Religion is Becoming Virtualised: Introduction the the Special Issue on Religion in Virtual Worlds (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religious Practice in Virtual Worlds
Ecumenica, 2013
Video games and virtual worlds have become a part of everyday life. With millions of users, these digital landscapes not only offer a play space but a place of religious observance as well. Second Life, for example, features several active religious congregations, while World of Warcraft has created fictional religions for several player types. These virtual worlds are not only spaces of play but places of ritual, religion, and faith. Digital spaces create three ways players can perform faith: common worship in a space they have created, fictional religions used to bolster player types in games, and subtle expression of real life faith through specific player choices and actions. Each digital world has its own unique take on religion, its performances, and the means available for its iteration. Virtual world research started in the early 1990s with investigation of multiuser dungeons, or MUDs, text-based precursors to contemporary graphic-based virtual spaces, and these early treatises offer intriguing glimpses into the possibility of virtual performances of faith. Stephen D. O'Leary found that users of virtual chatrooms and MUDs searched for ways of fulfilling their religious needs and obligations by attempting "to recreate or simulate real space in virtual space and to sanctify a portion of this space as a theatre in which spirit is manifested" (803). Bruce Damer, on the other hand, suggests that virtual worlds allow people to ignore the labels required of first life citizens, giving greater freedom to explore issues of faith outside the confines of societal norms (12). The Anglican Church of Second Life. Photo by the author.
2009
This is a brief essay, we call "think-pieces", designed to stimulate a discussion on a particular topic. For this series of essays we propose the following question: "In thinking about the spaces of virtual worlds, and the practices we witness within them, how can we define what counts as culture? Can we see any common cultural trends emerging in different virtual worlds, or are practices as disparate as the worlds and groups we find within them?"
Ijlm Missives Why Virtual Worlds Can Matter Thomas and Brown / Why Virtual Worlds Can Matter 37
2009
Thomas and Brown / Why virtual Worlds Can Matter 37 Virtual worlds are persistent, avatar-based social spaces that provide players or participants with the ability to engage in long-term, coordinated conjoined action. In these spaces, cultures and meanings emerge from a complex set of interactions among the participants, rather than as part of a predefined story or narrative arc. At least in part, it is the players themselves who shape and to a large extent create the world they inhabit. While many virtual worlds provide the opportunity for that kind of world to emerge, game-based environments such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online illustrate it best because of the intense degree of coordinated action and co-presence among players. This sense of “being with others” and being able to share space, see physical representations of each other, and communicat e and act in that shared space provides a very specific set of affordances for players. This article is an effort to trace out and...
Demographics of Virtual Worlds
2008
Virtual worlds, as both a concept and an industry, has changed radically over the past 10 years, from a toy for the technological elite, to an over-hyped marketing phenomenon, to a needed reexamination of the uses and utility of virtual world technologies and experiences, as provided in this paper. Within academia there are a number of issues that require further examination. The academic community appears to be divided into four camps: 1. those who embrace virtual worlds; 2. those who ignore the shifting use of technology; 3. those who are aware but have not yet explored the technology; and 4. those who are entirely unaware that virtual worlds exist. There is an overwhelming focus of research, publications and funding on a single virtual world: Second Life, which does not serve more than a fraction of the entire population utilizing virtual worlds or similar technologies. An overview of the size, shape and forms of virtual worlds may have a positive impact on both of these issues. This paper presents an in-depth survey and analysis of virtual worlds and related technologies.
Meeting in the Ether: A Brief History of Virtual Worlds as a Medium for User-Created Events
Artifact, 2008
Virtual worlds, shared graphical spaces on the Internet, are an exciting new medium of human presence for the twenty-first century. This article explores the origins, evolution, and future of the virtual world medium from their humble beginnings in multi-player games to their use in education, business, science, and engineering. Its focus will be on the development of social virtual worlds including environments such as Habitat, Active Worlds, and Second Life.
—This article is dedicated to the phenomenon of video games virtual world. We have overviewed specific literature that let us formulate the generalized definition of virtual world: computer-based three or two dimensional environment or space that can simulate real world where users represented by avatars are able to communicate or interact simultaneously or synchron-ically. This definition is quite limited when it comes to virtual non-ICT worlds. To understand the essence of virtual world we referred to postmodern philosophy that implies the possibility of multiple full fledged worlds. We have formulated one thesis stating that virtual world is the universum of simulacra and the second thesis stating that virtual world is fiction, imaginary and illusory, that becomes real and actual in the process of interaction between the Architect of a virtual world and the Beholders. The article proposes a new view on virtual world of video games.
Second Life and other virtual worlds: A roadmap for research
2007
Abstract Virtual worlds like Second Life are becoming important tools for, among other activities, socialization, social networking, entertainment, collaboration, and business development. These environments offer information systems researchers a unique opportunity to study how these environments are built and managed by operators, how they are used and misused by users, and the impact that they have on users, communities, organizations, and societies at large.