Virtual Worlds and Their Discontents

Abstract

In the following article, author argues that virtual worlds are characterized by a particular mode of governmentality. Rather than seeing virtual worlds as analogous to societies in the real world, he suggests regarding them as ‘‘social factories’’ in which the social fabric is inextricably shot through with economic production. While the governmentalization of the global economy and the concomitant economization of governments are processes that originate in the real world, they also result in a ‘‘naturalization’’ of virtual worlds, a tendency which also becomes obvious in the way virtual worlds are discussed in terms of ‘‘population’’ and ‘‘territory.’’ In virtual worlds, the suffusion of governance with economic production thus leads to the formation of precarious forms of governmentality, which are veiled by a pertinent ideology of play.