This is a weekly update on my progress to document the history, perspectives, and narratives of the metaverse.
Current book word count: 98,306
Writing
Coming back to writing after a 5 week vacation break is never easy. Of course I read a lot and made notes during that time, but I took a deliberate break from looking at the script to get some distance and hopefully have a fresh look when returning. This has worked as far as I can tell.
I thought a little bit about what I wanted to write about next and I eventually settled on Habbo Hotel. One reason is that I really like the cute art style and the memory it evokes. I very much remember spending a lot of time in Habbo-like chat worlds when I was a teenager.
But also, I haven’t seen many articles talking about Habbo Hotel in the context of the metaverse. In sociology, there is the concept of “third places” (Oldenburg, 1999) — places that people use to keep in touch with their identity and their social circles outside their home and their workplace. This includes pubs, cafés, malls, parks, barbershops, beauty salons, and so forth. Virtual worlds have been analyzed through this lens for quite some time, for example by Soukup (2006), Steinkuhler and Williams (2006), even recently by Markiewicz (2020).
What I’m asking myself is at what point I talk about virtual worlds as third places in the book. Currently, I think it makes sense to start as soon as mostly social virtual worlds reached scale. An argument could be made to start earlier with DikuMUDs, for example LambdaMOO, where there is no “game” per se, and the focus is on socializing. But I think the concept of a third place in virtuality reached another quality with Web-based virtual worlds, where kids and teenagers logged in and hung out just to “be there” with friends. Don’t get me wrong, MUDs were already third places for many people, but with platforms like Habbo, entire social circles that already existed in real life shifted to also meet in virtuality. This to me is a different quality and deserves a deeper look. For a generation of teens, Habbo Hotel and similar platforms became the dominant form of how to think of “life online,” an actual “place” to be in virtuality, and thus a metaverse.
Quick recommendation: Back in the physical world, Johannes Kleske and Igor Schwarzmann look at the concept of the third place in the present, to “explore cultural rabbit holes, connect unexpected dots, and uncover insights that shape our world“, in their amazing podcast series Follow the Rabbit.
Back in the virtual world, I also wanted to write about Habbo Hotel because it is just wild. It’s a great example of an emergent virtual economy, with people turning tradable in-game furniture into a currency until Sulake (the developer) introduced an official one. Which promptly was used in theft, fraud, extortion and gambling. Where underage kids traded virtual sexual favors for virtual items. And eventually pedophiles caught on to all that and Sulake had to shut it all down in what was later called “The Great Mute“. But it was also a playful, tight-knit community that wanted everybody else to have a great experience by organizing parties and events and role-play.
It was a blast to write all that up. Great to be back on the keyboard and I’m excited how the book is shaping up.
Reading
“Moving Castles: Modular and Portable Multiplayer Miniverses” by Trust
“A growing number of subcultures, digital communities and guilds have turned their back on ad-supported social media and migrated their social and cultural activities to semi-private digital spaces, chat rooms and Discord servers. We believe these spaces have the potential to become decentralised institutions that are financed, owned and governed by their own members. To support this vision we propose Moving Castles, an organisational metaphor and real-time media type which combines collective agency and public participation in modular and portable multiplayer miniverses.”
“10 Axioms for the Metaverse” by David Burden
“Seeing as we seem to be back in full-on Metaverse hype again I thought I’d try and sum up my key views on the Metaverse based on over 25 years of working and playing in immersive virtual environments. Initially I tried to do this as a list of 6 things the Metaverse should be, and 6 things its shouldn’t, but that led to needless overlap. So here instead are 10 axioms for the Metaverse (no doubt still with some overlap!).”