For as long as I can remember, I've always been told that my head was up in the clouds. I enjoyed fairy tales as a child, imagining myself as a knight in shining armor slaying dragons and basilisks (I was not the damsel in distress). My imagination didn't stop after I graduated high school, as I grew older, I devoured thicker fantasy novels, like Tolkien and Robert Jordan. In college I was introduced to the world of tabletop RPG like Dungeons and Dragons, Vampires and Pirates. I found friends who shared the same interests and so I grew from a daydreamer to a normal social college girl (though it may have been a geeky social circle).
Little did I know that the internet was the next step in turning my fantasy world into reality. My alter ego went to law school, finally answering the demands of reality, but in those rare moments where I was able to relax from the rigors of studying, I discovered the virtual world of online gaming. Little by little online games mushroomed all over the Philippines. The old school chatting and challenging Starcraft and Warcraft battles bred online WORLDS of Ragnarok, Tantra, MU, Final Fantasy IX. My head was spinning. I was hooked.
An online Role Playing Game (RPG) is a game type where several (typically several thousand) players act simultaneously in the same server based world. It's basically a graphically illustrated MUD --Multi User Dungeon: text based, role playing games which are played over a telnet connection. So instead of sitting with your friends with a cup of dice, all you need is a computer and you're all set to walk or gallop into the new world. Traveling at the speed of a click of a mouse, one can interact with other players from across the globe to trade weapons and amulets etc.
Whether they take the form of games, social spaces, or educational environments, virtual worlds are now truly global in scope. The popularity of virtual worlds in Asia is phenomenal. From Thailand and Malaysia to Indonesia and the Philippines, the Asia Pacific region's on-line gaming market generated approximately $1.4 billion in annual revenues last year – a figure that is expected to reach $3.6 billion by the end of the decade. By creating an alternate world online, territorial boundaries disappear and cultures collide, which without regulation, is a sure recipe for controversies.
To give an example, some of the controversies are related to intellectual property, real-money transfer, gaming as political speech, time-limit addiction laws and the policing of Internet cafes. I've experienced people trying to sell their online weapons and armors for real money. So people meet up in malls to trade characters with real money. This is a scam waiting to happen, if it hasn't already. I've also seen a bit of racial profiling where Western players refuse to deal with Chinese players, discriminating them based on language skills.
In short, this area of the internet has so much potential to turn into a truly global civil society, not only is it a gaming world where you kill monsters for experience points, it is an interactive world with real human relations which opens the doors to the free exchange of ideas... or not. For now, I see that regulation is very much needed in order for this new world to flourish and benefit the human race in the long run. Later, I will be blogging on more specific issues relating to the virtual gaming worlds in addition to our assignments. But for now...
LET THE GAMES BEGIN.
