Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life
"Malaby presents an ethnography of Linden Labs, the creators of the Second Life virtual world. Which is to say, he focuses not on how users of Second Life feel about their experience, but rather on how the Linden Lab people strategize and implemented the wider structure of that virtual world. Malaby looks at the clash at Linden Labs of the liberal ideology espousing a flat organization of creative peers with the reality of a hierarchy in which people are ranked according to their perceived level of creativity."—Choice, December 2009"The recursive changes in building Second Life by Linden Lab founder Phillip Rosedale and colleagues illustrate some of the lessons of new business organizational ideas and the expansion of the creative logics of gaming into new areas of everyday life. In deceptively simple prose Thomas Malaby explores the ways patterned contingency elicits desires not just to 'play it again,' but to be creative both with strategies of play and strategies of constructing ground rules. Above all, Malaby explores unexpected social games that develop in and around games designed for libertarian, meritocratic, efficiency-calculating, or individual-centered players."—Michael M. J. Fischer, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies, MIT, author ofEmergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological VoiceandAnthropological Futures"Making Virtual Worldsis a clear, thoughtful and often spectacularly illuminating study. It examines the social and cultural when shaped by the virtual; cocreation that combines responsive producers and unpredictable consumers; and enterprise that must follow emergent practice. It will appeal to people interested in branding, marketing, innovation, urban planning, software design, organization behavior, new media, and virtual worlds."—Grant McCracken, Research Associate, Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT, author ofTransformations"Fascinating as an ethnographic study of Linden Lab,Making Virtual Worldshas important implications for the effects of high technology generally. Most significant, perhaps, is the recursive loop that Thomas Malaby traces between tool-making, libertarian politics, and the transformative effects of digital technologies not only on users of Second Life but also on the company and people (the 'Lindens') that create and maintain it. This book is essential reading for many diverse conversations, among them new media theory, science studies, technology studies, and cultural studies."—Katherine Hayles, UCLA, author ofMy Mother Was a Computer and Writing Machines