And now there's something over There.

I've been chatting with some friends of mine about There, a virtual reality experience (no plot, so I'm not sure that 'game' fits) which is planning to survive off its own economy. In a short form, you can build things, do things, buy and sell things, and those who do will get 'Therebucks.' But those who don't, but want to see or experience them, can make purchases with Therebucks, and can buy them with real money.

I can only imagine that economists, game theorists, and other scholars used to imagining 'what if' scenarios are salivating at the thought of observing this. If not, they should be. To my knowledge, this is the first online, interactive environment of its type and complexity which is plotless and relatively without the swords-and-sorcery background of an Everquest or Ultima Online. From what I've been told, the avatars (your virtual representation of yourself) can be remarkably varied, and some can be surprisingly honest. In other words, there are pot-bellies. Human beings have a fundamental interest in interaction and community-forming, and online groups have always profited from this. There might have found a way to turn this into a business.

One strong reason for my interest in a 'playworlds' concept is that if you can convince participants to be suitably serious about the results which occur within them, you can draw some remarkable conclusions about human interaction. Economists have looked at roleplaying games for a while, especially when the property was being traded for real money. I haven't found any studies by sociologists, but I'm fairly convinced that this is because I haven't worked very hard. I'm particularly interested in how such concepts might play out in law.

Unfortunately, such an experiment is not likely to be conducted for many years, because most virtual worlds have fixed laws, and thus nothing in the way of a legal system. (If A can loan B a hoverboard in There, and be absolutely certain he will get the board back because the database says he 'owns' it, no 'contract' is necessary.) The worlds are not yet suitably complex to require detailed conflict resolution systems (conflict resolution in fantasy systems is, generally, a whopping big sword, not tort law as such), nor confident enough to allow players, as opposed to designers, to write those rules. I think the time is coming for a virtual-reality system to play with those rules, though, and something like There might be a beginning.

Imagine, for instance, if the creators of There backed off from their god-like roles, and programmed separate rules for 'possession' of an item and 'ownership' of it. Possession would be a fixed rule of the system, but 'ownership' is determined by some form of agreement among participants. It would be possible to steal something that had value, and for uncertainty to arise in a trade or transaction. ("I'll buy that hamburger today for $1,000 Therebucks on Wednesday.") Similarly, you might be rewarded for returning a 'stolen' item.

How would different groups resolve their disputes? Imagine that certain players are given the ability to fix ownership of objects (judges) and possession of objects (police), and that these are both democratically elected, or even fixed at random. In this world, would individuals prefer judges who are formalist in their methods, or legal realists? Under what conditions would those preferences change? What if a judgeship is assigned to an infrequent player--how does the infrequent application of justice affect anti-social behavior? Given the ability to create 'islands' of users, such a virtual world might provide some indication of 'what if' scenarios currently argued within the legal academy.

I certainly won't be participating in There--there's too much going on in my life to put time into a virtual one. And There has a number of pitfalls and hurdles to clear before I'd be confident of the business model. (There are, it seems, regulatory hurdles to the conversion of Therebucks to real money, although those hurdles don't stop people from trading Everquest items on E-bay. Expect similar markets to develop.) But this is one story I'll definitely be keeping an eye upon, especially if There starts to attract not only item developers, but arbiters of disputes.