Dirk-Jan de Bruin - Virtual Worlds

As former Virtual Worlds researcher, developer and Virtual Community Manager I of course remain very much interested in the field of Multi-User Virtual Worlds/Inhabited Virtual Worlds.

Even though developments seem to have slowed down in the last few years, and sadly enough Virtual Worlds have not yet turned out the become 'the next big thing', there is still happing a lot out there.

I will try to keep up with developments and refer to some of them on this part of my website.

For more Virtual Worlds info, check out the Virtual Worlds Categories:
- Virtual Worlds category

And Papers

WorldsAway Links

Also, you can find an outstanding list of current Virtual Worlds on Virtual Worlds Review. I can highly recommend it, and it must have taken the authors quite some time to compile. Back in 2001 I did an extensive Virtual Worlds technology review for a major telecommunications firm and just compiling the list of main players surely took quite some time, let alone going into each platforms specific features.

More misc. Virtual Worlds Links (still need to sort them):
- HabitatChronicles.com, Chip Morningstar & Randy Farmer share their experiences (both founding father of the Inhabited Virtual Worlds)

- Terra Nova, Virtual Worlds Blog

- Read Al Lowe's story about Larryland. Although Al Lowe is mostly known for his historic adventure games like Leisure Suit Larry, he actually created the foundations for TSN/The ImagiNation Network.

- Very cool: Bruce Damer's Virtual Worlds timelime. I remember Bruce showed me and my father early versions of this timeline on a napkin during lunch. Of course, this version is way better .

- Karol Laskowski, Carla van de Wiel & Arnoud Engelfriet, Real human rights in virtual worlds

- Sara de Freitas, Serious Virtual Worlds - a scoping study

- Castronova, Edward,Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier(December 2001). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 618. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=294828

- Castronova, Edward,On Virtual Economies(July 2002). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 752. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=338500

- The Decline and Fall of an Ultra Rich Online Gaming Empire, Wired

- Les Mondes Virtuels - French website by my former colleague Josques Bernard.


- IBM, Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders

- Cisco Virtual Worlds Blog

Virtual Worlds Law:

- Lawspot Virtual Worlds Law Library

- Virtually Blind, Legal Issues that Impact Virtual Worlds

- Lastowka, Greg and Hunter, Dan,The Laws of the Virtual Worlds. California Law Review, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=402860 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.402860

- Solove, Daniel J.,'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy. San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, 2007; GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=998565

- Lawyers Find Real Revenue in Virtual World, Law.com

- Does Virtual Reality Need a Sheriff?, The Washington Post

- Two Developments in Virtual-World Law, William McGeveran (Harvard Info/Law)

- Virtual worlds wind up in real world's courts, Tom Loftus MSNBC.com

- documentary, Holland Doc: Another perfect world (Dutch)

BOOK: The state of play : law, games, and virtual worlds, J M Balkin; Beth Simone Noveck, New York University Press, ©2006.

Boellstorff (2008), Coming of Age in Second Life

Also, be sure to check at the authors that refer to our papers. You can find a list in the Papers section. Really interesting stuff, and of course all of it is related to Virtual Worlds.

Misc stuff:
- Documentary Holland Doc: Emoticons, Hetty Honingmann (regarding chat, Dutch)