State of Play IV: Program
Friday, December 1, 2006
8:30 a.m. – 9:15 a.m.
Breakfast
Coffee, pastries and fruit available from 8:30
a.m.
9:15 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Welcome and
Opening 
Symposium welcome:
Richard A. Matasar, Dean, New York Law School.
9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. How Did We Get Here?
This opening panel will
set the themes for the Symposium, charting just how we got to this point in
the studies of virtual worlds. Why did certain questions get asked
first, and has this directed research in particular ways? What are
the notable successes of virtual worlds research and where are the
failings? Have we missed things we should be discussing? If we
want to understand where we might go from here, we should first understand
where we are and how we got here.
Panelists:
Ted Castronova (Indiana
University); Julian Dibbell (Pleimunni Consulting); Dan Hunter
(NYLS/Wharton); Ren Reynolds (Terra Nova).
11:00 a.m.
– 11:15 a.m. Bio Break / AFK
Refreshments available
(coffee, tea, sodas, cookies, etc).
11:15 a.m. -
12:45 p.m. Governance and Groups
Groups and Individuals,
Guilds and Officers, Developers and Players. All manner of interests
play themselves out in the virtual worlds of the games, in the worlds of
scholarly research, and in the worlds of development. How are we to
think about institutions and individuals within these worlds, and what
effect do various contested conceptions have on our thinking about
them. Governance happens, but what sort of governance? And
why?
Panelists:
Tim Burke
(Swarthmore College); Joshua Fairfield (Indiana University); Greg Lastowka
(Rutgers University); Thomas Malaby (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee).
12:45 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. Lunch
2:15 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. Methodologies and Metrics
As with any
interdisciplinary field, the nature of the study of virtual worlds is
intimately connected to the nature of the methodology used to study the
worlds. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies of various stripes all
have their role here, but what role? Ethnographies, case studies,
historiographies and related methods allow us to detect and understand
certain types of behavior. Empirical and quantitative methods are
good at creating generalized insights about behavior, but comparatively
lousy in generating insights of how and why and with what meaning.
In this workshop we will explore when certain methods are better than
others, whether these methods are inconsistent, and what we need to
understand about methodologies of virtual world research in order to do
interesting work.
Panelists:
Nic Ducheneaut (PARC); Thomas Malaby (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee);
Dmitri Williams (University of Illinois).
3:45 p.m.
– 4:00 p.m. Bio Break / AFK
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Gender and Diversity
You may not have
noticed but there are not a lot of women or minorities in virtual world
studies, or even in the development process. And let’s not
talk about the rendering and representation of women and minorities in
virtual worlds. Or actually, let’s. Let’s talk
about whether there is any effect on this field by questions of gender,
race, sexual orientation, and the like. What sort of effect has this
had on the development and study of virtual worlds, and is there anything
that we need or can do about it?
Panelists:
Betsy Book (Makena); Mia Consalvo (Ohio University);
Constance Steinkeuhler (University of Wisconsin-Madison).
7:00 p.m. Dinner: Congee Village at
207 Bowery (map)
Saturday, December 2, 2006
8:30 a.m.
– 9:30 a.m. Breakfast
Coffee, pastries and fruit
available from 8:30 a.m.
9:30 a.m. – 11:00
a.m. Tax and Finance
When the history of
taxation of virtual assets is finally told, the blame will almost
certainly fall on Julian Dibbell. He may have been joking when he
wrote about trying to get the IRS interested in the tax status of his
Ultima Online assets, but look who’s laughing now? The Joint
Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress is examining the question, the
Australian Tax Office thinks that these assets are taxable, and various
people are asking, “Why shouldn’t we think of virtual assets
in the way that we think about other financially-valuable
assets?” This panel will venture into the uncharted terrain:
the taxation of virtual assets, money-laundering using virtual worlds, and
the myriad financial implications of virtual assets. There are no
maps for these territories but this should not deter us.
Panelists:
Bryan Camp (Texas Tech
University); Julian Dibbell (Magtheridon Taxation Associates); William
LaPiana (New York Law School); Dan Miller (Joint Economic Committee, U.S.
Congress); Ann Thomas (New York Law School); Marc Lewis (Sony).
11:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. Bio Break / AFK
Refreshments available (coffee, tea, sodas, cookies, etc).
11:15 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. Virtual Worlds and Learning
What’s the deal
with virtual worlds within education, and within learning more
generally? Some suggest replicating the physical classroom within
virtual worlds, but this approach is beset with all sorts of
problems. Alternatively we can build entire worlds that are
constructed solely to teach certain principles, but this is hardly
sustainable. Learning certainly happens in these worlds, but what
type of learning happens, is it valuable, and does it change any of our
assumptions about learning generally? And what happens if we
discover that play is the best way to
learn?
Panelists: Aaron Delwiche (Trinity University); Lauren Gelman (Stanford University); Constance Steinkeuhler (University of Wisconsin-Madison); Doug Thomas (University of Southern California); Lisa Galarneau (University of Waikato).
12:45 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. Lunch
2:15 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. Where To Now?
This session will
differ from other sessions because it will not have any pre-assigned
panelists, and instead it will pick up on the themes from the conference
and ask what are potential futures of virtual worlds research, what
directions should we take, what should we be studying and what have we
missed to date, how research might be funded to push things along, and who
should we be including who we’ve been ignoring?
3:45 p.m. Conference close
