Parlaying Value: Capital in and Beyond Virtual Worlds

RefereedRecent scholarship has made it clear that people within synthetic worlds (otherwise known as virtual worlds or MMORPGs) produce commodities and currencies with market value, while other work has established the increasing importance of social networks within and between worlds, as well as across the boundary which appears to separate them from the rest of users’ lives. To tie these two threads together, and account for the use of these environments for the development of expertise and credentials, I propose adding a third form, cultural capital, to the mix, and outline a model for understanding capital in all its manifestations: material, social, and cultural. This model will make it possible to explore how actors within synthetic worlds transform, or parlay, these forms from one into the other, and furthermore how these forms are used across all the domains wherein users act, blurring any qualitative distinction between virtual and real worlds.National Science Foundation Ethics and Values Studies in the Science & Society ProgramCenter for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwauke