Lo mundos virtuales son algo más (mucho más) que un cambio tecnológico, nuevas formas de entretenimiento o, incluso, un canal alternativo para la interacción de redes sociales. Son “mundos” con todas sus consecuencias, incluyendo las formas organizativas, las normas sociales, las leyes y las instituciones de una sociedad humana. De este modo podemos interpretarlos como experimentos sociales que nos permiten analizar si algunas propiedades que consideramos en ocasiones casi consustanciales con nuestras sociedades lo son realmente o son sólo consecuencias de las condiciones particulares del mundo físico o de nuestra historia.
First Monday ha publicado el Special Issue #7 dedicado a Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Global Cyberspace. Dos de los artículos, de investigadores académicos sobre mundos virtuales (y bloggers en Terranova), se adentran en los sistemas económicos y los gobiernos llegando a conclusiones interesantes para comprender el mundo real y su futuro cada vez más virtualizado.
1.
En Synthetic Economies and the Social Question, Edward Castronova se interroga sobre la desigualdad en las sociedades virtuales y la respuesta de los individuos a la desigualdad. Partiendo de que “An economy is an incentive system”, critica una asunción bastante popular que propone muchas de las reglas económicas que observamos en nuestra vida cotidiana son “naturales”, cuando en realidad son una construcción consecuencia de unas circunstancias específicas (y por tanto, susceptibles de modificarse ante nuevos escenarios como los creados en los mundos virtuales):
We’ve had the luxury, however, of talking about the rules of the economic game as if God gave us some Natural Rules once, and that we’ve screwed them up, and everything we’re doing now should try to get back to those Natural Rules as best we can. A fun fiction, this image is being wiped away by the emergence of entirely synthetic economies, where there is obviously no natural ruleset for the economic game, no natural order of production, and no natural tradeoff between equality and efficiency. Here, the economy is stripped to its bare essentials, and it’s rather shocking to contemplate what those essentials really are
A bunch of people talking. That’s it. The Economy: Through negotiated exchange, we create objects and endow them with value and ownership.
En los mundos virtuales surgen, como el mundo real, desigualdades en la riqueza entre individuos:
the total wealth held by users is dramatically, almost breathtakingly unequal. Some users have millions and millions of gold pieces and gear that shines like chrome. Other users have no money at all and gear made of old rags.
Second, the users’ rate of wealth increment per hour or unit of effort is also unequal, though less dramatically so.
I’ll refer to the former as ‘wealth inequality’ and the latter as ‘wage inequality.’
Pero lo realmente interesante es conocer la respuesta de los jugadores a ambos tipos de desigualdad; mientras las diferencias en riqueza son bien aceptadas, aquellas relacionadas con la productividad generan malestar:
… users’ attitudes toward wealth and wage inequality in contemporary synthetic economies are illuminating. The breathtaking wealth inequality in these places passes without comment. The rich are happy, the poor are happy — everyone’s happy! One hears nary a complaint about it. Thus, an econo–political dynamic that once toppled kings and emperors has absolutely zero political force in contemporary synthetic worlds. Strange.
Wage inequality, however, is among the most heated subjects. A day does not go by without someone complaining that her in–world occupation, be it wizard or welder, is horrifically and unfairly compensated relative to every other occupation.
Castronova concluye que estas actitudes virtuales se corresponden con una cierta visión neoliberal de la economía y la sociedad que acepta las desigualdades siempre que las reglas de juego y oportunidades sean equivalentes:
I think the explanation is fairly simple: these attitudes are consistent with a neo–liberal theory of deservedness, and perhaps that is the most widely shared rubric of social justice as we begin the twenty–first century. Roughly, I would describe the ‘neo–liberal’ theory as follows: if everyone is given the same opportunity to do things, and is subjected to only shallow, manageable risks, the fact that some people end up with great wealth and others do not is OK. People are assumed to be reliable agents of their own well–being and therefore any differences in accumulation — having been chosen by them under just circumstance — are not worthy of comment. Whether or not people are happy with the results, they have no claim against the State.
Cabría preguntarse si estas actitudes son representativas de las sociedades humanas o sólo de las comunidades de jugadores, que pueden constituir un grupo con motivaciones y comportamientos diferentes a la mayoría “no jugadora”.
Aunque Castronova acierta al analizar la economía como un sistema de incentivos, olvida que la economía tal como la conocemos cobra sentido ante situaciones de escasez de recursos (la norma en el mundo real) que hace precisa una asignación eficiente para permitir el desarrollo y crecimiento:
Avatar–mediated communication systems do not actually alter anything fundamental in the way human material inequality is constructed, but they do make certain powers of construction substantially more accessible and easier to see.
Pero, esta característica no es tampoco una “regla natural”. Aunque los mundos virtuales que existen en la actualidad generan escasez artificial por los intereses comerciales de sus desarrolladores, nada impide que puedan surgir nuevos entornos libres de esta escasez donde la economía tal como la conocemos tenga escasa relevancia. Será interesante conocer los resultados de estos “futuros experimentos”.
2.
El análisis económico se centra en las interacciones, transacciones, entre jugadores. Pero estas interacciones se desarrollan bajo unas reglas de juego que alguien define y controla. Los mundos virtuales, como los reales, cuentan con gobiernos. Esta cuestión es abordada por Richard A. Bartle en Why Governments aren’t Gods and Gods aren’t Governments. ¿Quiénes son los reguladores?, los desarrolladores que diseñan leyes implementadas en las condiciones de uso o empotradas en la arquitectura del código. Pero, como Bartle propone, los desarrolladores son algo más que gobernantes, se convierten en una suerte de Dios aceptado por los jugadores:
Virtual worlds raise awkward questions concerning how they are governed, central to which is the status of the developers of such worlds. The currently solidifying view of the legal establishment is that developers themselves are the de facto government of their respective creations, while being in turn subject to the laws of whatever real–world government asserts jurisdiction. The players of virtual worlds, however, while agreeing that real–world governments take precedence, have traditionally not considered developers to be acting as governments; rather they regard them as deities for their (virtual) reality.
…
Virtual world developers do rule their respective virtual worlds, but not in the same sense that that real–world states are ruled — even tyrannical dictatorships. They rule not as governments, but as gods. There’s a difference. Gods operate by changing the laws of physics, whereas governments work by the judicious application of the laws of physics that pertain to their world. I have no option but to obey the laws of physics, but I can consider disobeying the laws of the land if I believe I can either avoid detection or evade or defeat whatever force is sent to arrest me for my temerity.
Two key features of this difference together undermine any attempt to treat developers as being the government of their virtual world:
- Governments can be deposed by those they govern; gods can’t.
Governments can relinquish powers; gods can’t. The first of these statements says that developers can do whatever they wish in their world. The second says that this is true whether the developer likes it or not.
De un modo similar a lo que sucede con los sistemas económicos, que los desarrolladores sean dioses no debe ser considerado una “ley natural”. Existen otros modelos posibles en que estos desarrolladores actúen como un gobierno, pero en este caso los desarrolladores tendrían que formar parte del mundo virtual o el mundo virtual tendría que estar asociado al mundo físico, limitando seriamente la capacidad de creación de nuevas experiencias y estéticas virtuales:
Gods work within the physics of their own reality to create new realities that have new physics. Governments apply the physics of their own reality to moderate the behaviour of those who share that reality. For gods to be governments, they would have to be of the reality they moderate; however, as gods, the reality they moderate is of they themselves. These two conditions are mutually incompatible: if the world has sprung from my mind, how can I ever be a part of it? It’s a part of me!
Virtual world designers need to be considered gods, not governments, because that’s what virtual world designers are.
…
That’s why it matters to players: without gods of its own, the virtual world becomes just another part of the real world. Where’s the fun in that?
Una conclusión que resultará sorprendente y criticable para muchos, preocupados por el poder omnimodo de estos “nuevos dioses”. Pero pensemos que a diferencia del mundo físico, nuestras capacidades de elección entre mundos virtuales no tiene por que estar limitada y por tanto la existencia de una autoridad divina puede ser aceptada por los jugadores sin demasiadas reticencias, liberandolos de su principal obligación: jugar por el placer de vivir nuevas experiencias.
