Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

Digitally-mediated virtual places such as SL have also been described as multi-user virtual
environments (MUVEs) (Gordon 2008) or collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) (Prasolova-
Førland 2008, Schroeder 2011). The former definition is often used to describe a wide variety of
applications such as multi-player online games or multi-user VR environments, whereas studies
that use the latter mostly focus on collaborative systems for digital interaction, problem-solving,
content generation or various other purposes. In fact, a significant portion of the research
literature on VWs is comprised by studies on massively multiplayer online role-playing games
(MMORPGs) and the gamer experiences 2 . In his socio-economic analysis of online game spaces
and gamer communities, professor of telecommunications Edward Castronova (2005) defines such
spaces as “synthetic worlds”, which he describes as “any computer-generated physical space,
represented graphically in three dimensions, that can be experienced by many people at once”
(Castronova 2005: 22). On the other hand, new media scholar Eric Gordon (2008) claims MUVEs
such as SL are not essentially games, even if they might include game spaces. In this perspective,
SL represents the social VWs “in which the primary purpose is the creation of meaning through the
manipulation of the world and communication with others within the world” (Damer 2009: 2).
In his book on designing virtual worlds, the game designer and researcher Richard Bartle (2004)
defines virtual worlds as shared or multi-user, persistent virtual environments that are
simulated/implemented by a computer (or a network of computers). While Bartle’s analysis of
VWs focuses mainly on design and user-interaction in MMORPGs, several fundamental
characteristics are common for many online applications of 3D social worlds. In his view, major
characteristics of virtual worlds are: underlying automated rules that enable players to effect
changes to it, representation of players/users as inworld characters, and real-time interaction with
a shared and (relatively) persistent world. Bartle’s definition is useful in terms of putting the
emphasis on VWs as places in which human communication take place. Evidently, the ways in
which the field is described depends heavily on the purposes of the research framework. I
emphasize the framing of VWs as places in order to stay consistent with the overall socio-semiotic
framework on virtual place-making as co-production of multimodal sign systems.
Virtual worlds as places
As mentioned above, I consider the VW of SL a network of virtual places, which accommodate and
afford the co-production of 3D virtual environments as multimodal semiotic processes of place-
2 Unfortunately, it is not possible to discuss all the landmarks of MMORPG research and game studies here, in the
limited space of this dissertation. However, in addition to Richard Bartle’s (2004, 2008) contributions, I find digital
communication scholar T.L. Taylor’s “Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture” (Taylor 2006) and gamedesigner
Ralph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun” (Koster 2005) as particularly helpful resources for exploring the relations
between the design of gamer experience and the possible social arrays of digital interaction in online games.
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