Article
Second Life, Video Games, and the Social Text
English: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2009
Disciplines
Abstract
Instead of being a world apart from material reality, the virtual world Second Life is intertwined with larger trends associated with Web 2.0 and the "eversion" of cyberspace. A number of recent scholars have begun to explore the relation of textual studies and video games. Games represent sophisticated ideas of what it means to enable on a digital platform the dynamic, networked, collaborative construction of the social text, broadly conceived. A game space is not an infinite virtual reality, but is instead a possibility space in multiple dimensions. Videogames offer humanists serious models for potential networked events of their own—embodied, intermediated, and out in the world.
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2009 Modern Language Association of America
Citation Information
Steven E. Jones, “Second Life, Video Games, and the Social Text,” PMLA 124:1 (January 2009), 264-72.