Juwon's Blog

The Design Fiction of Virtual Worlds

A review of "30 Days in ActiveWorlds" & "Design Fiction as World Building"

In our world, we constantly encounter sci-fi entertainment contents that refer to our reality to an extent that it makes the viewers believe in the fictional world as a reality. Such representation of the imaginary world could be an example of Design Fiction. The article “Design Fiction as World of Building” questions the definition of Design Fiction by investigating two instances of Design Fiction, Game of Drones and The Empathy Engine. 
The core research idea of the article is the definition Design Fiction, which has varying explanations. Bruce Sterling, who first coined the term Design Fiction, defined Design Fiction as “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.” Now, the term “diegetic” derives the question of whether Design Fiction must be associated with storytelling and narrative. Diegetic prototype, a key theory of the article, means “prototypes which exist within the unreality of a fictional world.” The article investigates whether fiction should be a term that includes literature and narratives. However, the author debunks the idea that fiction is equal to narrative, thereby separating narrative from the definition of fiction. Another key premise that the article state is that design fiction is composed with a number of artefact building a world together. It is also mentioned that “a Design Fiction is a distinct entity” which we cannot see the shape of it, but can see ‘entry points’ of it. 
The article then proceeds with examples of Game of Drones and The Empathy Engine, all of which are cases of Design Fiction. Game of Drones demonstrated a fictional trial called ‘Drone Enforcement System’. The description of the project, such as small details of drones landing on actual charging areas, was incredibly realistic that it convinced the audience that it was a real thing. Also, The Empathy Engine project is another example of the Design Fiction that designed a device that detect human empathy. Although the technology of detecting human empathy is not available in real-life, the highly plausible explanations and manifestation of the device fooled the media in to believing that it was true. 
With these two examples of Design Fiction the article derives the conclusion that Design Fiction is “a world building” endeavor as neither of the two projects core was narrative. World Building is defined as “the process of constructing an imaginary realm.” Each of the artefact that composed the Design Fiction was created a coherent set of world, thus illustrating the World Building aspect of Design Fiction. 
The concept of Design Fiction and World Building is well demonstrated in a research done by Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith that investigated human action in a Virtual World. The article “30 Days in ActiveWorlds – Community, Design and Terrorism in a Virtual World” is a first person narrative ethnographical research done in a Virtual World called ‘Collaborative Virtual Design Studio (CVDS)’ for 30 days. 
Smith created a new virtual world in a software and participated as an avatar named ‘Butch’ and called himself ‘Smithee’. In the Virtual World people could build anything without any restriction, and Smith was aiming to see what people would build if they were capable of building anything. With his efforts to get people’s attention by setting up a competition, the virtual world became very popular. However, there were also incidents of vandalism, where a user destroyed building that others have created, and someone even hacked Smith’s network. Interestingly people confronted Smith as the suspect, and Smith quoted that even though it was a virtual world, he realized that “it was still possible to feel uncomfortable.” In the following days, Smith investigated the feeling of community. He stated that logging in and just being there created the feeling of community and involvement. As Smith’s virtual world was so popular and got many media attention, the world was given another free 30 day extension. However, most of the people left and only some few avatars remained in the world. 
One of the key elements that highlight the concept of Design Fiction in Smith’s research is the development and design of what people built and created in the virtual space. Smith stated that the virtual world “can be seen as a huge construction set with a set number of objects” and that “there is the widespread inclination of users to create structures that mirror the real world as much as possible.” This is very similar to Design Fiction, where artefacts of an imaginary setting compose the fictional world. In this sense, the virtual world can be though as the fictional world, and the object in the virtual world as artefacts that constitute in the fictional world. One main thing to note is that the in the Virtual World, people’s artefact will resemble to that of the reality to engage real-life world whether they intended or not. Thus, it seems that as artefacts in the World Building of a Virtual World consists of real-life contexts, the human actions and the outcomes of the Virtual World cannot be completely separated from our real life.