NYConvergence ORIGINAL
By: Gloria Sin

(Photo Credit: Gloria Sin, NYConvergence)

For a conference that bills itself as “the serious study of virtual worlds,” the sixth annual State of Play, hosted by New York Law School in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood this past weekend (June 19-20), was just as serious about having (real and digital) fun.

Not only were the cross-discipline conversations about the future of virtual worlds simulcasted in Second Life, attendees also got to do a mixed reality dance-off with the avatars -- only to rickroll them! And in the real world and between sessions, panelists and attendees could be found jamming to Bon Jovi on the Xbox, or killing each other through the conference role-playing card game, Eschaton.

Of course, game designers, social scientists, legal and law enforcement experts from as far away as Helsinki did not trek to the city just to hang in an arcade. In the span of two jam-packed days (there wasn’t even time for a lunch break on the last day), speakers fast-forwarded through their experiences of working with(in) virtual worlds in the panels I attended:

• Opening Keynote: A New Kind of World, Raph Koster
• Current Legal Issues for Virtual Worlds
• Beyond the Magic Circle
• Economies and Economics
• Developer Roundtable
• Security and Surveillance
• Lunch: Old Media, New Media, and New New Media
• The Laws and Governance of Virtual Worlds
• Studying Virtual Worlds

For me, the surprise hit of this year’s conference was the Security and Surveillance session, which featured such unlikely speakers at a gaming conference as an ex-Scotland Yard detective and a Special Deputy United States Marshal. When Charles Cohen, the officer who heads Indiana State’s Special Investigations and Criminal Intelligences Sections, talked about the similarities between the murder scene of a young girl and the fantasies that her father had simulated in virtual worlds, it really drove home that:

• Virtual and real worlds are increasingly blurred and real people are being impacted.
• Virtual worlds could potentially inform real world behaviors.

State of Play 2009 was unique in that most panelists attended their colleagues’ sessions and were incredibly accessible to attendees. The comraderie between industry experts and participants was evident online and off, which made the conference not only a success but truly fun. What did you like most about #sop09?