How Fiction 2.0 became Virtual Life on the Web
Long time before the high-tech communities have popularized the word Web 2.0, which marks new customs and habits in the use of the Net, writers and editors have experienced new ways to offer frame-on-demand stories. The three following models were made possible as soon as multimedia technologies were available:
• The first consists in allowing readers to decide for some events of the fiction. In fact, multiple hidden scenarios could be played according to the reader's choice, at some pre-defined sequences of the story;
• The second model offers to readers to pick in a set of characters which will take part to the story;
• In the third model, the reader can take part to the story.
Figure 1: Evolution to Virtual World
So, electronic stories of the first ages of multimedia in the 90s yielded place to virtual life games. In the beginning of this millennium, some Internet actors enabled these functions on the Net and added 3D to the scope… and finally offered spaces like Second Life. The need for prebuilt scenarios was slowly replaced by the eagerness and curiosity to freely enter in virtual worlds, where each one is mastering his own avatar's life. In the same time users of these sites are no more fiction readers or writers, but fictive actors of a crowdsourced imaginary world more and more massively populated.
There are many initiatives to use Virtual Life as a social laboratory for marketing purposes, behavior probes, opinion polls, trends tests (especially fashion "tendance"), etc. However, this virtual universe, totally decorrelated from real life, is a kind of parallel ecosystem. Avatars are the inner parts of their owners, kinds of would-be or would-has-been beings — not always human for some of them might be humanoid animals apparented to cartoons' characters. They may not live in an ideal world, as other avatars are sharing the same space.
Is there a missing link between these fictive worlds and reality? Maybe social networks present characteristics of both:
• Basically, Social Networkers subscribe to a site where they are recognized at the level they wish: as professionals, as members of a community or society, as alumnis of schools or organizations, etc.
• Moreover, any user may insert in his profile any facts concerning his past, present or future life…
• And, by the way, what would prevent him from adding artifacts projecting his imagination? For instance, right after his enrolment a user may begin by loading his avatar instead of his identity picture.
This is to say that social networking is definitely a virtual space which spans from pure reality — with the users' social data — to mere fiction.
Figure 2: Social Networks span from real world to virtual world
All these virtual space are ground for artistic creativity… Moreover, thanks to multiple APIs and mashups, a Social Network could easily be meshed with on-line games, enabling all users to play endlessly. Isn’t it more a recreation space than a space of creation?