During 2005, sociocultural anthropologist Thomas Malaby performed an ethnographic study at Linden Lab. Not of Second Life and its users, per se, but of Linden Lab itself, as a key component in the collective structure in and around Second Life.
Malaby found an organization whose actions, functions, and effects were frequently at odds with those which its employees and managers believed it to have. In the years since his research, now documented in his book, Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life, the Lab has performed a 180 in some areas, but have their perceptions of themselves as an organization, and as an agency actually changed?
Continue reading Linden Lab, then and now: Tools, policy, self-perception and anthropology
Filed under: Culture, MMO industry, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Linden Lab, then and now: Tools, policy, self-perception and anthropology originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
