FYI my current take (that I've mused on for quite a while but have now co-written (with Melissa DeZwart) a paper on) is that Virtual Worlds are for (increasingly) many legal purposes akin to sports. In a peculiar twist next I'm going to try to apply this to Human Rights law.

I have an aesthetics paper I was trying to get done before the upcoming US Supreme Court case where I argue that there is an aesthetic of game play (a ludosethic if you will) that meets the key philosophical criteria- thus under a functional theory of art at least some games qualify as art (there's also the Institutional notion of art but wether games are art under this really is a matter simple facts about their settings and reception - but I find this excruciatingly dull as a theory). The notion about seems to be rooted in modernist theories of aesthetics which I'm not sure are current in philosophy but I might dip my toe in.

The 'celeb' world idea did the rounds a few years back. I'm sure there was a VW 'experience' by Eno or something. Doing a quick search I came across this: Bowie World: http://www-static.us.worlds.net/cgi-bin/download.cgi?action=full&bundle=BowieNMCurrentVer I'm sure there are many more, given how cheap it is to roll our own world (sounds a bit katamari damacy) one would think there would be many of these. ren

this is teh awsome

I shall order asap. squee