I found Marie-Laure Ryan’s “Fictional Worlds in the Digital Age” very interesting. I have been fascinated by imaginary worlds since I was a kid, and read Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia (also C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, of course). Apart from this literary world-building, I hadn’t thought much about fictional worlds being created on-line. The article talks about how things in the fictional world can sometimes creep into the real world. What I especially found interesting is the criteria that we have for something to be considered real: it must have monetary value. Once something in the imaginary world – say an item that your character has acquired in an on-line game – is able to be bought and sold for real dollars, we consider it real. I think that shows an underlying trend in our society, how we value things by how much they are worth in dollars, over other forms valuation.
Fictional Worlds
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I like your point here, all innovations as they prove of interest to a group begin to be recognized through dollars and sense marketing. These processes also manage to make the imaginary or cyberspace worlds institutionalized in how profitable or expansive they can make them through expansions and DLC content. Much like the card games that we have now that profit from expanding to new abilities and such and limiting the old as they do not fit in anymore but get rehashed into useable cards in the series. It is true that the marketing factor is the big key here in its relation to the market scheme.