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You鈥檝e spent 2300 hours in World of Warcraft (WoW). Is it more than a game?

Like Tolkien鈥檚 Lord of the Rings or Wagner鈥檚 The Ring of the Nibelung, WoW isn鈥檛 just escapist fantasy. It鈥檚 posing alternatives to the world we actually have today. It raises questions about environmentalism and colonialism; it asks how people are going to be respectful of each other in a world in which there aren鈥檛 enough resources.

Tolkien believed that all good people could come together on the same side. This is one of the biggest questions that humanity faces: can we have a world consensus by which we鈥檙e all partners in finding a solution? Or, like the Hoarde vs Alliance situation in WoW, are we doomed to be in separate factions competing ultimately to the death? It touches on very serious issues but in a playful way.

You鈥檝e done a lot of work with religion. What does religion in WoW tell us about the real-world phenomenon?

The horrendous question that always troubles me is, what if religion is factually false but necessary for human well-being? What does science do then? Could there be some other stage of development in which we express ourselves through a kind of protean self in numerous realities with different levels of faith or suspension of disbelief appropriate to each of them?

That, on a much smaller scale, is what is happening with the fictional religions in WoW. The overwhelming majority of the people that play WoW don鈥檛 take its religions seriously.

The difference between faith and fantasy might not have been very distinct in ancient times, and it鈥檚 possible that we will move towards a time when instead of religion, people鈥檚 hopes can be expressed in something that鈥檚 acknowledged to be a fantasy but also, on some level, sort of real. WoW might exemplify that kind of post-religious future.

鈥淚t鈥檚 possible in the future that instead of religion, people鈥檚 hopes can be expressed in fantasy鈥�

In the book you say: 鈥�WoW may have the potential to become the first real afterlife.鈥� How?

Every movement a player makes in WoW is recorded, even their interactions with others. The avatar captures their social self. To what extent the avatar is its controller is a philosophical question, but the avatar can outlive its creator and continue functioning in WoW as a non-player character (NPC). Research is under way that will make NPCs behave more like specific people.

You hosted the first virtual science conference in WoW. How did it go?

It was a three-day conference about the convergence of the real and the virtual. In the main meetings we had 120 avatars 鈥� researchers from all around the globe. I had the experience of being with a leading American researcher and a leading Danish researcher who met for the first time and went questing together.

There were a few casualties 鈥� poor Wayne Lutters, a colleague of mine, was eaten by a pack of hyenas when he wandered too far from the group during the conference, and another colleague drowned. But there were no real technical problems, and that鈥檚 what counts to a scientist, right?

Could scientists be getting more out of virtual worlds?

Absolutely. They represent an opportunity for rigorous quantitative social science. Most of the games are not yet open or are not great for extracting data, but people are developing programs to analyse data about the tens of millions of WoW avatars online.

In the virtual environment Second Life, people are beginning to do formal experiments and set up laboratories. The virtual world A Tale in the Desert is well set up for academic experiments. It just hasn鈥檛 been used for that yet.