I’ve been witnessing the disneyfication of historical roleplaying in Second Life. Since the closing of the first Wild West roleplaying sim, Sigil, a number of new RP sims have been created to take its place. It’s difficult to keep track of these sims – they briefly appear and then, just like Sigil, completely vanish. Their significance is not in the number of simulations that have followed, but the manner which they conduct business. Many of these new environments resemble historical amusement parks or shopping malls more than they do roleplaying environments. A good example of this is Sand Ranch, where the streets are lined with small shops selling “authentic” avatar clothing, as well as stylized clothing that can make you look like a Country singer. The historical accuracy of these environments isn’t necessarily intended nor desired – their goal is to create a profit.

My criticism of disneyfication directly relates to my studies of the Oregon Trail computer game, Second Life historical roleplaying, and the potential use of virtual worlds for educational purposes. I should clarify that not all roleplaying simulations have been simplified into historical amusement parks. What has occurred is a shift in ownership – several successful historical roleplaying sims persist with group ownership. New simulations take advantage of the popularity of these environments and market their products to that community of users. The disneyfication that occurs in these newer roleplaying sims is largely due to an imbalance of ownership. When one person, or only a select few control how ideas are represented within a sim, they are naturally limited.

One of the exciting things about Sigil and other historical roleplaying sims is how collaborate these environments become. For example, Sigil itself had virtual town hall meetings, where virtual citizens would gather together with the mayor to discuss pressing issues. There were a list of roles that citizens could take up, and each person collaborated to affect the sim’s narrative structure. How the West, and history itself was represented within the sim depended on these individual users. The disneyfication that occurs in many newer Wild West sims can be attributed to this lack of community and collaboration. Traditional computer simulations, the Oregon Trail included, were limited by the presentation of ideas. Since all actions are hardcoded into the software, only a few select “experts” could present the West’s narrative, while Second Life as a social space has no such limitations.

The power of Second Life and any type of new social media is that it allows user interaction and the creation of relationships between individuals and environments. When learning history, those elements are critical to the retention of knowledge. Must there be disneyfication of historical roleplaying in Second Life? I would argue no – not more than there is any other process of learning. There is abstraction to some extent – we can only learn so much and most of us will not become experts. But there is the potential for Second Life, as a collaborative and social learning environment, to allow students to reach beyond the limited knowledge presented by experts, and learn through their peers in ways that mean more to them individually – a process of internalization that is the intention of learning.