Running until September at the Photographers' Gallery, Between Worlds examines the development and destruction of virtual worlds through the ages
The world is ending. To mark the occasion, hundreds, if not thousands, of people have gathered together to reminisce about all the adventures they’ve had together. There are heartfelt goodbyes. Memes are being shared. Even with the exact end point unknown, people are counting down to the apocalypse. It’s a mess of bodies and emotional conversations – a stuttering and celebratory rendering of life. And then everything goes dark.
As prescient as this scene sounds given the current state of the world and the threat of the climate crisis, this wasn’t an IRL doomsday party. Instead, this cataclysm has occurred numerous times online: from Club Penguin and Star Wars Galaxies to PlayStation Home and the closure of RuneScape Classic, the virtual worlds we spend our time in often meet their maker, usually when they are no longer deemed profitable and financially viable. As a result, the lives we lived there are lost in the digital ether as the servers are powered down.
Nevertheless, interest in digital worlds has never been stronger, with people like Mark Zuckerberg touting the metaverse – 3D-rendered spaces where people can work, socialise, play and, most importantly, spend – as the next step in our online lives.
Probing at this history of virtual spaces is Between Worlds, a new exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery in London that looks at the development of MMOs from the mid-1980s, to initiatives like Global Gateway, a metaverse created by the European Union that aims to encourage young people to engage with issues such as climate change, health and education. There are also videos of so-called “end of the world” parties, footage from the documentary series Preserving Worlds, which explores the legacies of these spaces, as well as photographs taken from social media of people meeting their “internet best friend” for the first time.
“There isn’t much difference, in my mind, in what was happening with virtual worlds in the ‘90s and ‘00s and what people are talking about now in terms of the metaverse,” says Sam Mercer, a digital producer at the Photographers' Gallery. “Part of the exhibition was about reflecting on the last 30 years or more of virtual world history and virtual world-building, but also thinking about the preservation, documentation, and what it would mean to create worlds if they were imagined by a different constituent, group, or person.”
Bringing those considerations into 3D-rendered life is a newly commissioned game by creative developers Benjamin Hall and Frances Lingard in collaboration with Sam and fellow digital producer at the Photographers' Gallery Arieh Frosh, which is on display in the gallery and available to play online. Titled World Imagining Game, players answer a series of questions such as who their world is for and how it is financed which helps them create their own virtual worlds. In the process, they consider different aesthetic possibilities, face different power structures, financial concerns and how to approach preservation.
“We didn’t want to fall into the trappings that things could be anything you want if you believe in it,” says Arieh of the game. “I think it’s helpful to think through something within the structures that you're stuck in or have to deal with. There could be something quite fruitful from what’s imagined there.”
As with many virtual worlds, the user-generated worlds created by playing World Imagining end with that world being closed down. This was by design, although wasn’t intended to be a commentary about the impending climate crisis of political instability.
“There were a lot of discussions a few years ago about the apocalypse and there were a lot of questions that asked: ‘But whose apocalypse are we talking about here?‘” says Sam. “Within virtual worlds, it is a very specific amount of people for which the world is ending. But for a climate crisis, that's a very different conversation.”
Nevertheless, the fact that Sam and Arieh took the variables that often cause a virtual world to close into consideration was appealing to developers and artists Benjamin Hall and Frances Lingard.
“There’s so much talk in the arts about the moment that seems to conflate any kind of digital practice or anything to do with gaming with an idea of world-building,” says Ben. “I think that’s not accurate. [Sam and Arieh] did a lot of due diligence towards funding structures, money and the finances of it. This is a project which is engaging with world-building in a way which more sincere and actually useful.”
“It re-materialises a lot of the stuff that’s often dematerialised in conversations around digital world-building,” adds Frances. “It brings it back to the thing that drives everything, which is economics.”
This manifests itself in the game, with players having different access to resources depending on the choices they make. “For example, if you have more access to resources, and you are working with a private company that would have private investment, then you would have more access to all the different options of player generation,” explains Frances.
While players aren’t able to download a playable demo of their world, each new creation is saved in an archive as a fact sheet, complete with an image of the world. It feeds into a wider discussion about the preservation of virtual worlds and who is responsible for that.
“It’s definitely not the user’s responsibility, but in most instances, it seems to fall on them as a form of maintenance and having this oral archive where you can talk through things,” says Arieh, referencing the documentary series Preserving Worlds, which also features in the exhibition. “That’s why I think that series is really good because people are able to talk through what these worlds were like, even if now they’re quite ghostly when you’re walking around the architecture.”
This question of preservation also makes up part of a three-year research project between the Photographers’ Gallery and Southbank University about digital folklore that examines communities within these older virtual worlds and how they exist, maintain themselves, and operate. “But also thinking more widely about how those communities function in relation to an extractive landscape on the internet,” adds Sam. “Or the idea that things online are there to be taken and used rather than built and maintained.”
But what of the future of virtual worlds? “All the tools, technology, services and interactions we have happen in, essentially, a virtual way,” says Sam. “The only thing missing – and this is what I think Meta, Apple and other companies are proposing – is the visual side that augments all of these technologies that we’re already using. But do we want a world where we want our realities augmented in this way? Who decides what that thing looks like? And is it actually improving anything? “
Between Worlds doesn’t provide an answer. Instead, with World Imagining, it asks you to envisage it for yourself.
Between Worlds is open now at the Photographers' Gallery and runs until 24 September. You can play World Imagining, online here.