Virtual Worlds Asian Perspectives: a Landscape with Peaks and Valleys

Abstract

When highlighting patterns of usage of virtual worlds, the mass media tends to draw generalizations from anecdotal extremes of the neglect of families and acts of gang-related or self-inflicted violence; other generalizations are drawn about the outsourcing of the acquisition of in-game resources. We argue that understandings of virtual worlds from Asian perspectives must be broader than these naîve generalizations.