The governance gap: Why ignoring virtual world scholarship imperils metaverse policy

Introduction

In October 2021, when Facebook rebranded itself as Meta Platforms Inc., the term "metaverse" exploded across academic journals, policy briefs, and corporate white papers. Wider et al. (2024, p. 4876) found that, "[b]efore 2008, there was only one publication per year, but the volume of publications increased from 2008 to 2021. However, the number of publications increased exponentially from 32 in 2021 to 581 in 2022".

Yet this surge of attention obscured a troubling pattern: the erasure of decades of empirical research on virtual worlds. Contemporary metaverse discourse, dominated by technology corporations, global governance bodies, venture capitalists whose definitions have gained institutional traction, and technocentric scholarship that has proliferated largely without engagement with decades of virtual world research, proceeds as though virtual worlds emerged fully formed in 2021, rather than having existed as sites of complex social organisation, economic activity, and cultural production since the 1980s.

This selective amnesia has profound implications for how digital governance, accountability, and justice mechanisms are conceptualised in virtual environments.

The most damaging mischaracterisations surrounding the metaverse include the assumptions that it must use virtual reality, must be interoperable, must be massive, and must employ cryptocurrency (Boellstorff, 2024, p. 1). These technological prerequisites, while presented as inevitable features of the metaverse, reflect ideological commitments to particular visions of digital capitalism rather than empirically grounded understandings of how people create meaning in online environments. This is not to suggest that interoperability or digital currencies hold no value for users. Rather, there appears to be significant historical evidence that demonstrates that virtual world communities consistently built functioning economies, property systems, and governance mechanisms through social practice, without these technological architectures. Castronova (2001), for example, showed that virtual economies exhibited patterns virtually indistinguishable from physical world markets, operating with platform-specific currencies rather than cryptocurrency. The relevant question, then, is not whether these technologies could be useful, but whether presenting them as definitional prerequisites serves users who have never demanded them or the business models of those who have.

When global institutions like the World Economic Forum (WEF) and INTERPOL advance governance frameworks for the metaverse, they do so largely without reference to the anthropological, sociological, and hermeneutical scholarship that has examined virtual worlds for decades, therefore risking the construction of regulatory systems that fundamentally misunderstand the spaces they purport to govern.

This commentary examines how the redefinition of virtual worlds as "the metaverse" has created a governance vacuum, particularly regarding mechanisms of accountability and justice. By analysing the historical trajectory of virtual world research alongside contemporary metaverse policy proposals and research papers, it reveals how epistemic authority has shifted from scholars studying lived virtual experiences to speculators projecting technological futures.

The architectures extend beyond academic turf wars: when definitions of virtual spaces are controlled by those with financial stakes in particular technological architectures, the regulatory frameworks that emerge may serve commercial interests rather than the communities that inhabit these digital places.

The historical foundations: virtual worlds as social worlds

The academic study of virtual worlds long predates the current metaverse moment. Bell's somewhat accepted definition characterises virtual worlds as "a synchronous, persistent network of people, represented as avatars, facilitated by networked computers" (Bell, 2008, p. 2) which is a conceptualisation focused on social infrastructure rather than technological specifications. This definition emerged from decades of ethnographic and sociological research documenting how people created meaningful communities, economies, and governance systems in virtual worlds.

Beginning with MUD1 in 1979 and extending through graphically rich and socially immersive environments like Second Life, Everquest, and World of Warcraft, researchers documented how millions of users engaged in complex social activities that challenged simplistic distinctions between "virtual" and "real" experiences.

Anthropologists like Boellstorff (2015) demonstrated that virtual worlds functioned as places of genuine human culture, while economists like Castronova (2001) showed that virtual economies exhibited patterns indistinguishable from physical-world markets. Lastowka and Hunter (2004) explored how virtual property rights challenged traditional legal frameworks, documenting cases where users developed sophisticated normative systems for governing their digital communities.

This scholarship revealed that virtual worlds operated as "separate jurisdictions with their own distinctive community norms, laws, and rights", where "the residents of virtual worlds will live and love and law for themselves" (Lastowka & Hunter, 2004, p. 73).

Crucially, this body of work documented how governance in virtual worlds emerged not primarily through top-down corporate control or external legal intervention, but through user-generated mechanisms: reputation systems, community tribunals, and informal dispute resolution processes that leveraged situated knowledge and cultural context.

Taylor's (2006) ethnographic work in EverQuest¹revealed the extensiveness of group formations (clans, alliances, guilds) and documented their social norms, the magnitude of their impact on everyday virtual and offline experiences, and how they dealt with conflict and boundaries. These user-created groups were not merely social clubs but the primary architects of governance structures within virtual worlds.

As Taylor observed, "players already are core actors in the maintenance and life of the game. There is no culture; there is no game without the labour of players" (Taylor, 2006, p. 159).

The corporate redefinition: from virtual worlds to metaverse

The contemporary metaverse discourse represents a sharp departure from this scholarship. The World Economic Forum's definition, borrowed from venture capitalist Matthew Ball (2022), describes the metaverse as "a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users" (WEF, 2023, p. 4).

This definition embeds several assumptions that diverge from empirical virtual world histories: the necessity of massive scale, the requirement of interoperability, and the implicit technological determinism that treats features like blockchain integration as essential rather than contingent.

Ball's definition "mixes together about 15 concepts, from selfhood to time, money, and place" (Boellstorff, 2024, p. 3), yet makes no real reference to Bell's (2008) earlier definitional work or the decades of scholarship it synthesised.

The question of what distinguishes the metaverse from virtual worlds is itself part of the contestation this commentary examines. Boellstorff (2024, p. 7) defines the metaverse as “virtual place” that can involve sensory immersion, interoperability, massive scale, or cryptocurrency, none of which are definitional requirements. To accept interoperability as the distinguishing category would be to concede definitional authority to those who have made it a commercial priority, which is precisely what this op-ed attempts to interrogate.

More concerning is who holds definitional authority. The WEF paper references Ball as the foundation for future governance white papers, while making no reference to the corpus of legacy virtual world research.

We may ask how it is that figures such as the WEF can claim that they are "bringing together government, academia, business and civil society to guide the development of a safe and inclusive, equitable, interoperable and economically viable metaverse" (Li, 2023) but fail to consider a single academic perspective on virtual worlds historically within their first publication (WEF, 2023), where venture capitalists spearhead their lexical frameworks?

Snow Crash: misreading the dystopian blueprint

The irony of how contemporary metaverse advocates invoke Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992) reveals much about the selective reading practices that characterise corporate metaverse discourse. The novel, which coined the term "metaverse", is consistently cited in policy documents and academic papers as providing the conceptual foundation for current metaverse visions. Yet these citations most often fundamentally misread or deliberately misrepresent the novel's critique.

Park and Kim (2022), for instance, write: "Metaverse was first used in Neil Stevenson's [sic] science fiction novel Snow Crash in 1992 and referred to a world where virtual and reality interact and create value through various social activities" (p. 4211). This interpretation is not merely incorrect but inverts the novel's central warning.

In Snow Crash, the metaverse does not represent a harmonious convergence of virtual and actual worlds creating mutual value. Instead, it depicts a dystopian future where nation-states have fragmented into privatised enclaves managed by corporations, mafias, and religious groups. Citizenship, legal protection, and physical safety become commodities purchasable by those with means.

The novel explicitly depicts how the logic of capital, power, and exclusion follows users into virtual spaces rather than dissolving there. Chen et al. (2024) compound this misreading by synopsising the novel thus: "the 'real' world is an anarcho-capitalist dystopia, where nation-states have broken down...The metaverse is thus a welcome escape" (p. 87). This interpretation fundamentally misses that the metaverse in Snow Crash enables unique and amplified forms of discrimination and inequality. It is not an innate refuge but an extension of systemic harm.

When the novel's author, Neal Stephenson, spoke at a WEF panel in 2023 he advocated explicitly against the future his novel depicted, arguing that the metaverse should be decentralised and open source rather than owned by corporate ecosystems (Stephenson, 2023).

This pattern of selective citation reveals how corporate metaverse discourse appropriates the cultural cachet of science fiction while systematically ignoring its critical content. The metaverse is invoked as visionary futurism while its dystopian warnings are erased.

This matters for governance because it demonstrates how definitional authority operates: those with resources to build technological infrastructures also control how those infrastructures are narratively framed, even when the original narratives explicitly criticise such concentration of power.

Governance implications: will the Greek god model persist?

The consequences of this definitional shift become apparent when examining governance mechanisms. Historical research documented what Ludlow (2010) termed the "Greek God Model" (p. 15) of virtual world governance, wherein platform owners acted as de facto governments, intervening arbitrarily in user disputes without systematic policies or democratic oversight.

Yet rather than addressing this power concentration, the WEF’s metaverse governance proposals seemingly reproduce it at an institutional scale. When governance frameworks are constructed on definitions supplied by venture capitalists, without reference to how virtual communities have historically governed themselves, the “Greek God Model” is not dismantled but endorsed with the legitimacy of a global governance body behind it. This is particularly striking given the historical evidence. Wall and Williams (2007) found that the most effective governance strategies in virtual worlds were community-driven, relying on in-group reputation and social accountability rather than external policing. Warren and Palmer (2010, p. 3) observed that the sheer scale of virtual worlds made stringent top-down enforcement “impractical and unlikely”. Boellstorff’s (2015) ethnography of Second Life documented this in detail: residents developed what he termed “creationist capitalism” (p. 206), a political economy in which users produced, traded, and regulated their own commodity markets without requiring blockchain or interoperability. Governance emerged through shared norms observable in dialogue, in-world media, and user creation, cultural infrastructure built through participation rather than platform imposition.²

Ludlow himself has maintained this position, noting more recently that “[p]eople are going to keep learning the painful lesson that there’s no way for a platform moderator to police a virtual world” (Mansour, 2023). The question is not whether governance is needed, but whether it will build on some of the proven and documented community driven mechanisms or override them with corporate and institutional authority.

Ludlow and Wallace's (2007) ethnographic work running The Second Life Herald³documented extensive governance failures and asked the essential question: "Do we want the laws of virtual worlds to be written by technology companies, whose agendas may not include granting us the freedoms we enjoy in our physical lives?" Their concern has only intensified. As Ludlow later observed, "terrestrial governments are rapidly becoming irrelevant. The real questions are about what kinds of laws are being created inside of virtual worlds" (Ludlow, 2010, p. 2).

More recently, the Amsterdam District Court's ruling in Bits of Freedom v. Meta Ireland (2025) forced Meta to make feed preferences persistent and easily accessible, restoring user agency in the face of manipulative interface design. These cases reveal that courts may override corporate governance when fundamental rights are at stake. Such interventions remain reactive, addressing harm after they occur rather than preventing them structurally. Moreover, the rarity of such rulings underscores the fragility of relying on courts as a governance mechanism for virtual environments: manipulative platform design is widely documented, yet judicial intervention remains the exception rather than the norm.

The property rights parallel: when technology obscures social relations

The Dutch Supreme Court's (Hoge Raad, 2012) determination that virtual objects constitute ‘goods’ subject to theft laws represented legal recognition of this social reality, rejecting the argument that virtual goods were merely "bits and bytes" (Wolswijk, 2012). The objects' legal status derived from their established social meaning as users treated them as valuable property, invested labour in acquiring them and experienced genuine harm when they were stolen.

Contemporary blockchain advocates make similar property rights claims but route them through technological architecture rather than social theory. The promise of NFTs and on-chain ownership purportedly solves property rights issues through cryptographic immutability. Yet this technological solution addresses a problem that user communities have already solved through social mechanisms.

As Lehdonvirta et al. (2009) demonstrated in Habbo Hotel⁴, buying decisions were shaped more by social influences like peers and overall network activity. Value derived from social recognition, not technical specifications.That social influences rather than technological architecture once majorly governed user behaviour in virtual economies makes the current landscape all the more concerning. Where the researchers above documented communities whose economic behaviour was shaped by social recognition, contemporary platforms deploy dark patterns and algorithmic manipulation to override precisely these mechanisms. Mooij (2025, pp. 12‒13) argues that immersive virtual environments create conditions through which this override can intensify, for example, through the deployment of bots indistinguishable from ‘real’ users and algorithmic curation of perceived group opinion, mechanisms that operate without user awareness or consent. The Amsterdam District Court’s ruling in Bits of Freedom v. Meta Ireland (2025) addressed one such instance, but as noted above, such interventions remain rare. The shift from social influence to engineered influence is likely not a sign that earlier research is outdated; it is possibly evidence of the corporate capture this commentary examines.

Technocentric ideology and the erasure of user agency

When Nick Clegg (2022), then Meta's president of global affairs, claimed that "there is nothing deterministic in the way a technology impacts society" and that "the metaverse is a logical evolution", he erases the power relations that shape technological development. Technologies are not discovered through neutral processes; they are designed, funded, and deployed by actors with particular interests and ideologies.

When technology corporations, global governance bodies, venture capitalists, and technocentric scholars collectively control definitional authority, while ethnographers and virtual world researchers are absent from the table, the resulting governance frameworks risk serving commercial logics rather than the communities these frameworks purport to govern. This raises a fundamental question: whose vision of digital futures will prevail?

The stakes: competing visions of digital futures

The definitional struggle over the metaverse ultimately concerns whose interests will shape digital futures. When Boellstorff (2024) argues that "what might appear to be inevitable aspects of the metaverse are, in fact, capitalist assumptions about economy and society" (p. 7), he identifies how technological framings naturalise particular social arrangements.

The insistence that the metaverse must be interoperable, must incorporate cryptocurrency, must achieve massive scale appear on the surface to be technological requirements, yet, when we scrutinise the parties involved in establishing these technological requirements we are left to wonder if they are not, instead, ideological and shareholder driven commitments.

The historical record of virtual worlds offers an alternative vision. In these spaces, users created meaningful communities, developed sophisticated governance mechanisms and constructed economies that served social purposes beyond profit extraction. In EVE Online⁵, player-created alliances developed organisational structures capable of governing tens of thousands of members across hundreds of corporations, maintaining cohesion through shared norms and internal accountability rather than platform enforcement (Webber and Milik, 2017). They did so not because of technological capabilities but despite technological limitations. Meaning emerged from social practice, not computational power.

As Boellstorff (2015) argues, virtual worlds function as "places of human culture realised by computer programs", where culture precedes and shapes technology rather than the reverse (p. 17).

This anthropologically grounded understanding contradicts the corporate metaverse vision in fundamental ways. It suggests that effective governance emerges from communities, not platforms; that accountability depends on persistent social contexts, not interoperable identities; that justice mechanisms require situated knowledge, not universal algorithmic rules.

The practical risks of ceding governance authority to the corporations building these platforms are not hypothetical. When the same entities that design the architecture of virtual spaces also determine the terms of accountability within them, the conditions exist for conflict of interest: platforms may set rules that protect their business models rather than their users, define harmful conduct in ways that exclude their own design choices, and control the evidence base on which disputes are adjudicated. The shift from social influence to engineered influence documented above, from community norms to dark patterns, illustrates how this dynamic is already underway.

Most critically, it implies that scale may be governance's enemy rather than its friend and that meaningful accountability becomes harder, not easier, as virtual populations grow.

The question is not whether virtual spaces require governance, but whose knowledge and whose interests will shape that governance. The contrast between historical virtual world scholarship and contemporary metaverse policy could not be starker. The former documents decades of empirical evidence about how people actually create meaning, organise socially, and develop justice mechanisms in digital environments. The latter projects technological visions serving commercial interests while ignoring or potentially actively erasing this evidence base.

The path forward potentially requires additional reflection on the historical canon of virtual world research. Boellstorff (2024) claims that anthropology can be good for the metaverse by "calling into question ways of thinking in danger of becoming 'common sense'" (p. 2).

Ultimately, the question is epistemic: who defines the metaverse and its governance? When corporations set definitions, policy aligns with commercial interests. Centring virtual world scholarship offers a corrective, emphasising user agency, community governance, and empirically grounded accountability.