Design and the Social Ontology of Virtual Worlds

This essay analyzes the ontological structure of institutional and other social entities in virtual environments. The emphasis is on institutional reality, which consists of entities (objects, events, etc.) like money, contracts and chess pieces, that are constituted in part through collective agreements. It is studied how institutional entities are constructed in virtual environments, how they relate to institutional entities in the real world, and how they are recognized by users. It is subsequently disucssed how designers of virtual environments may better account for the peculiar characteristics of institutional entities in design.