Who governs virtual worlds?

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That leads, however, to the examination of external governance, which means disputes between real governments and the community of players and designers.

Thus, Lastowka said, the question of whether real-money trades is good or bad for virtual worlds is a lot like a yacht club dispute over whether members need to wear jackets in the dining room: it's something that can be resolved without getting the law involved.

And that's probably good, as he suggested that the law is not particularly attuned to the issues revolving around games.

"Law is so close to games, in that games set up rules and structures, and try to set them up around specific rules and behaviors," Lastowka said. "The reason the law is dismissive of games is that it recognizes a similarity and wants to say, 'No, that's not what we're doing.'"

Thus, he suggested that the law of virtual-worlds is going to be similar to law of sports and other forms of private organizations.

To Thomas Malaby, another panelist and an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, governance comes from the confluence of control--of players and their behaviors--regulatory schemes, social and structural conventions and material constraints.

Malaby said any form of governance, in virtual worlds or beyond, comes from law and regulation--the idea that enforceable rules are put in place and that there are consequences for breaking them.

Yet, clearly, virtual world players want more clear lines of demarcation when it comes to governance, and when it comes to players asking for such help, publishers often reply that it's too hard to build it into their products, said Timothy Burke, a panelist and an associate professor of history at Swarthmore College.

"Secondly, they'll say, honestly, 'We're scared of the consequences of having more robust tools for governance.' Governance isn't fun. (Publishers) don't want that in their games. It's just a small group of freaks (who want it, they say) and most?don't want you to have it, because they don't like what it does to their games."

Ultimately, then, the panelists seem to suggest that if players want real governance, at least when it comes to issues between themselves, they are going to need to self-govern. As to complex issues between players and the publishers, it's likely that real disputes will need to be elevated to the courts.

"The rules players develop do stop each other from bad acts," said Fairfield, "and that's all the governance we probably need."