Refracting State Development: Alliances In The Virtual World EVE Online

Why would states, resource intensive and difficult organizations, develop when they are not necessary? Unlike the voluntaristic model of social organization assumed by liberals starting from a state of nature, the real-world history of state building is a narrative of necessity and competition. By probing the process of state development in a virtual world (EVE Online), this paper explores state building in the absence of social or physical infrastructure that ties people together, what Michael Mann calls “the social cage.” In doing so, it demonstrates support for the idea that violent competition drives state development as states build organizational power in order to fight wars. However, it also shows that organizations in EVE are far less stable than their real world counterparts due to a lack of social caging. Through a qualitative analysis of interviews and documentary data about EVE, this paper illuminates how virtual worlds are useful sites of social science study, especially as counterfactuals for large-scale social phenomena. It also contributes vocabulary to understand virtual worlds, appropriating Stephanie Mudge’s term refraction to describe when and how virtual worlds are shaped by users. It argues refraction is a contingent interpretive process that attempts to solve problems generated in moments of uncertainty, often by drawing on ideological, social, and cultural models familiar to actors. In short, this paper shows that even in the absence of social caging, the users of EVE Online built states in order to solve the coordination and resource problems of territorial conquest.