The lawless frontier of deep space: code as law in EVE Online

Online multiplayer games are exemplary cases of the overlapping rule sets that are negotiated in the digital era. Game rules are used to establish a field of interaction at once familiar and strange, a deliberately differentiated sited for competitive, social, cultural and commercial exchange. Game rules created by developers in the establishment of an online digital game space intersect and overlap with rules created socially by players, withy cultural norms emerging from within the game space and from the contexts of play, with legal rules developed by lawyers managing the interests of publishers and with laws and values originating the real world contexts of players in whichever legal jurisdiction that are located. These heterotopian space are sites of negotiation and conflict on a number of levels.²