Summary: Tens of millions of people across the world also inhabit a virtual world: they spend hours undertaking numerous activities and interacting with others. Being inworld, or engaged in a virtual world, is a unique experience, shaped differently from other activities. This research examines the factors that allowed virtual worlds to develop into what they have become today. Drawing from personal experience in Second Life and a review of existing literature, this paper maps out an inter-connected web of developments across various fields that influenced the formation of virtual worlds such as Second Life. The advancements identified in the fields of science fiction, video- and computer-games, media, role-playing traditions and communication technologies are analysed as precursors of the qualities of contemporary inworld experience. Previous research has studied the development of individual fields on their own. By undertaking an analysis on a macro level and across fields, this paper offers a new insight in the development of the complex phenomenon of virtual worlds in the 21st century, whereby the evolution adopts the structure of a genealogy. New connections among previously disparate fields emerge. Maeva Veerapen is currently completing her PhD within the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies. Her current research is focused on understanding the fundamental structure of the experience of being inworld and participating in virtual worlds by examining various constituents of the experience such as the user-avatar relation, the quasi-intersubjective interaction with the computer and the encounter of the Other. Her research interests include the phenomenology of new media and performativity of media.
