Journal For Virtual Worlds Research (Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
Not a member yet
366 research outputs found
Sort by
Staging the New Retail Drama: at a Metaverse near you!
No full textConsumers have traditionally looked for products that could fulfil their needs and retailers responded to demand by initially adopting product-oriented, and then more recently customer-oriented, strategies. This shift was heavily underpinned by technology which enabled retailers to implement more intelligent approaches that evolved around consumers, based on their profiles. The next step in this transformation is now towards
How to approach a many splendoured thing: Proxy Technology Assessment as a methodological praxis to study virtual experience
No full textThis article introduces Proxy Technology Assessment (PTA) as a methodological approach that can widen the scope of virtual world and game research. Studies of how people experience virtual worlds and games often focus on individual in-world or in-game experiences. However, people do not perceive these worlds and games in isolation. They are embedded within a social context that has strongly intertwined online and offline components. Studying virtual experiences while accounting for these interconnections calls for new methodological approaches. PTA answers this call.Combining several methods, PTA can be used to investigate how new technology may impact and settle within people\u27s everyday life (Pierson et al., 2006). It involves introducing related devices or applications, available today, to users in their natural setting and studying the context-embedded practices they alter or evoke. This allows researchers to detect social and functional requirements to improve the design of new technologies. These requirements, like the practices under investigation, do not stop at the outlines of a magic circle (cf. Huizinga, 1955).We will start this article by contextualizing and defining PTA. Next, we will describe the practical implementation of PTA. Each step of the procedure will be illustrated with examples and supplemented with lessons learned from two interdisciplinary scientific projects, Hi-Masquerade and Teleon, concerned with how people perceive and use virtual worlds and games respectively
Brands and Consumption in Virtual Worlds
No full textVirtual worlds, such as Second Life, are rapidly becoming recognized as a technology of substantial future importance for marketers and advertisers due to the great growth of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). In recent years virtual worlds have become highly interactive, collaborative and commercial; these worlds would have the potential to be new channels for marketing content and products, integratin
ArchHouseGenerator
No full textThe manual creation of virtual environments is a demanding and costly task. With the increasing demand for more complex models in different areas, such as the design of virtual worlds, video games and computer animated movies the need to generate them automatically has become more necessary than ever.This paper presents a framework for the automatic generation of houses based on architectural rules. This approach has some innovating features, including the implementation of architectural rules, and produces 2D floor plans as well as complete 3D models, with a high level of detail, in just a few seconds. To evaluate the framework two different applications were developed and the output models were tested for different fields of application (e.g. virtual worlds). The results obtained contain evidences that the proposed framework may lead to the development of several specific applications to produce accurate 3D models of houses representing different realities (e.g. civilizations, epochs, etc.)
Licensing Considerations for OpenSim-Based Virtual Worlds
No full textContent creators and owners of OpenSim-based virtual worlds alike struggle with issues surrounding licensing and usage of content in these immersive spaces. The Fashion Research Institute (FRI) is specifically addressing these issues and more as part of the process of licensing its Shengri La regions to enterprise. This use case is the basis of ongoing legal research by FR
The Neil A. Armstrong Library and Archives: That
No full textMigration of library services has moved increasingly toward 2D web services and social interactivity and 3D virtual reference services. Patron satisfaction with reference services is a key tenant for determining a successful reference interaction. The study examines the roles of user identity, educational learning modalities, institutional sustainability, and credibility in achieving overall user satisfaction in reference social interactions within NASA JP
Virtual Epidemics as Learning Laboratories in Virtual Worlds
No full textIn this article, we put forward the proposal to use virtual epidemics as learning laboratories for players to develop a better understanding of infectious disease, its social implications, and inquiry process. In the case of virtual epidemics, players can use their own experiences and observations of the community to learn about processes of infection and immunity, the interactions of social behavior, and reactions to perceived health ris
Second Life Unplugged: A Design for Fostering At-risk Students\u27 STEM Agency
No full textAt an alternative high school serving predominantly at-risk underrepresented students evicted from mainstream education, we designed and implemented Fractal Village, a critical-constructionist computational and mathematical pedagogy learning environment. Fractal Village, instantiated in the virtual world "Second Life," constituted an empirical environment to research our emergent model of mathematical/computational agency (m/c) as well as an interventionaiming to foster such agency. Key research objectives were to: (1) study relations amongst cognitive, affective, material, technological, and social factors that would contribute to individual development of m/c agency; and (2) delineate design principles for fostering m/c agency. The student cohort engaged collaboratively in virtual world imaginative construction activities each manifesting generative themes (Freire, 1968), to which the designers-as-teachers tailored mathematical and computer-science concepts, such that students appropriated the STEM content apropos of tackling their own emergent construction problems. We argue that to build agency, students must develop both skills and disposition
"We Will Always Be One Step Ahead of Them" A Case Study on the Economy of Cheating in MMORPGs
No full textMassive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are a sub-sector of virtual worlds that share with other worlds the characteristics of both complex technological systems and complex societies. The success of several MMORPGs makes them a vibrant area for research from different points of view, including their economic aspects (Castronova, 2005). Our research is mainly concerned with thepractice of cheating in MMORPGs and its consequences. In this paper we explore the economic dimensions of cheating in MMORPGs as they relate to the business activities of companies that offer cheating software, inparticular programs called \u27bots\u27. Specifically, we address the following question: "How do cheating practices shape economic interactions around MMORPGs?" We characterize the economy of cheating (as it is carried out by cheating companies) as an answer to breakdowns in the relationship between cheaters and cheating companies (Winograd and Flores, 1987; Akrich, 1992), which involves both learning and innovation processes. In order to answer our question we present a case study of the Tibia (http://www.tibia.com) and an ongoing anti-cheating campaign. In the conclusion of the paper we provide some general reflections on the relevance of the economy of cheating to Virtual Worlds research
Third Places Take First Place in Second Life: Developing a Scale to Measure the
No full textThe objective of this study is to examine what drives visitor retention in successful businesses operating in online virtual world environments. The study draws motivation from increasing anecdotal evidence reporting on high profile corporate brands withdrawing from operations in Second Life - citing low visitor traffic as their motivation. Early adopter corporations that established business operations in Second Life did so anticipating benefits from the new technology akin to the quantum leap made when they embraced the World Wide Web. While disappointingly low visitor numbers left many virtual world operations looking like desolate ghost towns, there are businesses enjoying active repeat customers. Drawing on Oldenbur