Journal For Virtual Worlds Research (Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
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Virtual Worlds Come Of Age
No full textVirtual worlds have been purported to provide a fertile bed for marketing and brand-building for real-life companies. In Second Life, for example, there was a flurry of media hype and activity by companies in the period from 2007-2008. Several years on, however, the reality is that most of the big name brands have pulled out of Second Life. One of the reasons for this is the poor level of value generated for customers by the virtual brand experience, poor interactivity, a lack of brand and channel fit, and inadequate understanding of virtual communities. Recently, a new form of more targeted brand offerings has emerged. Branded virtual worlds, many of which are targeted at the youth segment, are growing rapidly. Many of these worlds attempt to bridge the gap between the real and virtual worlds, including advertising and real-world tie-ins, as well as subscriptions and digital micro-transactions. This paper examines one such virtual world, buildabearville.com, and its real-world counterpart, Build-a-Bear Workshop. This successful case study has become increasingly important in driving revenues and cross-channel activity for the company. The paper rounds off with conclusions and implications for practice in this very new area of investigation
Design Principles for Doing Business on Second Life: an immersive ethnographic study
No full textThis paper addresses the question of designing a virtual world business. A popular and economically thriving community - namely Second Life (www.lindenlab.com) - was selected for the research investigation. From an extensive literature review, a conceptual framework was developed in order to model the four most thriving industries on Second Life: (1) Real Estate, (2) Building, (3) Fashion, and (4) Entertainment. A six-month immersive ethnographic study was conducted using two primary research techniques of participant observations and in-depth interviews. For each industry, the results are summarized according to the business areas that were deemed critical
Virtual Worlds, the IRB and a User\u27s Bill of Rights
No full textVirtual worlds provide a vibrant and exciting new venue for the conduct of social research. New social phenomena have emerged in the context of these worlds as individuals and groups use the world
Making Sense of the Virtual World for Young Children: Estonian Pre-School Teachers
No full textThe study provides an overview of teacher perceptions regarding young childre
Some Remarks on Ontological-Cognitive Structures in the Metaverse
No full textAbstract: This paper aims to bring forth some ontological elements that we believe are fundamental to a wider philosophical basis of the Metaverses. We start from some indications presented by physical experiments which reproduce virtual environments in real time, searching for its eidetic-methodological relations with genetic epistemology and construtivism, showing that the structures of physical interfaces, which are founded in virtual experiments, dialogging with the concepts of body, mind, projection, cognition, and other concepts, which are present in the possible formulation of an ontology of the virtual worlds and the Metaverses. We conclude the paper with the idea of the necessity to think the issue of the ontological fundamentation of cyberspace and its metaverses
eLab City: A Platform for Academic Research on Virtual Worlds
No full textThe eLab City project in Second Life is a laboratory environment for the study of user behavior in virtual worlds
Who
No full textVirtual playgrounds designed for children 4-12 years-old are among the fastest growing segments of the Internet. These spaces offer the promise of new social, educational, and creative opportunities for young people. These opportunities, however, are associated with new risks due to the nature of online interactions. This article presents a socio-technical investigation of two virtual worlds for children. Informed by Value Sensitive Design, the work highlights the tensions between supporting age appropriate, developmental play and constraining inappropriate behavior to ensur
Beyond Being There: A Grounded Investigation of the Value of Virtual Worlds for Remote Family Interaction
No full textIn our interdisciplinary project, HI-Masquerade, we investigated the potential of virtual worlds for remote interaction between family members of different generations. In this paper, we report on this study. Our methodological approach consisted of two components. We presented storyboards, visualizing use scenarios, to family members. In addition, we let these family members use a virtual world application at home. By doing so, we triggered both assumption- and experience-based reflection on the sense of using virtual worlds for family interaction. Our findings show that while family members have concerns about virtual worlds (e.g., possible replacement of real life activities), they also see opportunities (e.g., learning together). Family members felt that the virtual world that they had used was not a suitable platform for remote family interaction. Nevertheless, they appreciated the increased offline interaction that it generated because it helped to bridge the childre
Penguin Life: A Case Study of One Tween
No full textAlthough we are increasingly aware of what young people do online and perhaps even why they do it, we are less clear about how particular affordances of an online environment enables identity formation. Accordingly, this case study sought to explore how one twee
ExtSim: A Flexible Data Mapping and Synchronization Middleware for Scientific Visualization in Virtual Worlds
No full textIn this paper we present a general-purpose middleware, called ExtSim that allows OpenSim to communicate with external simulation software, and to synchronize the in-world representation of the simulator state. We briefly present two projects in ScienceSim where ExtSim has been used; Galaxsee which is an interactive real-time N-body simulation, and a protein folding demonstration, before discussing the merits and problems with the current approach. The main limitation is that we until now only have been limited to a third-party viewer, and a fixed server-client protocol, but we present our work on a new viewer, called 3Di Viewe