World of Warcraft
Sims
Second Life
Halo
Face of Mankind
Gods War Online
Massively multiplayer online games represent a range of worlds, including ones based fantasy, science fiction, the real world, super heroes, sports, horror, and historical. The most common games are fantasy worlds, unlike real world based games are pretty rare. Many massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPGs) have real-time actions and communication. Players can create a character that travels between buildings, towns, and worlds to carry out business or leisure activities. Communication is usually textual, but real-time voice communication is also possible.Virtual worlds are not limited to games but, depending on the degree of immediacy presented, can encompass computer conferencing and text based chat rooms Sometimes, emoticons are available, to show feelings and facial expression.
"A virtual world, or virtual environment, is usually
an Internet-based simulated environment inhabited by avatars, or graphic
representations, of its interactive users"(Safko). An avatar can be represented
textually, by a photograph, logo, image, or more popularly used a 3-D cartoon-like person, animal, or
object. 
Although the social interactions of participants in virtual worlds are often viewed in the context of 3-D Games, other forms of interaction are common as well, including forums, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, instant messaging, and video-conferences. Communities have their own rules, topics, jokes, and language. Members of these communities can find like-minded people to interact with. whether this be through a shared passion, the wish to share information, or a desire to meet new people and experience new things. Users may develop personalities within the community adapted to the particular world they are interacting with, which can impact the way they think and act. Internet friendships and participation online communities tend to complement existing friendships and civic participation rather than replacing or diminishing such interactions The most popular virtual world is Second Life. The name itself is kind of explains what it is, it's the players' second life outside of the real world. Rosedale developed Rig, a large, slow, expensive, and difficult to wear and use
system. It then evolved into the Internet software Linden World, which was
designed to allow its users to play games and socialized with other users in 3D
online environment. Linden World then grew into today’s Second Life software
experience. In 2008 Second
Life had a banner year. There were 16,785,531 people registered Second Life and "residents" spent more than US $100 million on virtual goods and services. Across the world players participated in more than 397 million hours.
Although the social interactions of participants in virtual worlds are often viewed in the context of 3-D Games, other forms of interaction are common as well, including forums, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, instant messaging, and video-conferences. Communities have their own rules, topics, jokes, and language. Members of these communities can find like-minded people to interact with. whether this be through a shared passion, the wish to share information, or a desire to meet new people and experience new things. Users may develop personalities within the community adapted to the particular world they are interacting with, which can impact the way they think and act. Internet friendships and participation online communities tend to complement existing friendships and civic participation rather than replacing or diminishing such interactions The most popular virtual world is Second Life. The name itself is kind of explains what it is, it's the players' second life outside of the real world. Rosedale developed Rig, a large, slow, expensive, and difficult to wear and use
system. It then evolved into the Internet software Linden World, which was
designed to allow its users to play games and socialized with other users in 3D
online environment. Linden World then grew into today’s Second Life software
experience. In 2008 Second
Life had a banner year. There were 16,785,531 people registered Second Life and "residents" spent more than US $100 million on virtual goods and services. Across the world players participated in more than 397 million hours.
Disabled or chronically invalided people of any age can benefit enormously from experiencing the mental and emotional freedom gained by temporarily leaving their disabilities behind and doing, through the medium of their avatars, things as simple and potentially accessible to able, healthy people as walking, running, dancing, sailing, fishing, swimming, surfing, flying, skiing, gardening, exploring and other physical activities which their illnesses or disabilities prevent them from doing in real life. This one of the benefits of the virtual worlds. But people with medical conditions aren't the only people using them. Companies are using them as well. Big names like Disney run have their avatars and businesses running 24/7, so anyone that that logs in at anytime can "go" to Disney and have some to interact with.Other than people that use these worlds for business and relief from their medical condition, is it beneficial for people to sit at their computers or TVs for hours on end? They is no end goal for the game, you are basically living a second life through the computer.Thank you for reading. I would like to know your thoughts.
What do you think?
Do you think virtual worlds can become too much?
ReferencesBateman, Patrick J., Jacqueline C. Pike, Nicholas Berente, and Sean Hansen. "Journal of Virtual Worlds Research." Time for a Post-Mortem?: Business Professionals' Perspectives on the Disillusionment of Virtual Worlds. N.p., 2012. Web.Kamberi, Shahnaz. "Journal of Virtual Worlds Research." A Cross-Case Analysis of Possible Facial Emotion Extraction Methods That Could Be Used in Second Life. N.p., 2012. Web.Safko, Lon. The Social Media Bible Tactics, Tools, & Strategies for Business Success. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Print
I personally think the virtual worlds are too much for me - totally separate from the reality. I am not sure about "relief from medical condition." Because I recalled that I had a male roommate who played the World of Warcraft for hours. Whenever he came home from work, he rushed to turn on his computer and played until he went to bed EVERY single day! He was gained weight and losed himself from the reality because he was so addicted to it. That was back in the late 90's. Virtual world really did effect on him. Anyway, using virtual world in business may be cool idea and that's another way to make money.
ReplyDeleteBack to the "relief from medical condition" part, I misunderstood the concept. But now I do understood after reading a very interesting article from NPR. It was about burned veteran that he could not tolerate taking much greater morphine. He was always in severe pain when the nurses had to scrub his burned skin.
DeleteWith a new virtual creation, David Patternson and his colleague Hunter Hoffman created the virtual reality called "SnowWorld" to help the burned veterans to visualize the opposite of fire. They watched themselves in the winter cartoony film such as seeing wooly mammoths, snowmen, playing snowballs or going through icy canyon. The burned victims felt calm and forgot the pain.
It remind of another type of techniques called biofeedback and relaxation. I think it is another advantage for deaf people using “medical” virtual reality because we are very visual than hearing. Although, the brain does have an amazing capacity.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Deletehttp://www.npr.org/2012/02/12/146775049/virtual-penguins-a-prescription-for-pain
DeleteAt first I was skeptical about the medical benefits as well. Then I read stories were soldiers that came back from war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) and one of the treatments the doctors use was for the soldier to replay what happened. That is common treatment in psychology world not just for soldiers; but in these cases they had the soldier use a virtual world game to simulate what they experienced.
DeleteThen you have people like your roommate that will sit there for hours playing forgetting there is an actually world they live in. And some stay that the virtual worlds help shy people interact, but to me that doesn't make sense. How does that help them in the real world if they still can't talk to the people they see and touch in front of them. Also, that was an interesting article
I just read an article about a legal conflict involving a virtual world landlord looking to collect from those who rent space in his development.
ReplyDeletehttp://articles.cnn.com/2010-05-10/tech/virtual.property.second.life_1_linden-lab-virtual-land-second-life?_s=PM:TECH
Lawyers, check.
In another article two young parents were arrested in South Korea after "accidentally" starving their child while raising a virtual child. Spending 12 hour marathons in internet cafes while their kid went hungry.
Stupidity, check. Youth, check.
In another article a Tokyo man marries a video game character.
Psychosexuality, check. Social taboo, check.
Another article displays how lucrative virtual worlds have become for making profit.
Money, checkmate.
Lawyers, youth, stupidity, psychosexuality, social taboo, and money is pretty much the basis of every generational change for a very long time.
Virtual worlds aren't "good" or "bad" for society per say, but they certainly are making a splash and will very much change our "real" world in the future. As long as there are people making money, and people wanting to escape the real world, then this is a recipe for Virtual World success.
I agree with everything you said. People need to find the balance between actually living and escaping from the "real" world for a while. I think that would fall under common sense, but some people do get addicted.
DeleteThank you for sharing the interesting cases.
DeleteI can admit that both my sister and I were SIMS fans back in the day. I haven’t played a computer game or video game or phone game in probably nine years though. I do not think there is anything wrong with people who enjoy playing virtual games. I think it is a way for people to sort escape reality for a little bit-sort of like a movie. The only thing I dislike is how addictive the gaming industry can be. It’s hard for anyone to limit themselves to only an hour or have any control at all over how long they play on the computer.
ReplyDeleteTrue, I say I'm an ex-gamer because I played SIMs and Halo all the time when I was younger. I think it would be as bad if the virtual world games had an end goal or levels or sometimes like that. That way you can saw I won that, I'll come back later or tomorrow for the next level.
Delete