Virtual worlds for modeling complex processes between people and systems
Eleni Stroulia, Mihnea Galeteanu, Paul Pacholski, Kelly A. Lyons, Paul R. Messinger · 2010
Virtual worlds, where thousands of people can interact simultaneously within the same simulated three-dimensional space, represent a frontier in social computing with critical implications for business, education, social sciences, technological sciences, and our society at large. Members participate in virtual worlds through graphical representations of themselves, i.e., their avatars. In a virtual world, through their avatars users can engage in rich interactions with each other and with their environment. They can build objects and they can exchange them for in-world money, sometimes exchangeable with real money. They can communicate through voice over a headset and microphone, they can use text chat, and they can communicate non-verbally with their avatars' gestures. They can navigate through the world by walking, running, driving vehicles, flying, and teleporting. All in all, they can "experience" the world through a rich variety of interactions with it, including dressing, changing their avatars' shapes, touching things, building and owning things, engaging in quests, doing sports, communicating, socializing and collaborating. This rich experience and the increased degree of immersion and engagement it enables create an opportunity for software systems that enable new forms of system-user interaction.