A virtual world is an interactive simulated environment accessed by multiple users through an online interface. Virtual worlds are also called "digital worlds," "simulated worlds" and "MMOG's." There are many different types of virtual worlds, however there are six features all of them have in common:
1. Shared Space: the world allows many users to participate at once.
2. Graphical User Interface: the world depicts space visually, ranging in style from 2D "cartoon" imagery to more immersive 3D environments.
3. Immediacy: interaction takes place in real time.
4. Interactivity: the world allows users to alter, develop, build, or submit customized content.
5. Persistence: the world's existence continues regardless of whether individual users are logged in.
6. Socialisation/Community: the world allows and encourages the formation of in-world social groups like teams, guilds, clubs, cliques, housemates, neighbourhoods, etc.
Virtual worlds have been created for many different purposes. The largest and most common type of virtual world is the "MMORPG" which stands for "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game." But virtual worlds have also been built for purposes other than gaming. Some of those virtual worlds which are currently being used are:
Socializing / Online Community Buildingsmall-scale, casual games may be incorporated into a social world, participants are not necessarily there to win or play a game, but rather to socialize with others and, in many cases, create and decorate a personal space such as a home, room, or apartment. Social worlds tend to use settings based on idealized versions of reality. Most provide some basic building tools and the ability to host activities and events that revolve around a wide variety of topics.
EducationEducational worlds come in a wide variety of forms, including 3D recreations of museum and gallery spaces, computer programming tutorials, virtual libraries, and meeting spaces for online university courses.
Political ExpressionVirtual worlds can serve as forums for political expression and debate. While real-world political issues can crop up in gaming, social, and educational worlds, there are a few cases in which completely separate virtual worlds have been built for the purpose of political debate or even experiments in various types of self-governing online communities.
References:
http://www.virtualworldsreview.com/info/whatis.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_world
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1 comment:
Hi Stacey,
You have provide a good general outline about Virtual Worlds. This can be extended and elaborated upon by starting to relate it to what we are doing in this course.
Highlight aspects of your research in terms of what you will be achieving with your digital collaboration project.
It is good to see the posts starting to accumulate, but your blog is still seeming a little sparse.
Be sure to keep up with the weekly tasks, and maybe even take the stance that you also provide at least one other post a week that is not a requirement, relating to some aspect of your project.
The more posts, and thus information that we can gather as a group will give us a pool of ideas and concepts for us to draw from.
I will b doing my utmost to contributing to this pool as well, leading us to realise a stunning final product.
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