Virtual worlds as knowledge management platform – a practice‐perspective

Virtual worlds, as electronic environments where individuals can interact in a realistic manner in form of avatars, are increasingly used by gamers, consumers and employees. Therefore, they provide opportunities for reinventing business processes. Especially, effective knowledge management (KM) requires the use of appropriate information and communication technology (ICT) as well as social interaction. Emerging virtual worlds enable new ways to support knowledge and knowing processes because these virtual environments consider social aspects that are necessary for knowledge creating and knowledge sharing processes. Thus, collaboration in virtual worlds resembles real‐life activities. In this paper, we shed light on the use of Second Life (SL) as a KM platform in a real‐life setting. To explore the potential and current usage of virtual worlds for knowledge and knowing activities, we conducted a qualitative study at IBM. We interviewed IBM employees belonging to a special workgroup called ‘Web 2.0/virtual worlds’ in order to gain experience in generating and exchanging knowledge by virtually collaborating and interacting. Our results show that virtual worlds – if they are able to overcome problems like platform stability, user interface or security issues – bear the potential to serve as a KM platform. They facilitate global and simultaneous interaction, create a common context for collaboration, combine different tools for communication and enhance knowledge and knowing processes.     

Interconnecting distributed virtual worlds using Metabots: performance evaluation against the traditional client‐server model

Virtual Worlds evolution is breaking the barriers of virtual isolation, thus allowing users to participate in geographically dispersed and culturally diverse places. At the same time, mobile agents have been established as a solid programming method for heterogeneous networking and computing environments. Our work focuses on the definition of a distributed Virtual World reference platform for enhanced users' experience. Towards interconnecting virtual worlds with mobile agents, we have further enriched the concept of a human‐like appearance avatar. We propose two distributed virtual world architectures, namely loose and tight. In parallel, we present a relevant implementation scheme along with experimental results that prove the performance enhancements achieved against the classic client/server model. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding the Role of Sense of Presence and Perceived Autonomy in Users' Continued Use of Social Virtual Worlds

Despite an exponentially increasing number of registered users, social virtual worlds have the problem of a high user attrition rate. It is thus meaningful to explore which factors influence users' continued use of social virtual worlds. The current study attempts to find these factors in unique characteristics (e.g., 3‐dimentional environment, avatar interaction, and user empowerment) in the world, which can be sources for retaining users. Specifically, the study employs the sense of presence and perceived autonomy. 194 users of Second Life, which is the largest social virtual world, participated in the survey. The findings support the argument that the sense of presence and autonomy are influential in users' continued use of social virtual worlds.     

Exploring the potential of virtual worlds in engaging older people and supporting healthy aging

There is an increasing need to find innovative activities to help the older population maintain a healthy life. Virtual worlds, which can provide social engagement, entertainment and creativity as well as useful information and services for older people might offer a solution to this issue. Although emerging studies have begun to look into the benefits of virtual worlds in healthcare, little has been done in the context of older people. Based on semi-structured interviews and previous research on healthy aging, we identified and described in depth four areas in which virtual worlds could be useful to support older people. In general, it was found that virtual worlds could help empower older people to manage their disabilities, facilitate social engagement, provide mental stimulation and productive activities.     

Social virtual world continuance among teens: uncovering the moderating role of perceived aggregate network exposure

Engagement in virtual worlds has become pervasive, particularly among the young. At the same time, the number of virtual environments has increased rapidly. Due to intensifying competition, promoting sustained usage, i.e. continuance, has become a top priority for virtual world operators. Prior research has shown that network externalities play a key role in the adoption of communication technologies. However, a small amount of research has examined the role of network externalities in continued IT usage in general or with respect to the virtual world participation in particular. To fill in this gap, we examine how perceived network externalities affect the continuance of social virtual worlds. To this end, we introduce the concept of perceived aggregate network exposure (PANE). We extend the original information systems (IS) continuance model with perceived enjoyment and position PANE as a moderator. We test the model with data collected from 2134 Finnish Habbo Hotel users and employ structural equation modelling in the analysis. The results demonstrate that PANE moderates the influence of motivational factors on continued use intention and satisfaction.     

Spatial proximity to others determines how humans inhabit virtual worlds

Highly immersive three-dimensional virtual worlds have emerged as a popular medium for human social interactions. These environments enable multimodal sensory engagement and provide an immersive graphical representation of physical space where users can interact via avatars. However, when compared to two-dimensional virtual settings such as chats, virtual worlds impose constraints on social interactions due to the physical distance between individuals. Using the popular platform of Second Life as a model, we examined how humans manage this interindividual distance in virtual worlds. Taking advantage of methods developed in population ecology, we investigated how avatars are distributed in relation to each other to populate a virtual world. Our results revealed a striking dichotomy in the spatial relationships between avatars. Considerable aggregation, largely independent of population density, was observed alongside surprisingly marked physical isolation. These findings demonstrate that the spatial proximity to others determines how humans inhabit virtual worlds.     

Measuring virtual wealth in virtual worlds

This article presents pioneering research on measuring virtual wealth in an open virtual world for diagnosing the health of virtual worlds. It proved the existence of an open virtual world by proving the existence of a free choice of virtual currencies for virtual goods between distinct virtual worlds. By discussing the features of open virtual world in a circled networked organization, the article devised a virtual wealth measuring scheme, called Gross Virtual Product (GVP), for any virtual world. Based on this scheme, it suggested an accountability matrix to account for a changing virtual world regarding its total virtual wealth, profitability, user participation and happiness. To demonstrate the suitability of GVP scheme and accountability matrix, the article has conducted a case study on SecondLife.com, which showed the appropriateness of the proposed scheme and matrix. The research made in this article is very important. The proposed measuring scheme and matrix help virtual world participants perceive the possible risks of the participated virtual worlds in advance to make better decisions on virtual business.     

Indoor space art design based on immersive VR and embedded system

Indoor space systems are mainly used in outdoor environments, but indoor navigation systems are still under development. This article introduces indoor spatial analysis based on virtual reality to people who help in indoor environments. Work is done with the mechanisms and methods used for storage, dynamic reconstruction, and navigation in 3D virtual space using databases. The characteristics of the room are shown in the database table. The proposed Virtual Reality Environment Modeling (VREM) method is used to create a 3D image to analyze the room space. The client browser requests the virtual world through the server that provides the URL. The selected virtual world and server virtual format is returned to the client. The new 3D simulation embedded system is used to act as an agent for the behavior of simulation embedded system and other objects on the Internet and their associated syntactic structures. This method is first applied to the forward transform 3D to enhance the virtual and reconstructed images of the discrete cosine transform. Effectively view large virtual worlds and easily modify them. The size, shape, or other aspects of the virtual world's elements can be changed by changing the data in the database. Finally, virtual block matching algorithms are applied to analyze virtual indoor components or objects to provide better results than existing methods.     

Virtual worlds — past, present, and future: New directions in social computing

Virtual worlds, where thousands of people can interact simultaneously within the same three-dimensional environment, represent a frontier in social computing with critical implications for business, education, social sciences, and our society at large. In this paper, we first trace the history of virtual worlds back to its antecedents in electronic gaming and on-line social networking. We then provide an overview of extant virtual worlds, including education-focused, theme-based, community-specific, children-focused, and self-determined worlds – and we analyze the relationship among these worlds according to an initial taxonomy for the area. Recognizing the apparent leadership of Second Life among today's self-determined virtual worlds, we present a detailed case study of this environment, including surveys of 138 residents regarding how they perceive and utilize the environment. Lastly, we provide a literature review of existing virtual world research, with a focus on business research, and a condensed summary of research issues in education, social sciences, and humanities.     

Pre-service teachers’ perspectives on using scenario-based virtual worlds in science education

This paper presents the findings of a study on the current knowledge and attitudes of pre-service teachers on the use of scenario-based multi-user virtual environments in science education. The 28 participants involved in the study were introduced to Virtual Singapura, a multi-user virtual environment, and completed an open-ended questionnaire. Data from the questionnaire indicated that gender and current computer game use were likely to affect the perceived benefits of using virtual worlds in a classroom setting. Behavior management was seen as being a constraining factor on a pre-service teacher’s willingness to use a virtual world in the future. Overall, the results of the study indicate that pre-service teachers as a result of their use of Virtual Singapura are both aware of virtual worlds and have a reasonable understanding of both their potential advantages and disadvantages within a classroom setting.     

Psychological needs and virtual worlds: Case Second Life

The most advanced contemporary virtual worlds provide their users with a possibility for living versatile virtual lives together with other users. A growing number of users worldwide are utilizing this possibility. The aim of this research was to study active virtual world users' satisfaction of psychological needs both inworld and outworld. A global online survey for the users of Second Life was constructed based on a model of ten psychological needs. The results based on 258 responses indicated that self-esteem, autonomy and physical thriving were the most highly satisfied needs inworld. Furthermore, the results indicated that autonomy, physical thriving, and money-luxury were needs, which were satisfied to a significantly larger extent in the virtual world than in the users' real lives (when not using a computer). On the other hand, the needs for competence, relatedness, security, and popularity-influence were more extensively satisfied in the users' daily lives than when in Second Life. The qualitative findings highlighted relatedness needs as motivations for Second Life usage and revealed five central themes in the motivations for Second Life usage: Second Life as self-therapy, as a source of instant pleasures, as liberation from social norms, as a tool for self-expression, and as exploration and novelty. In all, the findings suggest that the use of advanced virtual worlds is driven by a variety of different psychological needs. Virtual world usage is also related to need satisfaction in the users' lives outside the virtual world.     

Decision-making in-socio and in-situ: Facilitation in virtual worlds

Past research suggests that “situatedness”, i.e. the context, as well as the social interaction that occurs within it, play an important role in cognitive processes such as learning and decision-making. Thus far, IT tools have been limited in the level and type of situatedness they facilitate. The advent of virtual worlds has changed this. Virtual worlds provide open, three-dimensional platforms for creating and designing real life-like spaces; they also allow for interaction between users in the form of “avatars” in that space. This research study focuses on virtual worlds as platforms for learning and decision-making. We propose a model that explains how individuals in a group learn and make decisions through a process that is influenced by the two unique characteristics of virtual worlds that enable situatedness: the facilitation for designing real life-like spaces, and the facilitation of rich many-to-many interactions.We draw on theories of situated cognition, social cognition, and flow to explicate the influence of these characteristics on the process of learning and decision-making. Data was collected by means of a quasi-experiment in Second Life (SL). Results from this study extend and validate the predictions of situated theories of decision-making within the context of a virtual world environment and suggest guidelines for practitioners who wish to use such environments to support organizational learning and decision-making. Perhaps the most compelling of these is to focus on maximizing the immersion of the individual in the activity by stimulating his or her perceptions of others and activity-related cues in the environment.     

Virtual item purchase behavior in virtual worlds: an exploratory investigation

Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, World of Warcraft and Everquest, have demonstrated huge economic potential. In such virtual worlds, virtual items are bought and sold between individuals for real money. However, little empirical research has been conducted into players’ purchase behavior in virtual worlds. To help us gain a better understanding of factors influencing purchase behavior in virtual worlds, we embarked on an exploratory study. Four focus groups were conducted with 24 participants, selected according to demographic and experiential characteristics. Preliminary empirical evidence suggests that factors including effort expectancy, character competency, the quality of the virtual world system, social influence, virtual item resources, personal real resources, performance expectancy, and self-actualization are important for predicting virtual item purchase behavior in virtual worlds. The results showed that virtual item purchase behavior in virtual worlds has considerable variability involving a range of factors at different stages.     

Store selection criteria and sales prediction in virtual worlds

Virtual worlds (VWs) have emerged as a new context for gaming, collaboration, social networking but also commercial activity. This paper focuses on the latter, and investigates how consumers behave in this virtual context when selecting stores they visit or buy from. The paper explores store selection criteria in virtual world stores and extends earlier research in both offline and online commercial environments, taking into account the novel IT capabilities that VWs exploit. Theoretical insights drawn from the marketing and information systems literature have been used to guide the design of a survey conducted in the virtual world Second Life. In addition to identifying the factors influencing store selection, the paper investigates how these differ between shoppers and non-shoppers, and identifies the factors that affect the amount of money spent in virtual world shopping environments. The findings suggest that “Core Store Features” and “Security and Privacy” constitute the most important store selection factors in virtual environments and that sales in VWs are predicted by the frequency of visiting and the time spent within VWs’ stores. Building on these findings, the paper discusses theoretical and practical implications and further research perspectives in the context of (3D) online commerce.     

Social organization in virtual settings depends on proximity to human visual aspect

Virtual environments are inherently social spaces, in which humans interact through avatars. However, the parameters which favor inter-individual social structuring in those settings are still far to be understood. Particularly, the putative influence of anthropomorphic similarity of visual aspect on social organization of avatars is a key issue to understand the cognitive processes used to form social interactions in virtual worlds. Using the highly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft as a model of socially-active virtual setting, we analyzed the social behavior of 11,649 avatars as a function of their visual aspect. Our results show that social structuring in virtual settings depends on proximity to human visual aspect. Social groups formed by human-like avatars display more homogeneity than what the optimal use of the interface would predict, while this effect is not observed for social groups formed by non-human avatars. Thus, immersion in virtual environments depends more on visually-triggered social dynamics (role-play) than on optimal use of the interface (game-play). Furthermore, social aspect may override the immediate reward of interface optimization, thus representing a major factor of immersion in virtual environments.     

Modeling Methods for Reusable and Interoperable Virtual Entities in Multimedia Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds are facing several challenges to become a mature technology commonly used in their numerous potential applications such as games, training, education, health and collaborative work. Main challenges are the introduction of multimedia in virtual worlds and the decrease of the cost and the required time for their design, which remains an empirical process. This paper proposes a methodology for introducing multimedia and decreasing the cost and needed time. The main interest of the proposed methodology is to provide virtual worlds with multimedia, interoperability and reusability properties. Interoperability enables virtual entities belonging to virtual worlds independently designed (i.e., no prior explicit agreement exists between theirs respective designers) to interact with each others. Reusability enables virtual worlds designers to use a virtual entity pattern initially designed for a virtual world A to be used in the design of a new virtual world B. The originality of this methodology relies on multiagent concepts and learning techniques for avoiding prior complex specifications tasks to achieve interoperability and reusability of multimedia virtual entities in virtual worlds.     

Implementation of 3D mesh streaming and compression techniques in NVEs

In this paper, we present a framework that integrates three‐dimensional (3D) mesh streaming and compression techniques and algorithms into our EVE‐II networked virtual environments (NVEs) platform, in order to offer support for large‐scale environments as well as highly complex world geometry. This framework allows the partial and progressive transmission of 3D worlds as well as of separate meshes, achieving reduced waiting times for the end‐user and improved network utilization. We also present a 3D mesh compression method focused on network communication, which is designed to support progressive mesh transmission, offering a fast and effective means of reducing the storage and transmission needs for geometrical data. This method is integrated in the above framework and utilizes prediction to achieve efficient lossy compression of 3D geometry. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energizing business transactions in virtual worlds: an empirical study of consumers’ purchasing behaviors

Virtual marketplaces for products and services have become major profit sources in virtual worlds (VWs). The large quantity and growth of virtual product transactions and their platform providers’ profits have made it critical to understand consumer purchasing behavior in VWs. However, as open-ended VWs such as Second Life have environments that differ from those of other online communities, the underlying mechanisms of consumers’ e-commerce behavior may not explain their VW behavior. Therefore, this study examines consumers’ VW behavior by considering three categories of factors influencing their purchasing behavior: the platform context (i.e., technical characteristics such as interactivity and vividness and social characteristics such as involvement), product context (i.e., product value), and virtual experience (i.e., flow and satisfaction). This study examines how these factors affect consumers when they purchase virtual products. Its results highlight the importance of flow experience in consumers’ VW behavior. Interactivity, vividness, and involvement are found to affect consumers’ virtual experience—flow, and involvement exhibits a significantly stronger influence on flow. Flow and involvement are found to affect product value, and flow exerts a stronger influence than involvement on product value. Flow and product value directly impact consumers’ willingness to purchase, whereas satisfaction with the virtual world experience, which is significantly affected by flow, is not associated with willingness to purchase. The results further indicate that product value is more influential on willingness to purchase than is flow. After describing the study’s contributions to both research and practice, I conclude the paper by presenting avenues for future research.     

The changing nature of user attitudes toward virtual world technology: A longitudinal study

Virtual world technologies have been utilized in gaming for a number of years but only recently have they been applied as a serious tool for business. Many business applications have been identified, including the use of virtual worlds for team collaboration, training, and education, but a question remains about whether users will accept the premise that virtual worlds represent useful environments for engaging in business functions. We address this question by examining user reactions to virtual worlds. The first study looks at attitudes of users of the virtual world Second Life during three time periods (i.e., before exposure to the environment, after an information session and discussion of Second Life, and after use of the environment). Two variables, user acceptance of virtual world technologies and user self-efficacy, were examined as the primary dependent measures. Results show that while self-efficacy increases over time, user acceptance decreases in a highly correlated pattern. A second study investigates the underlying causes of the observed pattern of user acceptance using a content analysis of written reflections of user experiences. Both studies paint a detailed picture of user intentions and some of the reasons these intentions developed after use. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for business managers and researchers.     

Real-World Opportunities for Virtual- World Project Management

Virtual worlds provide technology capabilities that could transform education, communication and collaboration, and project management. Virtual spaces resemble the real world but without its physical limitations. Innovative companies and educational institutions are already finding ways to incorporate VW technology into their organizations. A VW research project conducted in Second Life highlights these new environments' unique technology capabilities. Such capabilities can provide richer, immersive, engaging environments to help overcome traditional barriers to virtual collaboration. By understanding this research, businesses interested in taking advantage of VWs can gain a greater appreciation of the opportunities and challenges involved.