Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are limited only by what their users do with them. Their primary function is to provide a sense of community among users, whether the world is dedicated primarily to social interaction (SecondLife) or a combination of social interaction and an actual game to lure those who are not as keen on interaction into playing (MMORPGs).

Virtual worlds can provide an outlet for user creativity (depending on the creative options given to users). SecondLife, for example, has incredibly detailed scripting functions that people can use to make things ranging from simple clothing to vehicles and even games within SecondLife itself. Virtual worlds also provide places for users to interact with one another without regards to physical distance. For some people, as shown in the video about the disabled people in last Tuesday's class, virtual worlds can even let people experience things (to an extent) that they can't physically experience.

Another advantage of virtual worlds is their adaptability to their users' preferences. Because of the dynamic nature of virtual worlds, the creators have to follow their users' trends to figure out what needs to be changed, added, or removed just like how the creators of Twitter added functions such as linking to specific users or hashtags based on what their users were doing.

Virtual worlds aren't the greatest thing since sliced bread, of course. If a virtual world is unable to differentiate itself from its competitors effectively, there is little reason for people to join in the first place and leads to a cycle of people not wanting to join because nobody else is joining. For the more popular virtual worlds, maintenance is always an issue if the servers they have are not stable enough for everyone trying to connect to them. Another flaw with virtual worlds is that language barriers can be even more pronounced than they are in the real world because they rely heavily on text for any sort of interaction.

In the future, however, the issue of communication barriers may be solved. A few virtual worlds already have primitive translators capable of rendering text between users in different languages, so it is only a matter of time before that is developed. The text-based barrier, although alleviated somewhat by the avatars used in virtual worlds, might become a thing of the past as virtual worlds develop and allow for voice transmission (and possibly distortions to fit the avatar) between users.

References

1. Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers by CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, the New York Times, October 26, 2009. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html