When thinking of the concept of the virtual world. images of simple 3d worlds such as Second Life usually pop into a persons mind, however the reason for this stems more from Second Life being embraced as part of pop culture and less from it being a successful virtual world.
In fact, Second Life has several flaws that stop it from being a true virtual world, the two primary flaws being that the game does not have a unified player-base and game-world. Second life is divided into two large servers, one for players 17 and under and the other for 18 and above, while this partition does serve to protect younger players from some of the more "adult" sections of Second Life, a virtual world can not be divided, it must be unified. Furthermore, Second life does not have a unified game-world, rather the game is comprised of thousands of islands, many constructed by individual players for private use. This sense of having your own private world is a key point of Second Life, however it does not contribute to a unified virtual world.
I feel a better example a of unified virtual world is the game EVE Online. EVE allows players to explore a large fictitious galaxy that is ever expanding, and all players who play EVE play in the same galaxy. As everyone must play in the same game-space, players must compete for resources and authority and form player-made corporations to better control entire regions of the galaxy. From this situation a player is able to achieve several goals in EVE that they could not in Second Life. One such goal is fame, as all players are interconnected in one large world then a large success can reverberate throughout the player community, this can even lead to authority, as one player can lead others to control economic goals and military goals that can have significant impact on how others play EVE.
For more information on EVE and Second life please follow the links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Online
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
http://pc.ign.com/articles/100/1002527p1.html -Article about the banking crisis within EVE during 09
Nowadays the virtual world is close to reality! It seems when we are in the virtual world we are in another dimension of life without time, as shown in a movies. Time span in virtual world and reality maybe different! Do you think this can be a problem later?
ReplyDeleteA lot of research is necessary to investigate the advantages and the disadvantages of this technology. Because it is very strong impact to our lives, especially our kids that are influenced by this tool more easily.
ReplyDeleteMany people joke about EVE online being second job where you always lose money as it is so complicated and time intensive. I feel that large scale virtual worlds can be extremely time consuming but really no more than social networking on face-book or twitter. I feel its more about mental focus, people tend to focus alot more on games and so they feel alot more time comsuming than other forms of entertainment.
ReplyDeleteI have never played games or joined a virtual life, so my question is this : if the player signs off but other players are still actively participating, what happens to that players avatar? Does it continue to live and function without the player or does it somehow go dormant until the player rejoins the game? For example, with EVE, if I'm piloting a ship and I sign off, will that ship continue to fly into another part of space and fight battles and possibly be destroyed while my human self is sleeping peacefully in my bed?
ReplyDeletemost online games have it that once you sign off your character remains in the game world for 20 seconds so that you can't use leaving the game as a tactic to escape combat. On a more macro level, EVE does not function simply through your actions in the game but through character "learning" in real time. your avatar learns one skill at a time over a set course of time. simple skills can take only seconds, complicated skills take 6 months. your character will continue to learn even you are not playing. This system is designed to reinforce that the only two real resources in the EVE are money and time... just like in real life.
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