Virtual worlds are computer-generated environments where users interact through avatars. They can be game worlds or virtual communities with customizable avatars and various activities. Virtual worlds offer graphics, sound effects, and streaming audio. Second Life is a popular virtual world community that earned US$64 million in 2005. Virtual worlds may incorporate real-world goods and services in the future.
A virtual world is an animated three-dimensional world created with computer imagination (CGI) and other rendering software. One of the hallmarks of such a world is that a user can interact within the environment by virtue of an avatar or a computer character representing the user. The avatar manipulates and interacts with objects in the world through mouse movements and keystrokes issued by the user. Simply put, the avatar is a remotely controlled character or proxy.
In addition to graphics, a virtual world also provides sound effects and can offer streaming audio for listening to music, radio or scripts from the virtual environment. In multiplayer games and environments, chat and instant messaging allow avatars to communicate with each other in the world.
There are two basic kinds of virtual worlds: those created for play and those created for themselves as virtual communities. While they share many similarities in terms of their rendering capabilities, they are created for two distinct purposes. The game worlds are inhabited by antagonists that the hero must defeat and provides the user with a built-in goal to achieve in order to conquer the game. Virtual communities, on the other hand, are places where the user decides what he wants to do. The avatar’s role in this world can be as passive or as active and creative as the user wishes.
Game world or virtual community, there is no doubt that gaming pioneered virtual worlds. Wolfenstein 3D, released in 1992, was the first game to offer a captivating three-dimensional first-person experience. This provided a springboard for the more complex worlds created in later games such as Doom (1993) and Quake (1996).
In these early forays into a virtual environment, the user’s point of view was that of the avatar, seeing only the tip of the weapon extending to the foreground of the screen. In some cases, the avatar’s face was a semi-animated mugshot in a toolbar that changed expression depending on the user’s actions. Some first-person shooter games continue to follow this style.
Virtual community avatars are fully rendered characters that can be fully customized. Avatars walk, run or fly through rich environments ranging from swaying tree forests to pounding waves and underwater marine life. Homes, businesses, clubs, art galleries and shopping malls are created in the virtual world, inhabited and explored by interacting avatars. Some worlds replicate sections of famous real-world cities, while other virtual landscapes allow residents to take creative license to build whimsical floating temples with cascading water fountains, neon weeping willow gardens, marble castles, and rotating art. The virtual world could also offer interactive lessons, dances, club memberships and any other activities.
While the multi-billion dollar gaming industry is well established, virtual world communities like Second Life are just getting started, relatively speaking. Second Life’s founder Linden, Inc. is said to have earned US$64 million in 2005 – quite impressive considering that a basic account is free. While hardcore gamers may find it a little embarrassing to inhabit a world that doesn’t have a prepackaged purpose — much less a brain-eating goblin chasing them — a different sect is finding the virtual world a strangely compelling and enthralling place to explore and go out. In time, such communities may even incorporate real-world goods and services, taking interactive shopping, customer service, education, and proxy participation in directions few have yet considered.
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