VW - Virtual Worlds and New Realities!
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Virtual Worlds and New Realities!

BUS 459/659, cross-listed with POLI (TBA)
Professors Benn Konsynski & Holli Semetko
Course Time and Location: Monday 6:30pm, GBS

The course will explore issues associated with the emerging types of virtual worlds and immersion technologies changing forms of political, social and commerce interactions. We will involve both virtual sessions "in-world" and real world classroom sessions to examine the technical, social, political, legal and commercial issues..

Engage in Virtual World Environments: Second Life, Kaneva (among others). We will examine the rise of new institutions within virtual worlds, and the influence of virtual worlds on the real world and vice versa. The course will consider the opportunities for new patterns of communication between organizations and their stakeholder "citizens" within virtual worlds. The technologies, capabilities and demographics are dramatically changing as these environments evolve.

Consider: Most internet users will have some kind of presence in a computer-based Virtual World within four years. According to Gartner Group 80 percent of the online community, including businesses, will actively participate in virtual worlds, such as Second Life, by 2011.

Goals: Participants will work on themed projects in virtual worlds, including work with the CDC, Halle Institute, and Pink Magazine. In addition, participants will lead and contribute to themes at an Emory Conference on virtual worlds scheduled for February 2008.

No heavy tech skills required - but please note - this course is not a spectator sport. Individuals should be self-motivated and willing to work in a workshop/project-oriented course.

Workshop/Project Course: Three Perspectives

Technology/Design - plan, build, analyze, and review virtual world projects

Society/Commerce - consider governance, collaboration, profit, branding, and new opportunities

Politics/Law - range and reach, rights, and responsibility, authority in virtual worlds

THREE PERSPECTIVES:
TECHNOLOGY/DESIGN - SOCIETY/COMMERCE - POLITICS/LAW

A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. This habitation usually is represented in the form of two or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids (or other graphical or text-based avatars). - Wikipedia
This course will examine issues associated with "virtual worlds" including massively multiplayer online games ( Second Life , Kaneva , Entropia, There, The Sims Online, Red Light Center). Related realms include massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as EverQuest, Lineage, Ultima Online or World of Warcraft. The population of virtual worlds has grown to more than 15 million - more than 2% of the earth's population.

At the same time, there is no political system in place! This has generated emerging political problems. For example, within the giant virtual world "Second Life" ( Second Life ) a "Second Life Liberation Army" (SLLA) that recently has started to launch disruptive attacks against online virtual commercial establishments ( challenge to the commercial ). The SLLA is demanding rights for avatars.

Equally, virtual world and real world politics are increasing becoming intertwined. In 2003, virtual citizens in Second Life effectively protested against the company's earlier plan of taxing avatars for all content own. Per the advice of Professor Larry Lessig, Second Life met the demands of the virtual citizens by switching to a property taxation scheme and allowing citizens to retain any intellectual property they produced ( history of Second Life ).

Additionally, in 2007, a few avatars in Second Life overran John Edwards' virtual campaign headquarters, and French politicians faced-off with virtual riots that included exploding virtual bombs (National Front ).

Cumulatively, technology, design, and innovation issues are important in understanding the limits of the capabilities and potential of these "virtual worlds" for society, commerce, politics, and the law.

TECHNOLOGY/DESIGN - SOCIETY/COMMERCE - POLITICS/LAW

  • Decision-making, coordination, and governance in virtual worlds

  • The role of virtual worlds in political campaigns, including but not limited to the current Presidential campaigns in France and the United States

  • The potential or role of virtual worlds in democracies - transnationalism including the prospects for a virtual U.S. Congress in virtual worlds

  • Net neutrality - Network loading and capacity issues associated with hosting and participating in virtual worlds

  • Who pays - virtual world fees and costs. Taxation in virtual worlds and real-world taxation challenges

  • Emerging economic models - intellectual property rights, buy/sell transactions

  • Legal issues - property rights, virtual notary publics, legal institutions, and dispute resolution mechanisms; who's responsible for law enforcement in virtual worlds

  • Business strategies - product placement, advertising models, profit models, customer service

  • Possible threats - what threats might virtual worlds have for organizations or nations, security or reputation risks, money laundering or rogue, non-state entities online?

  • Relation of RL and SL (real life and second life) - building virtual stores (IBM, Reuters, Dell, SONY, Circuit City and other already have done so) and virtual universities

  • New forms of collaboration - richer, more immersive environments; virtual meeting rooms, exchange of intelligence information, open courseware?

  • Sociological issues - do virtual worlds improve human interactions regarding conflict resolution, group behavior, and anonymous activities; when is my avatar me and when isn't it me?

    Some Current Virtual World Factoids

     For Second Life, as of June 2007:

  • More than 500,000 residents visited Second Life during the last 7 days
  • More than 1.1m within a month. The world itself holds more than 7.6m residents
  • 900+ islands were added during the month, resulting in a total of 8300+ unique islands in the world
  • Homeland Security has been operating in SL since 2005
  • Real-world FBI agents have gone "undercover" as avatars to investigate online gaming in SL
  • Political riots with the French, Spanish, and more recent U.S. elections have occurred in SL
  • More than $6.8m was exchange during the month of May 2007 in SL
  • The average age in SL is 37
  • Females log more in-world hours than males (though there are more males in the world)
  • More Europeans than U.S. citizens are involved in SL

    For World of Warcraft:

  • As of March 2007, here are more than 8.5 million players worldwide
  • Membership 3.5 million in China and 2 million in the U.S.
  • The real-world age of female players are older than male players in the world

    For Habbo Hotel:

  • As of December 2006, more than 66 million Habbos were created
  • The average age demographic of users being 11 to 18 year-olds
  • There are 7 million unique visitors to the virtual hotels each month
  • The virtual world operates in 29 countries, most recently in Russia

    For Neopets:

  • As of May 2007, over 139 million user accounts had been created with over 204 million virtual pets

    For Entropia Universe:

  • Real-world banks have entered the virtual world,
  • Paying $400,000 for the opportunity to provide banking services within the VW
  • Players can use real-world ATM cards to withdraw the virtual currency as real-world cash
  • The environment uses a set exchange rate

    Updated 6/20/07 Benn Konsynski

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