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Virtual Worlds
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2. Contents Intro Second Life Popularity of MMOGs World of Warcraft
Are we in a virtual world?
Cover picture is from
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3. Introduction
A virtual world (VW) is a computer-based environment in which its users interact via avatars.
For this course we are interested in VWs supported on the internet, so these are typically multiuser.
These worlds are classified according to:
Are they like the real world, e.g. conference calls vs fantasy.
Are they massively multiplayer?
What is their purpose? Education, entertainment, business, etc.
Within entertainment, are they violent?
Which of you has used a virtual world?
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4. Second Life Let's first look at SL for a moment.
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Second Life
Let's first look at SL for a moment.
Never have a bad hair day, successful virtual entrepeneur
The Math Department has an estate in SL called Portland Connection.
Have any of you used SL? For what?
How would you classify SL?
Is it a game?
Real world vs fantasy?
Massively multiplayer?
Violent?
What is its purpose? Education, entertainment, business, etc.
Login: Len Nirvana
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5. Popularity of MMOGs
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6. World of Warcraft (WoW)
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World of Warcraft (WoW)
The preceding graph was from
WoW has over 10 million customers, who pay approximately $15/month to play.
In contrast, SL (free) had 1.4 million unique users log in during the last 2 months tinyurl.com/n4gkbd .
What is so seductive about VWs?
Let's watch Second Skin to get a partial answer to this question.
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7. Are we in a virtual world?
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Are we in a virtual world?
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