Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Volume 1, Number 2 - Consumer Behavior

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research Volume 1, Number 2 November 2008 “Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds” ISSN: 1941-8477 Table of Contents • Editor’s Introduction o Natalie T. Wood, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Marketing, Assistant Director Center for Consumer Research, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia • The Social Construction of Virtual Reality and the Stigmatized Identity of the Newbie o Robert Boostrom, Southern Illinois University Carbondale • Ugly Duckling by Day, Super Model by Night: The Influence of Body Image on the Use of Virtual Worlds o Dr. Enrique P. Becerra, Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas, USA o Dr. Mary Ann Stutts, Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas, USA. • Symbolic and Experiential Consumption of Body in Virtual Worlds: from (Dis)Embodiment to Symembodiment o Handan Vicdan, College of Business Administration, The University of Texas-Pan American; o Ebru Ulusoy, College of Business Administration, The University of TexasPan American • Virtual World Affordances: Enhancing Brand Value o So Ra Park, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, David DeWester, Brenda Eschenbrenner University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA; o Sunran Jeon, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA

• Surveillance, Consumers, and Virtual Worlds o Douglas R. Dechow, Chapman University • On the Relationship between My Avatar and Myself o Paul R. Messinger, School of Business, University of Alberta; o Xin Ge, School of Business, University of Northern British Columbia; o Eleni Stroulia, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta; o Kelly Lyons, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto; o Kristen Smirnov, and Michael Bone, School of Business, University of Alberta • Consuming Code: Use-Value, Exchange-Value, and the Role of Virtual Goods in Second Life o Jennifer Martin, The University of Western Ontario • Having But Not Holding: Consumerism & Commodification in Second Life o Lori Landay, Berklee College of Music • Metaverse: A New Dimension? o Yohan Launay, ConceptSL Paris, France o Nicolas Mas, ConceptSL Paris, France • Virtual Worlds Research: Global X Local Agendas o Gilson Schwartz, Dept. of Film, Radio and TV, School of Communication and Arts, University of São Paulo • Real Virtual Worlds SOS (State of Standards) Q3-2008 o Yesha Sivan, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design & Metaverse Labs. Ltd. • Demographics of Virtual Worlds o Jeremiah Spence, Department of Radio, TV & Film, University of Texas at Austin • The “New” Virtual Consumer: Exploring the Experiences of New Users o Lyle R. Wetsch, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Faculty of Business Administration, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

• Second Life and Hyperreality o Michel Maffesoli, Centre d'Études sur l'Actuel et le Quotidien, Universite Rene Descartes –Sorbonne Paris V

Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 “Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds” November 2008

Editor’s Introduction

By Natalie T. Wood, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Marketing, Assistant Director Center for Consumer Research, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia

In his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, the author Neal Stephenson depicts a future where individuals inhabit two parallel realities; their everyday physical existence and their avatar existence in a 3D virtual world. In 1999 the first of three Matrix movies is released. It portrays a future where the world in which humans live and perceive to be real is in fact a simulated reality created by machines. These are just two examples of many works of fiction that portray a world in which human beings live either partially or fully in an alternative computer mediated world. In many of these storylines the characters move seamlessly back and forward between these two worlds. And it appears that now life is imitating art. In fact, as strange as it may seem, for some virutal residents, particular the younger ones, avatar-to-avatar activity is as real as face-to-face contact. These residents do not necessarily differentiate between their real and their virtual life. To them, they are one and the same and for some the virtual world may be even better than the real thing.

With so many people making the virtual leap - as of October 2008 the adult focused virtual world Second Life reported almost 15.5 million registered members and youth oriented Habbo Hotel boasted 111 million registered members - many marketers are eager to join them and stake their claim in this new landscape. Unfortunately for many, including American Apparel and Starwood Hotels their efforts have failed to live up to expectations and they have since withdrawn. Despite these and other failures there are many examples of success including campaigns by Cosmo Girl and Toyota Scion in There.com and Nike in Second Life. So what is it is it that determines success or failure? We can attribute the most prominent failures to a number of factors. For instance, some companies are quick to exit when they fail to achieve audience traffic similar to what they see in real-world media platforms. They forget that at this early point virtual worlds simply do not attract the volume of visitors we are accustomed to seeing on a broadcast media platform. Others simply replicate real world strategies (such as erecting

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Editor’s introduction 2

billboards) in-world, only to have residents flatly reject them. In essence they do not understand how individuals use these environments and how to harness the unique characteristics of the space to offer a compelling experience to their customers. So what, do we need to do differently in virtual worlds than we do in the real world in order to achieve success? To be able to answer this question we need to first explore what, if any, differences exist between real world and virtual world consumer behavior.

In this, the second issue of Journal of Virtual Worlds Research we aim to stimulate dialogue on the topic of in-world consumer behavior. In the first set of papers those active in virtual worlds share with us their response to the question “Consumer behavior in virtual worlds, is it really any different to the real world, or is it simply a case of 'old wine in a new bottle'?"

From here we present a series of papers addressing different facets of virtual consumer behavior.

From body image to virtual goods to brand value each of these papers offers unique and valuable insight swhich will benefit both academics and practitioners alike and inspire ongoing dialog and research in this area.

Keywords: consumer behavior; avatars; identity.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 “Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds�

November 2008

Consuming Code: Use-Value, Exchange-Value, and the Role of Virtual Goods in Second Life

By Jennifer Martin, The University of Western Ontario

Abstract In recent years, there has been significant growth in consumption of commodities in virtual social worlds, such as Second Life, and in the economies that arise from this practice. While these economic systems have been acknowledged and studied, there remains relatively little understanding of the reasons why individuals choose to purchase such goods, despite the fact that reasons for consumption are strong enough to drive a virtual goods industry with annual profits in the millions of dollars. Virtual goods, the author argues, meet no immediate needs for avatars or individuals and, as such, are purchased based exclusively on their exchange- and symbolic-values. Due to the graphical nature of Second Life and the consequent visibility of commodities within the environment, these reasons for purchasing virtual goods are explored in terms of their roles for users, and especially in terms of their potential for expressing wealth, power, status, individuality, and belonging. As such, this paper considers the roles of consumption in a way that relies on and further illuminates theories of consumption and value with respect to virtual environments and commodities.

Keywords: consumption; Second Life; use-value; exchange-value; symbolic-value.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Consuming Code 2

Consuming Code: Use-Value, Exchange-Value, and the Role of Virtual Goods in Second Life

By Jennifer Martin, The University of Western Ontario

Every day, thousands of people spend millions of dollars on goods that exist only within a virtual environment and the computer servers on which they are housed. This world is the online social world known as Second Life, and these people are many of its millions of residents.

With regards to Second Life, there is no question that virtual goods are being purchased, but there are questions as to why they are being consumed. Within this virtual commodity system goods are not needed or used in a conventional way. Although they could be coded otherwise, avatars within Second Life are not programmed to have any requirements for their survival— they do not get cold, hungry, or thirsty, and therefore have no immediate need for goods that will slake these conditions. As such, the immaterial goods within this world have no capacity to fulfill physical needs for either the user of their virtual representation. However, despite these limitations millions of dollars are still being spent on the purchase of virtual goods (Dibbell, 2006).

Modern theories of consumption suggest that use-value, or the ability of a good to fulfill a need, has been overridden by exchange-value (Jhally, 1987) as well as sign- and symbolicvalue (Baudrillard, 2000). Since they lack any use-value in terms of physical needs, but still appear to be compelling commodities, an examination of virtual goods highlights and further develops ongoing claims that conventional use-value is no longer a characteristic that must be present for goods to be consumed. By considering the meanings of virtual goods for their users, it is possible to elaborate on current understandings of consumption in virtual worlds beyond the purely economic elements of such environments. An analysis of virtual goods within Second Life reveals that despite the fact that they fulfill no material needs for participants or avatars, the role of virtual commodities as symbols of status, individuality, and belonging are significant enough to subsume use-value promote consumption as seen in a substantial number of sales transactions and significant economic activity.

Consumption in Second Life In recent years, there has been increasing development of graphically rendered online social environments. These social worlds provide an environment where individuals can create an avatar as a visual representation of themselves and, using this virtual body, interact with the world and other individuals in a variety of different ways. Created by Linden Lab, Second Life is one virtual world that focuses on social interaction while also offering a variety of different forms of entertainment, including socializing, playing, and shopping. As with many other such worlds, Second Life is graphical, and provides users with a visible world and a body through which to experience and interact within it. The environment was made public in October of 2003, and as of August 17, 2008 housed 14,760,237 “residents� (Linden Lab, 2003-2008b).

Currently, Second Life offers a highly developed online community and market as a result of the five years that it has had to develop and build not only a solid base of residents, but also of commerce.

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Despite their focus on social interaction, virtual social worlds tend to involve consumption as an element of the world’s environment. Where once online spaces, and especially those involved in socializing, were largely free of such practices, consumption is rapidly moving into online worlds through the presence of virtual goods (Poster, 2004). On the “What is Second Life?� webpage, three main features of the environment are presented to potential users: community, creativity, and commerce (Linden Lab, 2003-2008b). While it is listed on its own, both community and creativity also feed into and further commerce. In terms of virtual goods, creativity is required in their development, while community is required their consumption. As a result, the two remaining features in Second Life can also be associated with virtual consumerism.

As in the offline world, virtual worlds are populated with a wide variety of goods that are available to outfit the avatar in their virtual life. Virtual goods are especially prevalent in graphical worlds, since in these environments goods can be visually rendered onscreen and therefore become visible to both the immediate user and any other users who happen to be present within the environment (Bartle, 2003). As a result, there is no dearth of goods to be bought and sold within the world, and commodities for sale include clothes, electronics, property, houses, furniture, vehicles, and almost anything else that a developer can imagine and for which they can create the computer code.

Fig. 1: The variety of goods available at the Palamos Island Shopping Mall includes shoes, art, fish, clothing for men and women, jewelry, avatar animations, games, and music.

Prices for these goods differ based on a number of factors, including rarity, custom work, time and effort required to create the item, and the whims of the developer, but ultimately all

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virtual goods are graphically rendered code. In many cases, these goods are developed by users who have the technical skill to create not only the commodities themselves, but ways of customizing, animating, and making functional their goods, especially those that are intended to be interactive or animated in nature. These goods should not only be rendered visually, but they must also function within the world—clothes must cover the bodies of those who buy them, and vehicles must respond to steering and braking commands—which requires a certain level of knowledge and skill to make the functional and attractive enough for purchase (Bartle, 2003).

While not everyone has the skills to generate a full income, by selling their goods users accumulate in-world currency, know as the Linden dollar (LD), that they can use to purchase commodities. Conversely, they also have the option to “cash out” and exchange their Lindens for offline currencies, such as the US dollar. Conversely, these links between offline and online currency also allow for Linden dollars to be purchased with other currencies. Therefore, while currency can be earned in-world by creating and selling goods, or by purchasing a membership with an allowance, Linden dollars (LD) may also be easily obtained through a standard currency exchange between online and offline economies. The Linden dollar is valued at approximately $240 LD to $1 USD and rises and falls with the market for virtual goods (Walsh, 2006). No matter how users acquire their money, though, with cash in (virtual) hand they are able to begin to purchase virtual goods with which to outfit their virtual lives.

To date, a significant amount of work has been generated on the economic implications of consumption in virtual worlds. Edward Castronova has produced extensive examinations of the costs of virtual goods (2001, 2002, 2003), how money circulates through virtual and real markets (2001, 2002, 2005), and the role of the avatar within these systems and in virtual worlds in general (2003, 2005). For Castronova, “Virtual worlds may be the future of ecommerce, and perhaps of the internet itself” (2001: 3), suggesting that worlds like Second Life may be heralds of larger economic systems yet to come. Within this analysis, desire for virtual goods is shown through the fact that individuals actively seek and are willing to work for and even spend offline money on virtual goods. Similarly, F. Gregory Lastowka and Daniel Hunter claim that virtual goods are subject not only to conventional forms of supply and demand, but also to unconventional sales tactics, such as migration to online auction sites (2007). These tactics, which require extra time, effort, and money to purchase commodities also indicate increased desire for such goods. As such, there is little doubt that there is desire furthering the sale of virtual goods.

Although the desire to consume virtual goods is frequently acknowledged as a driving force of this economy, in many cases the factors underlying and driving this consumption are largely absent from analyses of virtual capital. There are multiple signs pointing to a rising desire for virtual goods, but in order to understand this desire in more than general terms, it is necessary to interrogate reasons for virtual consumerism in more specific terms.

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Use-Value and Exchange-Value: The Debate Despite customary readings of use-value and exchange-value through the lenses of materiality and abstraction (Marx, 2000), these terms have been contested and debated in ways that are further illuminated by the consumption of virtual goods. Recent debates surrounding consumption have primarily centered on the links between use-value and exchange-value, and especially on the ways in which exchange-value is implicated in use-value. Traditional readings of the work of Karl Marx consider use-value to be distinct from exchange-value. In this context, use-value is a material reality inherent in a physical object while, in contrast, exchange-value is a socially assigned system of value determining an object’s worth in relation to other goods, and not by virtue of any inherent characteristics within the object itself (Marx, 2000: 10).

However, this divide between use-value and exchange-value has not gone unproblematized. For many theorists there are faults in Marx’s argument, especially in his failure to acknowledge that the symbolic elements of exchange-value can affect use-value (Baudrillard, 2000; Jhally, 1987). Here, as suggested by Sut Jhally, the notion that exchangevalue can supplant use-value is especially relevant. Virtual goods offer an exemplary case of this subsumption because they lack use-value and yet continue to be bought and sold at a rapid rate.

In July of 2008, Second Life users made 19,937,851 user-to-user transactions (Linden Lab, 2008a) and collectively spent close to $84 million USD in one quarter (Ibid, 2008b). Despite their inability to meet any material needs, trade in these goods is reaching millions of dollars per month. As a result, exchange-value has subsumed a use-value that never was, not only because virtual goods are incapable of meeting physical needs, but also because virtual bodies in Second Life are not programmed to have them.

In Marx’s account of the valuation of goods, use-value is positioned as the ability of a good to fulfill a material but not necessarily a social need (2000). Although Marx does not explicitly make clear that use-value is purely practical and not linked to social needs, it is this perspective that is generally taken up by later theorists dealing with consumption (Baudrillard, 2000; Debord, 1994). This is not to say, however, that commodities do not have a use beyond their application to material needs. While use-value is commonly associated with physical needs, such as shelter and food, through their symbolic application commodities can meet less immediately material but equally important needs such as belonging and individuality.

Given that these needs exist even in the absence of use-value, exchange-value may also be determined in the context of sign- and symbolic-value, or the social values that are given to commodities (Baudrillard, 2000). For Baudrillard, “that which precisely the commodity was for Marx—is no longer today properly either commodity or sign, but indissolubly both” (1981, p.

148). Here, the symbolic-value of an object comes into play and works to value commodities within their social context. This movement towards the value of the symbolic can be seen in Second Life, where exchange-values associated with virtual goods can be read as a product of what they signify for individuals as well as what they represent for the community at large.

Given the absence of use-value within Second Life, it is the symbolic role of virtual goods that will be seen to determine the roles of virtual goods within Second Life, their exchange-values and the rates at which they are sold.

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The Roles of Virtual Goods The roles of virtual goods and the drive to purchase them can be tied to recent debates around the ways in which use-value and exchange-value function in a world increasingly based on capitalism, consumption, and consumerism. Since virtual goods do not meet physical needs, but are still purchased in abundance, it stands that there must be forces behind this consumption that are not rooted in use-value. As a result of the lack of use-value inherent in virtual goods, this driving force is linked to exchange-value in multiple ways, including profitability and affordability, social belonging, status, conspicuous consumption, identity and selfhood, individuality, and social lubrication.

Although they are intrinsically linked, the roles of virtual consumption in Second Life can be divided between the focus of the virtual economy and the focus of the virtual consumer.

The focus of the virtual economy is to sell goods and, for many residents, to generate profit.

Here, producers seek to create goods and position them in such a way that they are attractive enough to residents that they will be purchased. Conversely, the focus of the virtual consumer is to use those goods in a way that augments their virtual life. Consequently, they seek out the goods that are best going to fill their need and desire for items that will allow for the appearance of status and uniqueness within the virtual world. By positioning goods in a way that plays into what consumers wish to gain from their purchases, the virtual economy is able to use only the symbolic and social needs and desires of virtual consumers to sell their products.

Virtual Goods and the Economy Profitability In general, the virtual economy is concerned with selling its goods to generate profits.

Since users are able to exchange their Linden dollars for offline currencies, profitability can be a significant goal for producers. This opportunity to make money is positioned as an attractive feature of the world, and Second Life assures its residents that, “Thousands of residents are making part or all of their real life income from their Second Life Businesses� (2008). Making a profit can be difficult. Since there is an abundance of virtual goods within Second Life, developers must balance the cost of their goods with what people are willing to pay. However, generating income is not impossible, and a number of Second Life users are able create goods that are attractive enough to other users that they can live off the proceeds of their sales (Bridge, 2007; Craig, 2006).

The creation of virtual goods in order to generate profits can be a complicated endeavour, especially in an environment that boasts thousands of items for sale and where no commodity will meet a pressing physical need. Given the availability of an extensive selection of welldesigned items in Second Life, basic goods do not tend to sell as well as those created by people with more advanced skill sets and design abilities (Lavalee, 2006). Those able to make money from their virtual creations are generally seen to exhibit exceptional devotion to their work in addition to creativity, coding, business, and design skills (Bridge, 2006). Anyone can learn to code virtual goods, and many thousands of commodities are available for purchase in-world, as well as through online auction sites and personal web pages.

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As a result of these conditions, producers must find ways to appeal to potential customers. This appeal is especially important given that they are competing for individuals who have a wealth of both offline and virtual goods on which to potentially spend their money.

Therefore, those individuals who create and produce virtual goods must do so in a way that makes them especially appealing to other individuals. Producers seem to create appeal in their virtual goods in two main ways. First, appeal can be created by the fact that virtual goods – even those goods that are high in quality, status, or other positive attributes – tend to be vastly cheaper than their offline counterparts. Second, and the strategy that is most directly linked to virtual consumers, is that producers can create a sense of status and belonging for the consumer that arises from the purchase and possession of virtual goods. These elements, combined with the desire to generate profits, define the focus of the virtual economy.

Affordability In addition to the Linden to dollars exchange rate, an analysis of Second Life commodities reveals that virtual goods are much less costly than their offline equivalents. An inworld Hummer sells for $500 LD, an amount that is far more affordable than the offline version on which it is modeled. A live-aboard yacht sells for $2,600 LD or $9.97 USD, a significantly lower price than even an offline rowboat, and a pitbull dog can be had for $1,800 LD, or $6.87 USD. Furthermore, none of these goods have any associated fees or costs that will arise in the future. In Second Life, vehicles do not need maintenance, upgrades, or gas and dogs do not require food, veterinarian visits, or toys. While the initial outlay of money for these commodities is more affordable than it would be offline, virtual goods are also cheaper because most do not necessitate spending after their initial purchase.

This affordability is a trait of most virtual goods, not just those within Second Life.

Dibbell’s account of consumption in Ultima Online offers the information that Dugger’s house cost him $750 USD which, while not an insignificant amount at more than a single week’s wages (Dibbell, 2003, 2006), is a small fraction of the cost of buying an offline house. While the online house does not fill a need for shelter, it is a relatively affordable purchase within the virtual world. More importantly, it is a worthwhile purchase for Dugger, who sees the house as a way of better establishing himself within the environment (Ibid).

Juliet Schor writes that Americans are driving themselves into serious debt as they purchase (offline) status in an attempt to appear more affluent. In contrast, there are few, if any, accounts of individuals who have gone into debt purchasing virtual goods. This is not to say that people are not going into debt or overworking themselves in order to be able to afford virtual commodities. However, when money is tight for some individuals, online virtual world accounts are one of the first things sold to generate money (Dibbell, 2003, 2006). Given the possibilities for gaining status in the virtual world, these considerations suggest that despite the fact the people are making frequent purchases, virtual commodities remain more affordable than their offline counterparts and are therefore even more attractive to users than they otherwise might be.

Social Belonging In order to sell their wares and sustain the virtual economy, producers of virtual goods have an abiding interest in imbuing their virtual goods with meanings that make them attractive to consumers. Jhally writes that, “given the central role of objects in the constitution of human

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societies, human culture and human meaning, one can provide an answer as to where the power of advertising comes from: it derives not from the ingenuity of advertisers but from the need for meaning” (1987, p. 197). Jhally’s point regarding the “need for meaning” is well taken in this context. There is no inherent material use-value in virtual goods, both by virtue of their immateriality and the fact that they are simply not necessary for the basic requirements of offline or virtual life. Again, they do not feed us, keep us warm, shelter us, or offer any tangible benefits that fulfill basic physical needs. They do, however, sell at an impressive rate for reasons that have, as Jhally asserts, everything to do with meaning, and especially meaning that producers are able to position in terms of status, belonging, and individuality.

This sentiment is echoed in the work of Schor, who argues that the purchase of goods is rooted in the meanings and social status that they offer. For Schor, increasing consumption is driven by a desire to enjoy the benefits associated with a higher status group by purchasing the trappings and appearance of such a lifestyle. By engaging in consumption and allowing other people to see these goods, consumers are able to appear as though they belong in a particular status group within society even when their income would indicate otherwise. Therefore, through purchasing virtual goods, individuals can increase their apparent status within the virtual world. At the same time, those who produce virtual goods can use their ability to offer status as means to position their goods attractively within the economic system.

This focus on status also arises in the Second Life economy in the pricing and discourse of selling virtual goods. For virtual objects, as with their offline equivalents, “the value character of the products of labour become firmly established only when they act as magnitudes of value” (Marx, 2000, p. 13). These goods are still the product of labour, for it takes time and effort to develop and code even the simplest of virtual goods. Here, different objects require different amounts of time and effort to design and code (Lavalee, 2006). However, these differences can affect the price of a commodity and their success within the economy, with those requiring more time and effort being more expensive but also more desirable.

These differences in prices are important since virtual goods are computer code and, beyond labour, offer no intrinsic reason for variable prices. Despite the fact that virtual goods are all constructed of code, there is a tendency for producers to value goods differently within the economy depending on what is being represented. For example, while clothing is common to most avatars, art requires a place for display and is therefore more likely to be a status item and less likely to be widespread within Second Life. Consequently, one dress for sale in the Plaza Mall costs $150 LD while directly across the aisle a painting sells for $800 LD. As such, the pricing structure in Second Life can be seen to be as much of a product of exchange- and symbolic-value as any offline commodity.

This desire for status and social belonging is not lost on developers and appears frequently in the discourse around the sale of virtual goods. To denote higher status goods, sellers frequently advertise items in a way that makes them sound special or rare in a bid to attract buyers. One designer selling a piece of art writes, “only 50 of these will be released, this is your chance to own something unique” (SLExchange, 2006c). In turn, the creator of a pre-fab rainforest home writes, “This is a truly one-of-a-kind structure” (Ibid, 2006), which could be outfitted with “The Candarian Dweller”, a “unique 7 person sitting room custom” (Maelstrom, 2006, May 13). This advertising discourse—involving terms such as “unique,” “one-of-a-kind,” “exclusive,” and “rare”—appeals to the desire for status through individuality (Mueller, 1986).

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By positioning commodities in terms of the status and prestige they convey, developers are able to sell their goods to residents despite the absence of use-value by playing off social and symbolic needs and desires.

Aura and Limited Editions Status associated with rarity can be traced to Walter Benjamin’s notions of the aura of an original piece of work (1968). Aura is the sense of uniqueness based on authority granted through history and presence that emanates from an original work of art. This aura is lost when the work is disseminated through reproduction. Benjamin asserts that, “For the first time in world history mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual” (Ibid, p. 96), suggesting that there is value to be found in the process of reproduction, despite the loss of the aura. However, it remains that the original piece of work is subject to a loss of its sense of history, presence, and uniqueness when it is rapidly reproduced and disseminated. This loss becomes an issue since, in a world with millions of participants and virtual goods, status can be conveyed through that which is rare, expensive, historical, and possessing an aura.

As with the art world, high-status virtual goods can be protected by ensuring that they are singular, or at least not widely distributed or reproduced. In order to protect its authority from reproduction, Buskirk claims that art “requires a fully elaborated external structure of support, which includes…the adherence to external conventions that limit and control the reproduction of otherwise inherently reproducible works” (2005, p. 4), especially around the convention of the limited edition. Similarly, by only releasing single units or limited edition runs of a particular item, developers have tried to ensure that their goods retain their status and value in Second Life.

However, the protection offered to virtual goods through the use of limited editions has not gone unchallenged. Conflict within Second Life over the program CopyBot—a tool designed to backup in-world content that is capable of copying and reproducing the code for any item—have highlighted this importance of individuality, rarity, and status associated with commodities by threatening these qualities. Protests against the use of this software came largely from developers of virtual goods, who feared that the ability to replicate any commodity would allow them to be undersold and render their profit margins non-existent. By dealing with the issue quickly and declaring the use of CopyBot in violation of the Terms of Service, Linden Lab reaffirmed the value of virtual goods.

Given this response, it appears that the development and availability of such tools may also have implications for the meanings associated with virtual goods. Since CopyBot can recreate any item, it could also affect the loss of the individuality, rarity, and status associated with in-world commodities that were for sale or had already been purchased. To manage this threat, one resident suggests, “I’d also put up a store in Second Life and sell signed and numbered digital copies of the player so copybot wouldn’t be an issue” (Nathan, 2006). By acknowledging the need to reaffirm the authenticity of the work through the virtual equivalent of numbered editions of art, the threat to its aura is simultaneously addressed. When any commodity can be copied, including rare or custom-made items, the potential for losing the aura of individuality and status is very real, and is therefore a threat to those who create and sell virtual goods.

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Virtual Goods and the Consumer Status and Conspicuous Consumption Despite their importance to the Second Life economy, the role of virtual goods as a driving force in the economy also relies on consumers’ desire for commodities. While the creation and purchase of virtual goods is common within Second Life, there would be no sale of virtual goods – and quite likely less development of the same – without individuals who desire to purchase those commodities. Since virtual goods do not fulfill physical needs, sellers and buyers must have a means of determining an appropriate exchange-value for commodities, while buyers must also have reasons for purchasing goods. In the absence of use-value, the sale of virtual goods in Second Life depends on symbolic-value to drive their purchase by consumers.

Since many virtual goods are graphically rendered, and therefore visible to other users, they can convey status through their display. Due to the visibility of virtual goods in Second Life, in-world status can be linked to theories of conspicuous consumption. Thorstein Veblen writes, “the basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods” (2000, p. 39). By making consumption visual, users and developers are working within a world in which status can be expressed and recognized through commodities, which leads to conspicuous consumption.

The tendency towards conspicuous consumption is seen in the drive to acquire noticeably high-status virtual goods. This drive is not exclusive to Second Life, and has been documented in other online environments. In writing about a player named Troy Stolle from Ultima Online, another virtual world, Dibbell describes not only the process of buying a house—a rare, expensive, and high-status good in and of itself—but also what the player does with that property. Once the dwelling has been purchased, “The first floor, once the austere workshop of a hardcore craftsman, has become a bright, busy public gallery for Stolle's collection of rares and semi-rares” (Dibbell, 2003). As with Second Life, other users are free to come and go within the space, and presumably take an admiring look at the display.

Key words in Dibbell’s account of what he terms “The Unreal Estate Boom” are “public gallery” and “rares and semi-rares” (Ibid). The purpose of this space is to show off Stolle’s uncommon goods as a sign of his status within the Ultima Online community. Stolle’s goods suggest status on their own. Both the dwelling and the goods that it contains are rare, and therefore signal difficulty or expense in their acquisition. However, by making this space public, Stolle is engaging conspicuous consumption in an overt way. Not only does he posses a house— a very visible sign of status, given that it leaves a mark on the very landscape of the virtual world—but he wishes to display his other virtual goods in a way that makes them visible to others. It is not enough that he owns them. His consumption must be made conspicuous to reveal the status associated with his goods in a similar manner to that seen in Second Life.

Similarly, consumption is conspicuous in Second Life in multiple ways. First, even the smallest of purchases of clothing or jewelry can be seen on the avatar, since it is graphically rendered. Second, users can more easily see significant purchases, such as cars and boats, because they are larger than the avatar, and therefore more immediately visible. Third, people tend to be inclined to show off their goods, and private dwellings are frequently made public to

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all Second Life residents so that others can see both the dwelling and the goods that it houses.

All three forms of consumption allow almost any commodity that can be purchased within the world to be put on display for others to see.

While these first two expressions of conspicuous consumption are readily apparent in offline life (Schor, 1999), the third one is somewhat unusual. It is rare that individuals open their offline homes to anyone who wishes to enter, and yet virtual homes are frequently accessible to other users, if not the entire environment’s population. Within the virtual world there is no dirty virtual laundry lying on the floor, or virtual medicine chests with embarrassing contents for visitors to peek into. As a result, privacy is not as much of an issue as it would be offline.

Therefore, it is easier for users to open up their virtual abodes to show off their goods without worrying about many of the small details that could keep an offline home off limits to other people.

Fig. 2: A prominent and publicly accessible house at WaterMoon Breeze in Second Life.

More importantly, those dwellings that are open to the public tend to be set up nicely with furniture, art, electronics, and a significant amount of space for users to move around in. In some cases users are so proud of their spaces that they post virtual web sites specifically dedicated to this kind of display (Samiam, 2005). By and large, virtual homes can be kept open to the public more easily than offline dwellings because there is less upkeep, there are fewer concerns about privacy, and theft is unlikely, if not impossible. However, there is also a very real sense of display that goes into the construction of the space and the decision to open it up to the public, either in-world or on the web. Given this tendency towards display, consumption within Second Life can be read as conspicuous in its attempts to make purchases visible within the world.

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Identity and Selfhood In addition to conspicuous consumption, the graphical nature of virtual goods also lends itself more specifically to augmenting personal appearance and in-world identity through consumption. Despite the importance of rare, custom, and high-status goods within the Second Life economy, it is also important to consider other ways through which residents can use the wide variety of more widespread goods to seek status and establish their identity and place within the world. A more common and, in many cases more affordable way to mark identity and generate status is through developing the avatar’s appearance using the thousands of items that are readily available for purchase. In virtual worlds, many people simply want to create an avatar that looks distinctive and is representative of who they wish to be (Castronova, 2005).

The easiest way to accomplish this task is through the purchase of smaller but no less significant virtual goods.

Erving Goffman’s theories of identity speak to the idea that appearance is a critical way of providing personal information to other people, and that props are a means by which we can convey personal information to others about who we are and want to be (1973). Graphical virtual goods associated with the avatar can be seen and appreciated by other players both for their aesthetics and for the fact that their owner has chosen them (Castronova, 2004). Consequently, by obtaining and displaying virtual goods, residents are able to customize the appearance of their avatars, performing their virtual self to others in particular ways. Although these goods can be relatively small, they can also be a sign to other players of how much money, status, time, or effort has been invested in the avatar.

Goffman’s ideas of performativity can be also linked to multiple conceptions of the self, including ideal, multiple, and extended selves. Second Life offers its users the opportunity to create a virtual self with which to experience the environment. However, due to the anonymity associated with online interaction, the virtual self can be different from the offline self in terms of how it is constructed and defined as well as how many selves are created. Rather than being limited to one representation of the offline self, online selfhood can be multiple, variable, idealized, and changeable. In the context of these many options, consumption functions as a way to expand on and delineate between different expressions of selfhood within Second Life.

In addition to the possibility of creating only one self within the virtual world, residents are able to create multiple selves through which to interact with the virtual world (Turkle, 1995; Taylor, 2002; Boellstorff, 2008). While it is possible simply create multiple avatars, this process can be augmented through consumption. As Goffman suggests, consuming particular types of virtual goods allows individuals to relatively quickly and easily position themselves in a particular way (1973). Because different items designate different aspects of identity, the consumption of a variety of goods may be used to delineate different identities from each other, especially within the virtual context (Kafai, Fields, and Cook, 2007). Since these items can be and often are made visible to other members of the community, they serve as a visible marker to distinguish between and reinforce the different characteristics of multiple selves.

Within Second Life, consumption can also been linked to the idea of extended selves.

The idea of the extended self refers to the way in which individuals’ possessions help to define who they are, expanding the sense of self beyond the immediacy of the body and its associated personality and persona (Belk, 1988; Ahuvia, 2005). Rather than focusing on augmenting the

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performativity of selfhood for others, the extended self relies more on possessions as a way to define who they are and, in some cases, who they wish to be (Ibid). Within Second Life, virtual goods offer ways to extend the self through a wide variety of possessions, from clothes defining a particular group membership to houses that indicate a particular class of property ownership.

This extension of the self is especially interesting in terms of virtual goods than can be scripted or coded so that they function in particular ways within the world. While buying a sailboat in offline life may allow individuals to associate themselves with sailing, it does not guarantee the skills necessary to safely take a boat out on open water. In contrast, buying a virtual scripted sailboat in Second Life allows the resident not only the feeling of being a sailor, but the ability to be one as well. As a result of their meanings and capabilities, the associations made with virtual goods can be a powerful way of extending the self within Second Life.

The influence of virtual goods on providing an extended sense of self is perhaps most clearly seen in reactions to the loss of virtual goods. Russel W. Belk asserts that, “If possessions are viewed as part of self, it follows that an unintentional loss of possessions should be regarded as a loss or lessening of self (1988: 142). Within Second Life, it is not uncommon for bugs in the code to delete the inventories of residents, who respond negatively to such losses. On the official Second Life blog, one resident who lost the contents of their inventory writes, “My inventory is back but I’m a shadow of my former self” (Seaton, 2007), alluding to both the literal loss of items that defined her visual appearance and the loss of feelings of self generated by such an experience. Although it is not solely defined by the individual’s possessions, the loss of such goods can have a profound effect on a sense of self.

Finally, since individuals are free to construct their Second life avatar as they please, virtual consumption can be further expanded through the development of an ideal version of the self. Research into consumption practices has suggested that purchases can be used as a way for individuals to work towards the development of their ideal self (Landon, 1974). In online worlds, rather than simply purchasing virtual goods to define and distinguish online identity, goods can be purchased so as to create an idealized persona with which to engage with the virtual world. In Dibbell’s account of Ultima Online, the acquisition of an in-world tower and creation of a public gallery within it helps to create an ideal version of the self for the purchaser (2003, 2006). While the offline user is positioned as rather average, the in-world self is a property-owning, visible, well-outfitted member of the virtual community. By consuming virtual goods that construct the self in a particular way it is possible for individuals to not only create alternate selves online, but also to construct an ideal self through which to interact with the world and other residents within it.

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Personal Appearance Within Second Life, personal appearance can be strongly linked to the construction of virtual selves and identity. By offering visible cues about avatar style and preferences, virtual goods can help to establish a particular identity through the appearance of the avatar. While larger goods, such as dwellings and vehicles, have the advantage of being more easily noticeable, commodities associated with appearance are attractive to users because they are always present with the avatar, and therefore always provide information about status and identity. While a virtual house cannot be taken into an in-world nightclub, a distinctive outfit can. Therefore, it is these smaller, portable goods that come to signify status immediately. In this way, appearance is the mark of status and a designator of identity that is always present with the avatar.

Due largely to this focus on appearance, clothing is the most popular commodity within Second Life. Of the 2,353,390 goods currently available on the Second Life exchange, 79,422 are clothing—a category larger than any other by almost 38,000 items—33,565 are accessories, and 16,998 are otherwise related to avatar appearance. It is also possible to buy upgrades to the avatar body, and designers offer a multitude of eye colors, hairstyles, hair colors, piercings, and facial features that can be used to change the body of the avatar and achieve a desired appearance.

Fig. 3: Some of the many clothing options for sale through Destiny Designs in Second Life.

Another expression of this focus on using goods to develop personal appearance and identity in Second Life is the production and sale of “skins,” or full-body tattoos that cover the original body and can change a variety of the avatar’s features at once. One newspaper reports

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that, “a rocked-out, tattoo-covered sex god skin can sell for upwards of $3000 LD, or about $15 in U.S. currency. People can't buy them fast enough” (Stafford, 2003). Skins allow users a way not just to customize their appearance through clothing and other goods, but also a means of altering the entire body. In this way, Second Life offers residents a variety of options for customizing their avatar’s appearance. The wide range of goods available for customizing the avatar body and the rate at which they sell suggests that appearance and the commodities that can be used to change it are important markers of status within the Second Life environment.

Fig. 4: CMFF – Designer Chip Midnight’s Second Life clothing, shoe, and skin store.

The prevalence of clothing and other appearance-related goods in Second Life is also a phenomenon found in other virtual worlds. One analysis of There.com, a virtual world similar to Second Life, states that, “as with the real world, much attention is given to personal appearance, and one of the main activities in There is designing virtual clothes and selling them through ingame auctions” (Brown and Bell, 2004, April 24-29). It is not possible to definitively suggest that this focus on appearance is an integral part of all virtual social worlds. However, the fact that appearance is such an important element of two virtual worlds does suggest a common focus on goods as a sign of status and as a means of customizing the virtual body. Although the goods associated with an avatar do not fulfill physical needs, they are created, sold, and bought at high rates. As such, it follows that their ability to symbolically fulfill needs and desires for status and a pleasing appearance within the virtual world is driving their popularity.

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Uniqueness and Individuality While the almost unlimited combinations of skins, clothing, and features available inworld are a way to ensure avatar uniqueness, numerous advertisements in the Second Life forums offer custom designs, which can further help users to maintain their individuality. These custom orders can cost significantly more than their conventional counterparts—in one shop, a regular dress is $100 LD, while a custom dress is $500—but they ensure that the avatar can be singular in its appearance. Custom work ensures that no other avatar will be wearing a particular dress, tattoo, or skin, and also provides a way of creating an appearance or item that is not only unique, but representative of the user. Out of 6,329 advertisements for goods in Second Life’s “New Product” forum, 351 vendors, or 5.5 per cent of vendors refer to their work as “custom,” while in Second Life Exchange, 2,704 advertisements, or 14 per cent claim to offer custom goods. These numbers suggest that despite higher costs, there is enough demand for custom work that it is an important factor behind purchases within Second Life.

Although custom designs are commonly found in clothing and appearance-related goods, similar development can be completed for almost any virtual commodity, providing that there is a willing developer. Custom cars and motorcycles are available to those willing to pay, and a customized castle currently costs $20,000 LD. However, it remains that these virtual goods still do not fulfill material needs. What they do offer is a fulfillment of desires. Custom goods are closely linked with appearance and status, and offer users a way to establish themselves within the virtual community through the goods that they possess and the things that they suggest about their bearer. Moreover, these goods can be seen as representations of status at a financial level.

While custom goods ensure the individuality of the avatar, they are also a visual sign that the user has the means to pay for unique goods rather than simply purchasing items that are available to other residents. By purchasing virtual goods, and especially those that are custom made, users are expressing their status, individuality, and position within the virtual world to others.

Social Lubrication In addition to their potential to indicate status, virtual goods can also function as a social lubricant to bring people together through common interests and shared activities. Despite the fact that goods in Second Life lack conventional use-value, this does not mean that they are not still useful within the world. In some instances, commodities can bring people together into shared activities out of which social networks and communities develop. Some of the clearest examples of the use of virtual goods as social lubricant surround larger commodities and the events that surround them. For owners of cars and dune buggies, it is not uncommon to have owners come together for a race and enjoy time together socializing. Although individuals do come together of their own accord and form in-world communities, virtual goods can serve as a common bond and a reason to get together with other users.

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Fig. 5: The Nantucket Yacht Club – a sailing club with moorings and activities for Second Life residents with sail boats.

To this end, one boat designer and owner writes, “I was thinking of having a race, or series of races, some time in the next couple of weeks. I know nothing about real sailboat races, so it would probably be a simple affair. Everyone would race the same class of boat, though -i.e., a Flying Tako” (Massiel, 2006, June 22). Membership in a particular group of individuals is signaled by ownership of specific goods—in this case, specific to the point of owning the same class of boat. More importantly, it not only signals membership but allows for participation in activities that are associated with or facilitated by the goods in question. Without owning these goods, membership may not be possible and individuals can be excluded. Conversely, while there is status associated with these goods, they are also wrapped in intangible notions and feelings of belonging that can be employed in their sale. Brown and Bell write, “By choosing to do leisure activities with certain people they become our friends” (2004, p. 353). Although virtual goods may not be necessary, through their purchase they are able to bring people together into communities based on common interests and activities, and can be sold as such.

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Conclusions Despite the necessity of moving away from conceptions of use-value and need fulfillment when considering virtual goods, it cannot be said that that there is not a sense of need attached to consumption within Second Life. However, this sense of need is constructed not on conventional notions of physical and material needs and use-values, but on symbolic meanings around individuality, power, status, community, and belonging. Baudrillard asserts that individuals, “in the rupture of symbolic exchange, autonomize themselves and rationalize their desire, their relation to others and to objects, in terms of needs, utility, satisfaction, and use value” (2000, p. 24). Although residents may justify their purchases in terms of their use-value, it remains that they are purchasing goods whose meaning is located in social- and symbolicvalue, rather than the capacity to meet physical needs.

Although there remains a lack of use-value in virtual goods, it is important to note that their consumption should not be read as irrational or meaningless. A significant number of individuals who enter into forms of online engagement highly value their interactions (Turkle, 1994, 1995). As Thomas Malaby suggests, even within spaces that are virtual, “People may, in any specific context, imbue them with deep, normatively charged meanings” (2007: 96).

As such, it can be argued that it makes sense for them to focus their efforts in terms of time and money on developing reputation and status within the online world through virtual goods, if this is the environment and community that matters most to them. The roles that these commodities play for individuals is still meaningful, and it is these representations of status, individuality, and belonging that have driven the sale of virtual goods even as they have supplanted use-value.

The continued purchase of millions of dollars worth of virtual goods suggests that their consumption is being driven by a quality apart from that of use-value. An examination of virtual goods reveals that use-value is not a characteristic that is necessary for acquisition, and that exchange- and symbolic-value can be the driving force behind consumption. As a result of their existence as visually rendered code stored on a computer server, none of the virtual goods available for purchase in online worlds can be linked to a tangible expression of use-value. Yet, walking through a virtual world, these goods are everywhere—on avatars, in shops, advertised on the street, and placed in homes and buildings—and despite their ephemeral and immaterial qualities, they affect Second Life users, residents, communities, and interactions in significant ways that continue to justify their purchase.

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Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 “Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds” November 2008

Ugly Duckling by Day, Super Model by Night: The Influence of Body Image on the Use of Virtual Worlds By Dr. Enrique P. Becerra, Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas, USA Dr. Mary Ann Stutts, Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas, USA.

Abstract The use and importance of virtual worlds is growing worldwide but little is known about what influences participants to use them. The current study extends the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), using sociometer theory, to explore influences on the use of virtual worlds. It is hypothesized that perceptions of body image are negatively related to the desire to become someone else, and that this and attitudes towards telepresence (i.e., sense of being there), social norms, and perceived behavioral control are positively related to the use of virtual worlds. Findings suggest that perceptions of body image through the desire to become someone else, attitudes toward telepresence, and subjective norms significantly affect the use of virtual worlds. Perceived behavioral control was found to have no significant impact on the use of virtual worlds. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Key Words: body image; TPB; telepresence; virtual worlds; consumer behavior; sociometer theory; attitude; subjective norms; perceived behavioral control.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Ugly Duckling by Day, Super Model by Night 2

Ugly Duckling by Day, Super Model by Night: The Influence of Body Image on the Use of Virtual Worlds

By Dr. Enrique P. Becerra, Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas, USA Dr. Mary Ann Stutts, Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas, USA The use of virtual worlds, as a subset of virtual environments, is growing worldwide and practitioners and academicians alike are interested in understanding these environments. In virtual environments individuals can socialize, play games, form affiliation to groups, teach/learn, and/or shop/sell (Balkin & Noveck, 2006; Rockwell, 2008; Messinger, Stroulia, & Lyons, 2008). Virtual worlds, on the other hand, are designed mainly for social interactions without keeping score or accumulating points like virtual gaming (Schroeder, 2008). Virtual worlds are persistent virtual environments within a computer network for social interactions, in which users experience others as “being there” and can interact with others within the virtual environment, such as Second Life (Bell, 2008; Messinger et al., 2008; Schroeder, 2008).

It is estimated that up to 50 million people regularly participate in virtual environments (Bennett, 2008). For example, Balkin and Noveck (2006) estimate that participants in virtual environments spend an average of twenty-two hours per week in adult environments such as Second Life and World of Warcraft; children’s environments such as Habbo and Neopets; media-focused such as v-Side; community-specific such as Cyworld and HiPiHi; and educational environments such as Active Worlds and Forterra Systems. Virtual environments have been found to enhance online sales (Papadopoulou, 2007), increase online advertising/Web site effectiveness (Griffith & Chen, 2004; Coyle & Thorson, 2001; Li, Daugherty & Biocca, 2002), improve understanding of human interaction, and influence behavior (Yee & Bailenson, 2007).

Driver, Jackson, Moore, and Schooley (2008) predict that in five years virtual worlds will become as important to companies as the Web is now. However, worlds have the ability to be a waste of time and perhaps dangerous because they allow individuals to live out fantasies including leading a double life (Bailenson, 2006; Bennett, 2008). Nevertheless, the growing use of virtual worlds as a social environment and its importance to firms makes it an environment in need of understanding.

It is expected that 80% of Internet users will have an avatar presence in a virtual community by 2011 and that virtual world participation could reach a billion users by 2017 (Gartner, Inc., 2007; Virtual Worlds News, 2008a). An avatar is a three dimensional (3-D) representation of a person and his/her alter ego (i.e., becoming someone else) in a virtual environment. In virtual worlds participants can personalize their avatar by choosing a first and last name, which may vary from their real name, determine the avatar’s physical appearance, which may vary from their real physical appearance, and show only those traits that s/he wants to present to others (Talamo & Ligorio, 2001).

The available literature suggests that the allure of choosing one’s destiny, finding fulfillment and like-minded individuals, and becoming someone else, including changing one’s physical appearance (i.e., body image), attracts individuals to virtual worlds and may be context specific (Yee & Bailenson, 2007; Talamo & Ligorio, 2001). However, little is known about how a person’s perception of their body image, the influence of referents, and perceptions of 2

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telepresence or the “sense of being there” influences the use of virtual worlds. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) and sociometer theory (Leary, 1999), this study explores (a) the relationship between body image (i.e, a person’s perception of his/her physical appearance) and his/her desire to become someone else, and (b) the influence of the desire to become someone else, perceptions of telepresence, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms on the use of virtual worlds.

The present study concentrates on young adults, mostly college students, because of their potential to become heavy virtual world users. Internet users, ages 12-28, are more likely than older users (i.e, over age 28) to send and receive instant messages, play online games, create blogs, download data, search for information, and visit social networks (Vsodera, 2007; Fox, 2005). Approximately 98% of college students use the Internet (Packaged Facts, 2005). While Internet use is high among college students, gender differences can be found in what they access on the Internet. For example, male college students are more likely than female college students (49.3% vs. 34.3%) to view streaming video content and female college students (32.8%) are more likely than male college students (21.7%) to research health information (BurstMedia, Corp., 2007). Currently most virtual worlds users are under the age of 18 (e.g., Habbo) and over the age of 30 (e.g., Second Life). However, the 18-30 year age group offers tremendous potential for virtual worlds because of their affinity to social networks and online gaming (Fox, 2005; Virtual Worlds News, 2008b). For example, Gaia Online virtual world has increased its over 18 users by 30% during the past few years and that has made the site more edgy, which appeals to the over 18 and under 30 year old crowd (Virtual World News, 2008b).

The remaining article is organized in three sections. The next section discusses the relevant literature and presents hypotheses underlying the study. This is followed by a description of the methodology, analysis, and results. The final section concludes with a discussion of results and future research directions.

Background and Hypotheses The current study extends the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model (Ajzen, 1991), using sociometer theory (Leary, 1999), to explore the influence of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and the desire to become someone else on the use of virtual worlds (see Figure 1). The TPB is an extension of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), which posits that attitudes and subjective norms towards a behavior influence the behavior in question (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). The TPB extends the TRA by capturing non-volitional aspects of behavior (i.e., perceptions of ease or difficulty in performing the behavior in question) or perceived behavioral control. The TPB increases the prediction of behavior over the TRA because many behaviors, such as accessing the Internet, are not volitional (Ajzen, 1991).

Sociometer theory posits that a person’s relationships are determined by his/her self-esteem, which is influenced by social acceptance cues such as perceptions of physical appearance.

Sociometer theory in this study incorporates the influence of a person’s desire to become someone else, which is posited as being influenced by body image or a person’s perceptions of his/her physical appearance, as an influence on the use of virtual worlds.

Attitudes toward a behavior have been found to influence the behavior, including online information search and purchase behavior (Shim, Eastlick, Lotz, & Warrington, 2001). The influence of referents (i.e., subjective norms) has been found to positively influence online 3

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purchasing behavior (Jones & Vijayasarathy, 1998; Shim & Drake, 1990) and online game behavior (Wu & Liu, 2007) and, thus, it could influence the use of virtual worlds. Perceived behavioral control is related to perceptions of possessing the required resources and opportunity to perform the behavior in question, in our case accessing virtual worlds and the Internet. It has also been found to influence online behavior (Shim et al. 2001). Next we discuss the variables of interest in the study.

Figure 1. Influence on the Use of Virtual Worlds (Based on Theory of Planned Behavior and Sociometer Theory)

Attitude Towards Telepresence

Subjective Norms

H2 (+)

Virtual World Use

H3 (+)

H4 (+)

Perceived Behavioral Control

Desire to Become Someone Else

H1 (+)

Body Image

Covariates Education Level, Household Income, Age, Gender, Ethnicity

H1 (-)

Body Image and The Desire to Become Someone Else The literature abounds with studies of the self-concept and how it affects a person’s behavior, including social interactions and shopping behavior, but it has not been applied to virtual worlds. Participants in virtual worlds are able to experience “becoming someone else” through the design and manipulation of their avatars by altering parts of their self-concept and relationships with other people, if only for a brief time.

The self-concept is a multidimensional set of thoughts and feelings that a person has toward his/her self as an object (Sirgy, 1982). The self-concept includes the actual self, ideal self, and social self (Burns, 1979; Rosenberg, 1979). Additionally, self-esteem and selfconsistency exert an independent influence on the self-concept (Epstein, 1980). Self-esteem is 4

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the tendency to seek experiences that enhance the self-concept and self-consistency is the tendency for an individual to behave consistently with his/her self-concept.

Sociometer theory posits that self-esteem determines a person’s past, present, and future relationships (Leary & Baumeister, 2000). Individuals with high self-esteem feel that they are valued by others while individuals with low self-esteem doubt their value to others (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995; Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 2000). A person’s self-esteem, especially in western societies, is influenced by cues that impact social acceptance, such as physical attractiveness (Anthony, Holmes, & Wood, 2007; Leary et al., 1995). Easily observable cues, such as physical attractiveness, influence a person’s self-esteem because they impact social acceptance, particularly when other cues, such as honesty and/or kindness may take longer to assess (Anthony et al., 2007). Physical attractiveness allows individuals to assess another person accurately in a short time; good looking individuals are better liked, better treated, and they are sought out more by others (Anthony, et al., 2007; Reis, Wheeler, Spiegel, Kernis, Nezlek, & Perri, 1982).

Similar to other computer-mediated interactions, participants of persistent online social environments (i.e., virtual worlds) may apply social rules and expectations, such as judging other participants based on their appearance (i.e., the appearance of their avatar). Holzwarth, Janiszewski, and Neumann (2006) found that in the online retailing environment perceptions about an online assistant or avatar, specifically its physical appearance, increases its persuasiveness because its physical appearance, similarly to the real world, increases perceptions of likeability and persuasion. Similarly, Keeling, McGoldrick, and Beatty (2007) found that online purchase intentions, for customers who like to interact with a sales person, increase when the Web site adds an Onscreen Assistant (OSA), confirming that social rules and expectations apply in computer mediated environments, such as virtual worlds.

Body image (i.e., self-perceptions of physical appearance) is as important in virtual worlds as it is in the real world because virtual worlds are social networking places and, thus, social acceptance is desired. Interacting with others in a virtual world, where real identities may not be disclosed, could heighten the importance of easily observable traits. For example, Yee and Bailenson (2007) found, similar to research offline (Reis et al., 1982), that the more attractive and taller a person (i.e., an avatar) is perceived, the more social and confident the person represented by the avatar will act.

In virtual worlds participants present the physical appearance that best suits them, including having more than one physical presence (i.e., more than one avatar at a time). In other words, in the social environment of virtual worlds, obtaining social acceptance through physical appearance matters. Because a person may physically appear as he/she wishes, other socially acceptable traits may become more salient than in the real world. For example, Victor Pineiro, producer of Second Skin, a film that follows seven hardcore virtual world participants, was surprised to find out that a person he met and perceived as fun and affable, has cerebral palsy, is only able to move one finger, and is not able to talk (Bennett, 2008).

Most of human “social behavior is shaped by a concern that others like us and attribute to us such characteristics as warmth, humor, reliability, charm, and physical attractiveness” (Jones & Pittman, 1982, p. 235). Evidence suggests that less physically attractive individuals are less liked and less sought by others (Reis et al., 1982; Langlois et al., 2000). Additionally, evidence 5

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suggests that declines in young adults’ social circles can lead to loneliness and may increase their use of the Internet, including social networks (Matsuba, 2006). Likewise, increased use of the Internet may reduce young adults’ social circles (Kraut, Patterson, Lundmark, Kiesler, Mukophadhayay, & Scherelis, 1998), which increases their loneliness and Internet use. We may conclude that individuals with low perceptions of body image may have smaller social circles and may feel lonely but still desire social acceptance which they may find in online social environments, such as virtual worlds. We speculate that having the ability to become someone else is an incentive, especially for less physically attractive individuals, to participate in virtual worlds because in virtual worlds they can put their best face forward, be socially accepted, and have rewarding social interactions without the worries of others seeing their true physical appearance. Therefore, perceptions of body image will be negatively related to the desire to become someone else, and the desire to become someone else will be positively related to the use of virtual worlds (Hypothesis 1).

Attitude towards telepresence. Telepresence is the “sense of being there” caused by perceptions of interactivity and vividness. Telepresence occurs when the perception of the mediated environment takes precedence over the unmediated one (Steuer, 1992). Virtual environments enhance telepresence by increasing interactivity and vividness (Coyle & Thorson, 2001; Steuer, 1992; Scheck et al., 2008). Interactivity is “the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real time” (Steuer, 1992, p. 84), and is determined by the speed with which a medium can be manipulated, the range of ways content can be manipulated, the similarity between the mediated environment control and manipulation to the real world, and the ability to interact as if one was present in the mediated environment (Ha & James, 1998; Steuer, 1992). Vividness relates to “representational richness of the mediated environment defined by its formal features; that is, the way in which an environment presents information to the senses” (Steuer, 1992, p. 81), and can be determined by the number of senses engaged by the medium and how closely the medium replicates parts of the human sensory system (Steuer, 1992). For example, activities in virtual worlds can replicate touch, sight, and movement while allowing voice or chat communication compared to email or text messaging which do not replicate touch, sight, or movement and do not allow voice communication, making them less vivid and, thus, having less telepresence than virtual reality.

Virtual worlds are attractive to individuals, including consumers and firms, because they enhance the online experience (e.g., engage more senses) and provide the illusion of being there, which increases their effectiveness (Li, Daugherty, & Biocca, 2002; Griffith & Chen, 2004; Papadopoulou, 2007; Schlosser, 2003). Papadopoulou (2007) found that virtual experiences, because they stimulate real-world experiences, increase trust of the online vendor, which in turn increase online sales. Griffith and Chen (2004) and Li, Daugherty, and Biocca (2002) found that online advertisements with virtual reality experiences (e.g., 3-D) are more effective than online ads without it. Schlosser (2003) found that increasing the interactivity of an object online or a craving (e.g., smoking) in a virtual world (Baumann & Sayette, 2006) influences intentions more than when the same information is provided passively.

McMillan, Hwang, and Lee (2003) explored the effect of structural variables, such as Website features and message strategy, and perceptual variables, such as involvement and perceived interactivity on subjects’ attitudes toward the Web site (Ast). Involvement with the subject of the site and perceived interactivity that measured engagement (i.e., telepresence) were the best predictors of Ast. Positive attitudes were associated with websites that took advantage 6

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of Web-specific features such as virtual tours and online reservation systems that engaged the consumer. Sohn, Ci, and Lee (2007) found that consumers’ Ast may be influenced by their anticipated degree of interactivity at the product level (i.e., expected interactivity). Greater vividness and interactivity increase positive attitudes toward the Web site and increases in vividness create more enduring Ast (Coyle & Thorson, 2001).

Mazursky and Vinitzky (2005) found that greater telepresence positively impacts online search duration, the number of brands examined, and actually changes online search behavior.

Li, Dughtherty, and Biocca (2002) found that increases in telepresence positively influence product knowledge, brand attitudes, and purchase intentions. These findings suggest a positive relationship between telepresence and use of virtual worlds. Therefore, attitudes toward telepresence will be positively related to the use of virtual worlds (Hypothesis 2).

Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Subjective norms or the approval of others, called referents, have been found to affect behavior. For example, referents have been found to influence shopping center patronage intentions (Evans, Christiansen, & Gill, 1996), online apparel purchases (Shim & Drake, 1991), online game behavior (Wu & Liu, 2007) and purchases in general (Jones & Vijayasaranthy, 1998). We speculate that because social acceptance is desirable, and if others whose opinions we value do not approve of virtual worlds, a person may be less likely it to use them. Therefore, subjective norms will be positively related to the use of virtual worlds (Hypothesis 3).

Access to the Internet is important to participation in virtual worlds. Perceived behavioral control, or the ease of accessing the Internet, has been found to influence intentions to search and to purchase online (Shim et al., 2001). Accordingly, if perceptions of access to the Internet are low, a person may not use virtual worlds. Therefore, perceived behavioral control will be positively related to the use of virtual worlds (Hypothesis 4).

Demographics. The published literature on demographics and the use of virtual worlds is scant and, thus, we control for demographic variables, such as age, gender, income, ethnicity, and education level, believed to influence online behavior, but do not speculate on their influence on the use of virtual worlds.

Methodology Data and subjects’ characteristics Adult Internet users from an introductory marketing class, open to all majors, at a large liberal arts Southwestern university that maintains an active presence in Second Life, were asked to voluntarily participate in the study. Seventy-eight adults completed the paper and pencil survey and were asked to administer it, in exchange for extra credit, to at least two adult friends or co-workers for a total of 252 participants with 215 usable responses. The majority of the subjects were male (55.5%), 18 to 24 years old (69.3%), white other than Hispanic (69.7%), attending college (74%), and with a household income of less than $40,000 (54.8%).

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Measurements All scales were derived from existing literature on telepresence, physical attractiveness, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms (Anthony et al., 2007; Korgaonkar, Silverblatt, & Becerra, 2004; Lessiter et al., 2001; Reis et al., 1982; Shim et al., 2001; Simmons, 2006; Cash, Morrow, & Hrabosky, 2004).

Virtual world use Virtual world use is conceptualized as the experience with virtual worlds (Shim et al., 2001; Korgaonkar et al., 2004). Subjects were asked to indicate how often they visit virtual worlds, such as Second Life, Habbo, and/or Activeworlds, on a seven-point Likert scale (1= never, 4= once a week, 7= two or more times a day), and if they agree with the following two statements, using a seven-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree): I often visit virtual worlds, and I am very much like people who visit virtual worlds. The respondents’ virtual worlds experience is as follows: 30% (28.1% females and 31.8% males) participate more than once a month but less than once a week, 10.8% (2.7% females and 15.8% males) at least once a week but less than once a day, 2.4% (0.9% females and 2.9% males) at least once a day, 19.2% (21.8% females and 17.4% males) visited virtual worlds at least once but do not actively participate in them, and the remaining 37.6% (46.3% females and 30.3% males) do not participate in virtual worlds at all.

Telepresence attitude For this study, the authors have conceptualized attitudes as a composite of the importance of telepresence attributes and beliefs that the Internet possesses the same attributes (Shim et al., 2001). Telepresence attitude encompasses 27 attributes derived from the ITCSense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) (Lessiter et al. 2001; Simmons, 2006). Lessiter et al.

(2001) validated the ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) questionnaire which offers researchers using a range of media systems (e.g., 3-D, films, VHS films, TV/computer) a tool with which to measure four facets of media experience: sense of physical space (e.g., presence or “being there”); engagement (e.g., psychologically involved); ecological validity (e.g., lifelike or real); and negative effects (e.g., adverse physiological reactions such as dizziness or nausea).

Telepresence attitude was measured using an expectancy-value model (e.g., A= eibi) in which the subjects’ evaluation of each attribute was weighted by his/her belief that the Internet will provide that attribute. Subjects were asked to indicate on a seven-point Likert scale (1= not important at all, 7= extremely important) how important (ei) each attribute was to them. The twenty-seven attributes included items such as anonymity, vividness, ease of use, feelings of being with another, sense of fantasy, easy to discern the other’s identity, communication is effective, enhances social connections, easy to present one’s image, and feels like a real face-toface interaction (for complete list see Table A2). In another section of the questionnaire subjects were asked to indicate on a seven-point Likert scale (1= strongly disagree, 7= strongly agree) their agreement or disagreement that the Internet would provide (bi) each attribute.

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Body image and desire to become someone else Body image was conceptualized as the person’s opinion about perceptions of their own physical attractiveness (Reis et al., 1998). Subjects were asked if they agree/disagree with the following two statements on a seven-point Likert scale (1= strongly disagree, 7= strongly agree): I like the way my body looks, and others like the way my body looks.

Desire to become someone else was conceptualized as the persons’ desire to change their persona. Subjects were asked if they agree/disagree with the following three statements in a seven-point Likert scale (1= strongly disagree, 7= strongly agree): I wish I could become someone else, if I could I would change my appearance to be more likable, and if I could I would become someone else.

Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control Subjective norms are conceptualized as the person’s opinion of the importance of approval by their family, friends, and significant other of their participation in virtual worlds.

Subjects’ subjective norm was measured using a three-item seven-point Likert scale (1= not important, 7= very important). Subjects were asked to indicate the importance of referents (e.g., family, friends, and significant other) approving their participation in virtual worlds.

Perceive behavioral control is conceptualized as a person’s perception of how difficult it is to access the Internet and to interact with others online. Perceived behavioral control was measured using a two-item seven-point Likert (1= very easy, 7= very difficult) and measure the ease of accessing the Internet and the ease of interacting with others online.

Demographics Subjects indicated their household income, age, education, gender, and ethnicity on a seven-point scale (see Table 1).

Preliminary Analysis We conducted a preliminary analysis to determine the structure of the 27 attitude items before proceeding to test the hypotheses. A principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation, using SPSS 14.0, was conducted; 10 items with severe cross loadings were deleted.

The remaining 17 items yielded five factors explaining 70.8% of the variance (see Table A2).

The first attitude component, Closeness, includes seven items: easy to discern the other’s sincerity, sense of physical closeness, transmits emotions effectively, easy to tell if the other is trustworthy, feels like a real face-to-face interaction, and sense of being there with the other.

The second attitude component, Social, includes three items: allows me to meet other people, involving-time disappears, and enhances social connections.

Immediacy, the third attitude component, includes the following three items: vividness, immediate response from another person, and immediate contact with another person. Task, the fourth attitude component, includes: communication is effective, allows me to do my work 9

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easily, and communication is enjoyable. And, the Anonymity component includes the item anonymity (see Table A2).

To assess the indicators, a factor analysis with Direct Oblimin rotation was run for all variables. The Social and Task attitude components did not display external consistency; these attitude components presented severe cross-loadings with other variables. The aim of the study is not to determine the telepresence attitude that exerts the most influence on the use of virtual worlds, rather, to explore if there is a relationship between the telepresence attitude and the use of virtual worlds. Thus, the Social and Task telepresence attitude components were eliminated and a factor analysis with Direct Oblimin was run again for the remaining variables.

Internal and external consistency was assessed using correlation analysis, factors analysis, and Cronbach’s alpha (Churchill, 1979). The factor analysis with Direct Oblimin rotation yielded eight factors accounting for 73.8% of the variance (see Table B3). The values of coefficient alpha were .82 for virtual world usage (average inter-item correlations .60), .82 for desire to become someone else (average inter-item correlations .60), .64 for perceptions of physical attractiveness (average inter-item correlations .48), .90 for subjective norms (average inter-item correlations .75), .3 for perceived behavioral control (average inter-item correlations .20), .91 for the Closeness attitude component (average inter-item correlations .60), and .72 for the Immediacy attitude component (average inter-item correlations .46). The Anonymity attitude component has only one indicator and, thus, reliability is not computed. The perceived behavioral control variable exhibited external consistency but its internal consistency is questionable. However, due to the exploratory nature of the study the variable was kept.

Results A linear regression with virtual world use as the dependent variables and subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, telepresence attitude components, desire to become someone else, perceptions of attractiveness, and demographics as independent variables was run using SPSS 14.0. Results are presented in Table 1.

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Table 1 - Linear Regression Analysis Dependent: Virtual World Use1 Subjective Norms Perceived Behavioral Control Desire to Become Someone Else Body Image Closeness Immediacy Anonymity Gender Age Ethnicity Household Income Education Level Dependent: Virtual World Use2 Body Image Dependent: Become Someone Else3 Body Image Dependent: Virtual World Use3 Become Someone Else Body Image 1

Standardized Coefficients .153** .079 .208** -.020 .320*** -.069 -.041 .222*** .085 -.152* -.065 .004 -.154* -.276*** .464*** -.030

R2adjusted: .311; F: 9.255; p<.001.

R2adjusted: .020; F: 5.932; p<.05.

3 2 R adjusted: .073; F: 20.163,; p< .001 * p< .05, ** p< .01, *** p< .001 Household income (1= $20,000 or less, 7= $120,000 or more) Age (1= less than 18, 7= 65 or more) Education level (1= attended middle school, 7= post graduate) Gender (1= female, 2= male) Ethnicity (1=American Indian, 2= Alaskan Native, 3= Asian, 4= Hispanic/Latino, 5= Black/African American (other than Hispanic), 6= White (other than Hispanic), 7= Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, and 8= Other race/ethnicity.

2

The model explains 31.1% (R2 adjusted) of the variance of virtual world use. Desire to become someone else (p< .01), supporting H1, subjective norms (p< .01), supporting H3, and the Closeness attitude component (p< .001), supporting H2, have a significant influence on the use of virtual worlds. Perceived behavioral control, perhaps because of its questionable internal consistency, did not exert a significant influence on the use of virtual worlds, questioning H4.

Gender (p< .001) and ethnicity (p< .05), as suggested by the online literature but not hypothesized, have a significant influence on the use of virtual worlds. Males display a greater use of virtual worlds than females. Virtual world use is highest among Asians which is similar to findings of Internet use by Korgen, Odell, and Schumacher (2001). Age, income, and education level do not exert a significant influence on the use of virtual worlds but these results may be due to the homogeneity of the respondents.

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Body image or perceptions of attractiveness do not exert a significant influence on the use of virtual worlds but its influence, as posited, could be mediated by the desire to become someone else. To determine this, following the Baron and Kenny (1986) test for mediation, three linear regressions and the Sobel test for mediation were run. The first linear regression (see Table 1) tested whether perceptions of attractiveness influence the use of virtual worlds (p< .001). The second linear regression tested whether perceptions of attractiveness influence the desire to become someone else (p< .001). The third and final linear regression tested whether the desire to become someone else influences the use of virtual worlds (p< .01) while controlling for perceptions of attractiveness (p< .6). Following the linear regressions, a Sobel test of mediation (Preacher & Leonardelli, 2001) was conducted.

The Sobel test results confirm the linear regression results in that the desire to become someone else mediates (t = -3.9, p< .001) the influence of body image on the use of virtual worlds, supporting H1. Body image is negatively related to the desire to become someone else and this is directly related to the use of virtual worlds, as predicted by H1.

Discussion and Conclusions The results indicate that telepresence attitude, subjective norms, and the desire to become someone else are directly related to the use of virtual worlds and the influence of body image on the use of virtual worlds is mediated by the desire to become someone else. The results confirm that a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body image or perceptions of attractiveness are inversely related to his/her desire to become someone else and this in turn is directly related to virtual world usage. Low body image or perceptions of attractiveness increase the desire to become someone else, which in turn increases the use of virtual worlds. Attitude towards telepresence, through its Closeness attitude component, exerts the most influence on the use of virtual worlds followed by gender, desire to become someone else, subjective norms, and ethnicity.

The Closeness telepresence attitude component, such as being with others, physical closeness, and transmission of emotions, exerts the greatest influence on the use of virtual worlds. The desire to become someone else and body image exert the third greatest influence on the use of virtual worlds. These results highlight the relational aspect of virtual worlds which suggest that if individuals and firms want to be successful in virtual worlds, they should concentrate on providing relational experiences.

Results also suggest that males use virtual worlds more than females, which is consistent with prior research that found males to be heavier users of the Internet (Packaged Facts, 2005).

Age, probably due to the homogeneity of the respondents, was not significant but the findings suggest that the use of virtual worlds increases with age. Age and physical attractiveness are related; physical attractiveness is at its peak during oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s youth (Langlois et al, 2000; Cash et al., 2004) and, thus, external traits may be more important. However, it is possible that older individuals value internal traits more than younger individuals and may have a greater inclination to use virtual worlds than younger individuals. These results suggest that the demographic influence on the use of virtual worlds should be explored further.

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The findings corroborate that a person’s desire for social acceptance, reflected by perceptions of physical attractiveness, influence their use of virtual worlds. Easily observable traits, such as physical attractiveness, influence a person’s self-esteem, as suggested by Anthony et al. (2007), and low self-esteem increases the desire to become someone else, which may increase the use of virtual worlds. However, this does not suggest that only individuals with low self-esteem use virtual worlds. It suggests that environments, such as virtual worlds, that reduce the importance of an easily observable trait, such as physical attractiveness, allow individuals to be valued on traits that may not be easily observable such as kindness, warmth, and/or honesty.

The anecdote about the cerebral palsy individual met by Victor Pineiro is an example of an individual being valued by non-physical traits. Therefore, virtual worlds may be frequented by individuals that value “internal” (e.g., honesty) traits more than external traits (e.g., physical attractiveness) despite their looks.

The concept of having an avatar(s) in any physical form desired by the owner makes the study of virtual world behavior even more interesting in the sense that an avatar can enhance one’s physical attractiveness as well as allow the owner to demonstrate positive non-physical characteristics, such as honesty, humor, and warmth. However, the opportunity for negative behavior (e.g., deception, rude behavior/language) also exists with avatars. The ability to cast out avatars that exhibit negative behavior, especially from group affiliations, already exists. The current study did not look at avatar choice or behavior. Future research should examine a person’s choice, design, and behavior of their avatar(s) within virtual worlds. For example, how might an avatar’s physical attractiveness affect the owner’s “consumer” behavior toward products, services, and/or promotions within virtual worlds? In other words, does a person behave differently as a consumer in a virtual world environment compared to their actual self in the real world, and how is that impacted by their choice of avatars in virtual worlds?

Future studies should also explore the differences in each telepresence attitude component on the use of virtual worlds. The Social and Task telepresence attitude components were not tested and thus, it is possible that they could influence the use of virtual worlds.

Acknowledgements The authors thank the McCoy College of Business at Texas State University – San Marcos for its generous financial support in conducting this research.

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Appendix A Table 2 - Attitude Towards Telepresence - Analysis

Anonymity Ease of usef Vividness Immediate contact with another Emotional contactf Feelings of being with another Immediate response Sense of fantasyf Meet new people Discern otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sincerity Communication is effective Satisfying interactionsf Easy to know otherf Easy to like otherf Engaging interactionf Task easy to accomplishf Sense of physical closeness Transmits emotions Sense of being with other Involving, time disappears Enhances social connections Ease to present my imagef Ease to tell trustworthiness Can determine if enjoy otherf Can do work easier Communication is enjoyable Feels like face-to-face a

Factor Loadings1

Importance (ei) (mean)2

Internet Provides (bi) (mean)3

Attitude ( A= eibi) (mean)

.887e -.719c .806c -.702a .704c -.714b .746a .711d -----.802a .787a .756a .698b .750b -.788a -.812d .655d .741a

4.31 5.93 5.05 4.82 3.88 3.60 4.84 2.98 4.04 4.33 5.79 4.99 4.47 4.16 4.60 5.60 3.22 3.94 3.56 3.90 4.71 4.50 4.43 3.90 5.78 5.36 3.98

4.41 5.50 4.93 4.90 3.61 3.45 4.65 3.44 4.27 3.59 4.98 4.39 3.87 3.91 4.22 5.13 2.97 3.20 3.26 4.26 4.33 4.01 3.14 3.36 5.21 4.71 3.08

19.77 33.02 25.71 24.58 15.25 13.58 23.84 11.93 18.83 16.57 29.56 22.94 18.35 17.43 20.32 29.28 11.08 13.50 12.79 17.86 21.82 18.97 14.51 14.30 30.94 26.18 13.42

Closeness attitude component.

Social attitude component. Deleted for the final analysis. c Immediacy attitude component. d Task attitude component. Deleted for the final analysis. e Anonymity attitude component. f Items deleted.

1 Principal Component Analysis with.Varimax rotation; 70.8% of variance extracted.

2 Scale range from 1= not important to 7= very important 3 Scale range from 1= very unlikely to 7= very likely 4 Average mean b

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Appendix B Table 3 - Factor Analysis Factor Loadings1 Becoming Someone Else I wish could someone else If I could I change appearance If I could I become someone else Body Image I like the way my body looks Others like the way my body looks Subjective Norms Family approval of virtual world use Friends approval of virtual world use Significant other approval of VW use Closeness Discern otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sincerity Sense of physical closeness Transmits emotions Ease to tell trustworthiness Feels like face-to-face Feelings of being with another Social Vividness Immediate contact with another Immediate response Anonymity Anonymity Perceived Behavioral Control Accesses Internet anytime Ease to interact on net Virtual World Use I often visit virtual worlds I am like people that visit VW How often I visit VW 1

Reliability .818

Inter-Item Correlation .600

.644

.475

.898

.745

.914

.601

.722

.463

NA

NA

.306

.181

.819

.606

.859 .770 .891 .838 .860 .930 .892 .893 .765 .844 .839 .776 .803 .762 .843 .733 .835 .759 -.897 .830 .631 .792 .830 .820

Principal Component Analysis with Direct Oblimin rotation; 73.9% of variance extracted.

19

Vol. 1. No. 2.

ISSN: 1941-8477 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worldsâ&#x20AC;?

November 2008

Virtual World Affordances: Enhancing Brand Value By So Ra Park, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, David DeWester, Brenda Eschenbrenner University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA; Sunran Jeon, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA

Abstract Virtual worlds are three-dimensional, computer-generated worlds that are a natural extension of the existing Internet. Although many businesses are jumping on the bandwagon to maintain a presence in virtual worlds, there is no well-established knowledge or theory to guide businesses in their involvement in these environments.

In this paper, we identify affordances in the virtual worlds that can be used to increase the state of flow experienced in a business virtual site, which in turn may enhance brand equity, or the perceived added value of a brand to customers. We present a conceptual model that can be used to guide future research and industry practice on business implications of the virtual worlds.

Keywords: Virtual worlds; affordances; brand value; brand equity; flow.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 2

Virtual World Affordances: Enhancing Brand Value By So Ra Park, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, David DeWester, Brenda Eschenbrenner University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA; Sunran Jeon, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA

Virtual worlds are the next stage of the Internet and they present opportunities for businesses to find new ways to provide value to customers. Examples of virtual worlds include Second Life, There, Active Worlds, and Kaneva. Bryson (1996) defines virtual reality or virtual environments as “the use of computers and human-computer interfaces to create the effect of a three-dimensional world containing interactive objects with a strong sense of three-dimensional presence” (p. 62). In virtual worlds, people “exist” through their avatars, which are digital representations of the user in the form of simulated bodies.

Avatars do not have to replicate the user’s physical features or even look human (Walmsley, 2008). Digital representations can be anything from animals to animations. In fact, some of these “other than human” forms have developed their own subculture. Avatars increase one’s sense of socializing “by putting a face to the audience and reinforcing its presence” (Walmsley, 2008, p. 13). A user’s avatar can move by walking, running, or even flying. Also, a user’s avatar can interact with objects, either real or imaginary, and with other avatars (Pratt, 2008). Some virtual worlds provide communication capabilities that include textual, visual, and auditory to facilitate involvement and learning (Eschenbrenner, Nah, & Siau, 2008), which can help to create brand awareness or enhance the value of a brand. Such learning can occur by interacting with others through their avatars or with other objects in the environment.

In the virtual world environment, instead of looking at pages of product descriptions like on a 2D Web, one can participate in designing or customizing products, and carry out text or audio conversations with the avatars of business representatives, thus increasing the richness of conducting business activities. Almost any business activity that can be conducted on the Web can be conducted in virtual worlds. Customers can look at virtual products, customize and order items, and ask customer service questions about products and services. Dell, for example, allows computers to be customized in Second Life and then purchased through a Web page (Brandon, 2007). Businesses are participating in virtual worlds because they see significant potential and opportunities with the exponentially increasing population in these environments (Schwarz, 2006).

Due to the attractiveness and potential of the online virtual environment for promoting products and services, companies are including a presence in virtual worlds to promote their brands. However, what affordances in virtual worlds can help to enhance brand equity or the added value of a brand?

This paper explores the business implications and potential of the virtual world to enhance brand equity. Businesses are utilizing the immersive environment to enrich customers’ experiences, enhance interactions with customers on specific brands and products through hands-

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on activities, and improve customer service by having the avatars of their representatives provide demonstrations and hands-on help, thus enhancing brand equity. We adopt the perspective of the theory of flow to explain how businesses can create and enhance positive perceptions of brand equity.

Background On Business Opportunities In Virtual Worlds Virtual worlds are creating new windows of opportunity for business applications. In fact, the opportunity as a new commercial tool is very appealing (Brandon, 2007). For example, IBM is utilizing the virtual world environment to enhance customer training, create immersive socialshopping experiences, and host events (LaMonica, 2007). Best Buy’s Geek Squad extended their customer service into the virtual worlds. Geek Squad, for example, will answer computerrelated questions in Second Life (Brandon, 2007). Issues with computers that cannot be resolved within Second Life provide an opportunity to refer customers to a physical Best Buy location, where technicians can fix computer problems at Best Buy’s regular rates. Many other companies have also created a presence in virtual worlds such as Second Life. They include H&R Block, Cisco Systems, Reuters, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Pontiac, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Circuit City, Sears, MTV, Adidas, American Apparel, and PA Consulting.

The virtual worlds can become an optimal testing and marketing platform for companies if customers’ experiences can be maximized in the virtual worlds. Erik Hauser, who is a founder of Swivel Media, a virtual brand management company, indicates, mentioning Schwarz, that the biggest benefit of businesses’ presence in the virtual worlds is the ‘engagement’: “In today’s hyper cluttered space, marketers are lucky to get a second or minute of a consumer’s attention. We were able to ‘engage’ our audience for hours not minutes or seconds.” (Schwarz, 2006) The above statement helps to explain and illustrate why the concept of flow is relevant and important for understanding the business implications of virtual worlds.

Theoretical Background The theory of flow was developed by Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 1998) to describe the mental state when one is completely focused, absorbed, and engaged in an activity. Flow has been defined as an intrinsically enjoyable experience, such as one that a person might experience in a gaming event (Privette & Bundrick, 1987). Various flow models have been proposed, tested, and used to identify characteristics of individuals, technologies, and the environment that would create the flow state.

Ghani, Supnik, and Rooney (1991) studied the differences between computer-mediated groups versus face-to-face groups and identified two characteristics of the flow state as: (a) total concentration in an activity, and (b) enjoyment from carrying out the activity. As shown in Figure 1, Hoffman and Novak’s (1996) model on flow comprises three categories of Web navigation characteristics: (a) an individual’s skill set or control characteristics (skills and challenges), (b) the Web environment or content characteristics (interactivity and vividness), and (c) an individual’s motivation or process characteristics (goal-oriented and experiential). Control characteristics are important because individuals can experience anxiety or boredom when the

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congruence between skills and challenges is not met. Content characteristics relate to the mechanical systems enabling smoothness in online interactions, and the richness of the medium in enabling a variety of cues and in information presentation. Process characteristics describe an individual’s cognitive motivation in an activity such as browsing the Web. These three categories present the conditions for experiencing the flow state. Figure 1 also shows possible outcomes of flow: increased learning, perceived behavioral control, exploratory mindset, and positive subjective experience.

Novak, Hoffman, and Yung (2000) developed a revised model in their subsequent research. In their model, flow in the Web environment is determined by (a) high levels of skill and control, (b) high levels of challenge and arousal, (c) interactivity in terms of speed, and (d) telepresence / time distortion. In comparison with their previous research (Hoffman & Novak, 1996), skill and challenge in control characteristics are separated as skill/control and challenge/arousal which contribute directly to flow. Novak et al.’s (2000) test of Hoffman and Novak’s (1996) flow model suggests that applying the flow model in a limited context may require modifications based on the context of application. Since virtual worlds are new and emerging, we will draw on the three main categories of antecedents proposed by Hoffman and Novak to discuss how the distinct characteristics of the virtual world environment could morph the flow process experienced by (potential) customers in business virtual world sites.

Figure 1. Hoffman & Novak’s (1996) Model

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Model Development As discussed earlier, Hoffman and Novak (1996) identified three categories of characteristics (control, content, and process) contributing to the flow phenomenon. Control characteristics comprise skills and challenges while content characteristics include interactivity and vividness. Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations constitute process characteristics of flow antecedents. Note that we narrowed the scope of these two terms to emphasize the goal-oriented and experiential nature of motivation.

We identify affordances provided by the virtual world environment and examine how they afford flow antecedents in virtual worlds. Gibson (1977) originally defined ‘affordance’ of an animal to be “a specific combination of the properties of its substance and its surfaces.”

Although this definition is frequently applied to the properties of objects (Norman, 1988), Gibson (1977) clarified that it can also be applied to an entire environment. The word “afford” means “to make available.” An affordance is a property of an object, animal, or environment that affords, or makes available, certain actions. For example, having a handle affords the ability to carry an object, and the ability to fly affords the ability to travel quickly from one place to another. Virtual worlds afford a variety of actions and mental states, which in turn affect how people act in these worlds and interact with one another, which then affect feelings of presence and flow.

The affordances present in a virtual world can increase social networking opportunities in several ways. Most virtual worlds actively encourage the forming of social networks through groups that people can join and theme-specific locations where like-minded people can gather.

The ability to host virtual events is another way in which people can be brought together. The global nature of virtual worlds allows people who would otherwise be separated by geography to meet in the same virtual space and form social networks. If a given social network takes an interest in a certain product, company, or service, then these social networks can then affect brand equity by forming and dispersing opinions about the product, company, or service. If the members of a social network rate a product highly and disseminate this information to others, it can lead to an increase in brand equity and product sales. Conversely, if a social network is formed around the dislike of a product, company, or service, then the negative opinions and protest actions by members of the group can have a devastating affect on its brand equity (Ward & Ostrom, 2006).

In the following subsections, each group of the antecedents will be explained and the affordances that explain the objects or environmental features enabling the antecedent characteristics will be discussed.

Control characteristics. In Hoffman and Novak’s (1996) research, control characteristics relate to individual’s skills and challenges. Novak et al. (2000) looked at control characteristics as skills and control of challenge. Skills, in the context of online navigation, are defined as “the web consumer’s capacity for action during the online navigation process” (Azjen, 1988) while challenge, in the marketing context, is defined as “the consumer’s opportunities for action on the web” (Novak et al., 2000). Control is “customer’s ability for action” (Azjen, 1988). Hence, control of challenge refers to the customer’s ability to utilize their skills when facing a challenge.

Skills in the context of this research refer to the user’s capacity to navigate the virtual world environment, manipulate virtual objects, and be involved in the activities provided by the

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 6

environment. Challenges, on the other hand, refer to the difficulties experienced in navigating the virtual world, in creating virtual objects, and in getting involved in the activities provided by the environment. Therefore, the affordances that allow for the use of skills and the affordances that present challenges to users are the same list of affordances. Any given affordance creates a challenge if the user struggles to use that affordance, such as having difficulty navigating, and the same affordance allows the use of skills if the user is experienced at navigation.

For the purpose of this paper, we will focus only on the environmental factors rather than individual factors in defining the affordances. In the case of virtual worlds, skills comprise of what a person needs to function in a virtual world such as being able to navigate from place to place, make new virtual objects such as clothes, and control oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s avatar. Virtual worlds afford a variety of skills and challenges. The five affordances included in our model are navigational aids, mentors, help, training programs, and design templates (see Table 1).

Table 1 Affordances Influencing Control Characteristics in Virtual Worlds Affordance Description Navigational The ability to move from place to place is a key skill in virtual worlds, but it can aids also be a challenge for users that have difficulty using the supplied navigational aids. In order to move in a virtual world, users need to master the simple mechanics of moving forward, turning, jumping, and so forth. Once those basics have been learned, users can move their avatars over distances, which then require navigational skills. Virtual worlds provide different affordances that may help users navigate in the world. All virtual worlds provide navigation by sight, that is, users can look around and walk from their current location to their desired location. Most virtual worlds provide additional affordances in the form of maps or other navigation aids such as View-in-View Maps, Animation Guides, and Human-System Collaboration. Effective use of navigation allows individuals to meet more people, which can lead to participation in more social networks.

Mentorship Virtual worlds may assist users in developing their skills by providing mentors.

Second Life, for example, has a special island for new users. Experienced users can voluntarily visit this island and assist new users in learning the skills necessary to function in Second Life. These mentors can provide assistance in everything from learning to walk to customizing avatars.

Online help Virtual worlds provide various help functions to users. Online help may be available through help screens and informational bulletin boards in the virtual world. PDF instruction manuals may also be available for downloading Training Some virtual worlds provide training programs. Avatar Island in Second Life, programs for instance, provides various types of training for new users. Users are able to participate in these programs at their own pace until they are able to function at a skill level sufficient to allow them to leave Avatar Island and enter the main areas of Second Life.

Design Users can obtain a design template for given objects, such as clothes or templates transportation, and then use the template as a beginning design that can be further modified and customized.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 7

Content Characteristics. The role of content characteristics on flow entails attracting the attention of users with appropriate information, richness of media, and stimulating content.

Interactivity and vividness are components covering the technical and social enablers of artifacts and their characteristic behaviors within the virtual world.

Researchers such as Steuer (1992) and Novak et al. (2000) focus on the mechanical perspective of interactivity. Steuer defined interactivity as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real timeâ&#x20AC;? and as a function of speed, range, and mapping. Novak et al. (2000) measured interactivity only with the speed of interaction. In a Web navigation environment, interpersonal interactivity may not be as important as in the virtual world environment because most information is one-directional but interpersonal interactivity is an important component of the virtual world environment. Virtual worlds, compared to other online applications, appear to promote both interpersonal as well as technical/mechanical aspects of interactivity. Hoffman and Novak (1996) identified the performance characteristics of ease of use, mapping, speed, and range as influencing interactivity, and recognized both interpersonal as well as mechanical aspects of interactivity. Ha and James (1998) identified five dimensions of interactivity in business Websites: playfulness, connectedness, information collection, reciprocal communication, and choice. The five dimensions cover both interpersonal communicative and mechanical interactivity.

In applying the dimensions of interactivity to virtual worlds, the following phenomena are observed in the virtual world environment: (a) interesting content and events (playfulness) can be easily found; (b) relationships are built among people (connectedness); (c) intended experiences are gained (information collection) by visiting places, viewing a movie, and meeting other people; (d) many means and opportunities to talk to other residents (reciprocal communication) are available; and (e) the environment gives people a feeling of control in communication, navigating, and participating in the promotional events (choice).

Lambard and Ditton (1997) suggest various ways to increase interactivity, that is: (a) when the medium responds to a greater number of inputs, (b) when the user can manipulate a greater number of object behaviors, (c) when the user can manipulate a higher degree of object behaviors, and (d) when the medium responds to user stimuli more quickly. The objects mentioned here would include common virtual objects and avatars. These guidelines imply that a virtual world can provide more interactive environment when there are more objects, including humans represented by avatars, when the objects are more responsive, and the responses from any object are quickly given and varied. We consider five affordances that can lead to interactivity, namely social networks, sports, event hosting, concierge, and reactive objects, and explain them in Table 2. While social networks, sports, and event hosting describe the environment where interactivity can be fostered, concierge and reactive objects are objects which provide interactive services.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 8

Table 2 Affordances Influencing Content Characteristics (Interactivity) in Virtual Worlds Affordance Social networks

Sports events

Event hosting

Concierge

Reactive objects

Description Since virtual worlds allow avatars to express their emotions, gestures, and physical movements as realistically as possible, a person interacting with other individuals would receive feedback with multiple stimuli the instant the person speaks or touches. Social networks can take many forms, ranging from non-existent as in Myst (where there are no other users), to walking around randomly in Second Life, and to well organized social groups as in campaign teams in World of Warcraft. Social networks that are formed by satisfied users of a given product can increase brand equity by informing other people of the product.

Sports events can allow short-term groups of people to interact with each other. “Sports” is used in a very general context to include anything from skydiving in Second Life, to playing at an amusement park, to stock car racing. Sports in virtual worlds range from passively watching sports events to actively participating in them.

Hosted business events are an example of a short-term gathering. Cisco recently held an event in which users were able to interact with a virtual data center and see a virtual version of very high-end networking equipment (Brandon, 2007). Such events can increase the loyalty of already satisfied customers and reach new customers.

Businesses may have offices that receive visitors and offer some kind of concierge. In a virtual world business office, a concierge will be one or more persons who know the company and its products and can answer questions from virtual visitors. Best Buy’s Geek Squad provides a service similar to our concept of a concierge by answering customers’ questions about products. Effective concierges can improve visitors’ opinions about the company.

Reactive objects can be modified by users. The first example a typical user will encounter is his or her avatar. An avatar can be modified in almost any way imaginable, from changing its gender, species, size or other characteristics. Another example is being able to customize virtual versions of objects that can then be purchased in their customized form in the real world.

Vividness is defined as “the representational richness of a mediated environment as defined by its formal features” (Steuer, 1992) and comprises both depth and breadth of vividness.

Valacich, Paranka and George (1993) examined the breadth dimension of vividness and define it as “the number of sensory dimensions presented …closely related to media concurrency.”

Walther (1992) suggests that the breadth of communication narrows when there are not many visual and audio cues. Steuer (1992) examined the depth dimension by assessing the quality in each of the sensory dimensions.

In looking at the breadth and depth of vividness, businesses can utilize different media to present contents effectively. For example, Nike in Second Life promotes their athletic shoes by giving away free shoes in places like free markets. By giving away shoes, Nike can use writing, pictures, video streams, and/or graphics to efficiently deliver their messages to enhance breadth.

Quality of the promotional activity can be realized when the video shown in the promotion is of superior quality in terms of fidelity and sound quality.

Aside from the mechanical aspects of interactivity and vividness, content involves social considerations as well. Lambard and Ditton (1997) identify social realism, in the use of media convention and in the nature of task or activity making, in which the user experience becomes more realistic. Social realism will be increased by reducing the error patterns that computers

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 9

generate, and incorporating conventional human tasks and human speech or behavior patterns (Lambard & Ditton, 1997).

High quality video and audio are necessary for any world to be perceived as vivid.

However, just having high-resolution images and stereo will only convey a static sense of vividness. Hence, vividness needs to be incorporated into the interactivity dimension in virtual worlds. Five affordances that can contribute to vividness in the virtual worlds are realistic objects, spatial 3D, avatars, multimedia, and haptic feedback (see Table 3).

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 10

Table 3 Affordances Influencing Content Characteristics (Vividness) in Virtual Worlds Affordance Description Realistic Having an object that looks real is one level of vividness, but the next level is for objects that object to act real. As an example, consider a motorcycle. Virtual worlds afford vividness by allowing objects to have dynamic and realistic qualities. A motorcycle in a virtual world should have all of the correct components of a real motorcycle including having moving parts, and making realistic sounds that change according to situations such as high or low stress on the engine. It should also be possible for users to ride the motorcycle in the virtual world and have it respond in realistic ways. Presenting realistic virtual copies of real-world objects can be used as a marketing tactic.

Spatial 3D Spatial 3D refers to the three-dimensional sense of immersion provided by virtual worlds in which people can see into the distance, move in all three dimensions, and view in all three dimensions.

Avatars Avatars interact with objects, allow the user to know exactly where he or she is, can see their reflection in mirrors, hold objects in their hands, and see other users while talking to them. Business representatives can take the form of avatars and communicate with visitors or (potential) customers.

Multimedia The multimedia nature of virtual worlds affords various means of conveying information. Information can be transferred using text, graphics, and audio.

Virtual worlds allow text to be conveyed in any of the usual ways, although sometimes with minor differences, over other online environments. For example, instead of posting text on a Web page, it can be posted with virtual paper on a virtual bulletin board that users can read in the virtual world. The vividness of a virtual world will be increased if the graphics the user sees are realistic looking and of high quality and color depth. Virtual worlds can also increase vividness by using background or ambient sounds, such as birds singing in the distance, the sound of the wind blowing, or water flowing to increase the vividness of the virtual world experience. For example, Second Life increases the vividness of flying by adding the sound of rushing air. Furthermore, the sound increases as an avatar flies faster and decreases when the avatar decreases speed, which enhances the feeling of speeding through the air.

Haptic Haptic feedback is the term used to convey a sense of touch to users. Virtual feedback worlds can have two types of haptic feedback, one for the avatar and one for the user. Of course, avatars cannot feel anything, but the vividness of interacting with objects in the virtual world can be increased by conveying a sense of bumping into furniture, walls, trees, and other objects. It decreases the vividness of a tree when one’s avatar can walk right through it with no resistance and it increases the vividness of a wall when one’s avatar is not only stopped by the wall, but hits it with a little “thud” sound and slightly bounces back from the impact. Haptic signals can also be sent to the user’s real body using equipment such as game controls that vibrate; these controllers already exist and are in commercial use with certain video games. More recent advances even allow computers to convey a sense of touch to users. For example, Japan’s NTT company recently announced a glove that allows the user to “touch” and feel virtual objects (Knight, 2007).

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 11

Both interactivity and vividness influence content, thus increasing the level of perceived reality in the virtual environment. Vividness answers questions such as how technology can provide more output stimuli and reactions to input stimuli, and whether sound will also be 3D. The interactive nature of objects, such as tactile stimuli, force feedback, and movements, in the virtual world also adds reality to the world (Lambard & Ditton, 1997).

In regards to content characteristics, social interactivity would be increased when objects are responding to avatars in more humane ways and when there are more people who can build relationships nearby. Widening the number of expressions avatars can make, providing a variety of methods and options to code object behaviors, having more users in the world, and other efforts to increase social cues and interactions can increase the social interactivity and vividness.

The increased interactivity, in turn, would help people to feel that they are in the real world rather than an augmented world.

Process Characteristics. Process characteristics refer to the motivation for people to start Web navigation (Hoffman & Novak, 1996). Sharafi, Hedman, and Montgomery (2006) identify how different levels of challenge would require either intrinsic or extrinsic motivation to reach the flow state. Hoffman and Novak (1996) view the process characteristics to be either goaloriented or experiential. We termed process characteristics of goal-orientation as extrinsic motivation and experiential orientation as intrinsic motivation since they are two different aspects of a userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s motivation. Motivation can arise from personal factors such as desire, curiosity, and interest which are intrinsic in nature, while extrinsic motivation refers to a userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s response to environmental factors such as reward, social pressure, and punishment.

Virtual world users could be motivated to participate in activities that pose challenges to them. For example, there are several places in Second Life where you can go and receive Linden dollars by participating in surveys. Three affordances in virtual worlds that affect extrinsic behavior are monetary incentives, free trials and services, and competitive events (see Table 4).

These extrinsic motivation affordances can be used as part of the marketing and public relations campaign. If implemented properly, such affordances can encourage and influence the use of products and ultimately, increase brand equity.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 12

Table 4 Affordances Influencing Process Characteristics (Extrinsic Motivation) in Virtual Worlds Affordance Monetary incentives

Description Monetary incentive refers to any kind of incentive a business or site offers to users or their potential customers. For example, H&R Block offered a substantial discount on their Tango software to people that visited the company island in Second Life (Brandon, 2007). Nearly any type of coupon, discount or money give-away that can take place in the real world can also be offered in virtual worlds.

Free trials Companies can also offer free products and services, either temporarily or permanently. and services Any type of free offers such as buy two get one free offers, free product give-aways, and virtual product give-aways can be offered in virtual worlds. Monetary incentives and free products, trials, and services can have the same impact on extrinsic motivation in the virtual world as they do in the real world.

Competitive Gifts such as trial samples or other prizes for competitive events can lure people to events participate as well. In addition to the prizes that can be won in such contests, many people are also motivated by the competitive nature of such contests. Attracting people to contests by appealing to peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s competitive nature can produce the same business benefits as doing so in the real world by creating excitement and word-of-mouth advertising opportunities, not to mention generating innovative ideas from new and existing customers.

People are intrinsically motivated to do something when they get pleasure and satisfaction from the behavior itself (Deci, 1975). Virtual worlds also afford ways to tap into peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intrinsic motivation in ways that can benefit businesses such as creating a community of loyal customers and using games to entice potential customers to buy or learn more about specific brands or products. Three examples of such affordances in the virtual world environment are exclusive memberships, exclusive ownership, and games (see Table 5).

Table 5 Affordances Influencing Process Characteristics (Intrinsic Motivation) in Virtual Worlds Affordance

Description

Exclusive memberships

Many people are strongly motivated by a sense of belonging, a feeling that many business use to promote customer loyalty through various membership and customer relationship management programs. Businesses can easily offer space in virtual worlds to which only members have access, such as the virtual equivalent of a private social club. For example, an airline could partner with Pontiac, which has a presence in Second Life, to offer miles to people who purchase cars, either virtual or real, in Second Life. These types of membership programs can increase the exclusiveness and prestige of products.

Some virtual worlds motivate userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense of belonging to a world by allowing exclusive ownership of everything from clothes to land. In many virtual worlds, users can customize their avatars with items owned exclusively by the user, either because the user directly developed the items or because the user paid someone else to design the items. Ownership can extend to other items, such as weapons in World of Warcraft, vehicles or mounts, buildings, and land.

Games and other amusements can be used to intrinsically motivate people to engage in activities that also benefit the businesses providing the games. Games can refer to multi-user or single-user activities, but the focus is on events that users are motivated from within themselves to participate in.

Exclusive ownership

Games

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 13

All of the affordances discussed above under control, content, and process characteristics are antecedents that contribute to the flow experience.

Outcomes of Flow. Various outcomes of flow are possible. They include cognitive, taskrelated, and behavioral outcomes. In the context of virtual worlds and marketing, relevant outcomes from these categories that are of particular interest include persuasion, attitude belief, product belief, product awareness, attitude towards brand, attitude change, purchase consideration, customer confidence, purchase intention, user satisfaction, and behavior change.

Therefore, outcomes of flow that are experienced in a virtual world environment may present opportunities to improve a company’s marketing efforts. In particular, we are interested in one of the most important aspects of marketing and promotion, brand equity.

A brand is defined as “a promise of benefits to a customer or consumer” (Raggio & Leone, 2007) and “a name, symbol, design, or mark that enhances the value of a product beyond its functional purpose” (Farquhar, 1990). Brand equity is “the ‘added value’ with which a given brand endows a product” (Farquhar, 1990). Hence, brand equity is the strength of one’s attitude toward a brand. Brand equity is important considering the following quote from the Director of Global Interactive Marketing, Coca-Cola Co. : “So much of our metrics aren’t about sale, but they’re about brand love.

Brand value and brand love are our key metrics.” (Capps, 2007, p. 6).

Businesses are leveraging on the immersive environment of the virtual world to enrich and enhance customers’ experiences with specific brands and products through various interactive and hands-on activities, thus enhancing value of the brand. Brand equity has been classified as a strategic asset that requires continual maintenance and development in order to achieve profitable long-term results in the current marketing environment (Sriram, Balachander, & Kalwani, 2007). Brand equity can provide competitive advantages by developing a brand platform that can be leveraged for new product introductions, increasing resilience in industry downturns or crises, and creating resistance or barrier to competition (new or existing) (Farquhar, 1990).

The four dimensions of brand equity are brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, and brand loyalty (Washburn & Plank, 2002; Pappu, Quester, & Cooksey, 2005). Brand awareness influences the recognition and/or recall of a certain product (Percy & Rossiter, 1992).

Both recognition and recall influence customers’ purchases either by reminding or questioning the category need of the product/brand or by recalling the particular brand when there is a category need for the particular product. Brand awareness is one of best predictors of purchase (Axelrod, 1968). For example, if consumers have limited product information, they may rely on their familiarity with a particular brand to influence their purchasing decisions (Lane & Jacobson, 1995). It is important to note, however, that a brand must not only be familiar, but must also be preferred. The former is related to brand awareness while the latter is related to brand associations, perceived quality, and brand loyalty.

Etterberg (2003) suggests that a new approach for building brand value is needed. He suggests that the following factors are needed for building a brand: customer relationships through excellence in customer service or experiences, relevancy through unique merchandise offerings or expertise, retrenchment or reaching out to customers through technological means or

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 14

convenience strategies, and rewards through time-savings or gaining stature through use of the product or service.

Virtual world environments present new opportunities or approaches to building and maintaining brand equity through engagement in the flow experience. Through the immersive nature of a virtual environment, customers can develop greater brand awareness and associations.

With the experience of flow in the virtual environment, customers can enhance their recognition and recall of a particular brand, which may positively influence their attitude towards a particular brand. The rich, interactive experiences that can be developed can influence customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; evaluations of a brand through more intense affective and cognitive experiences. Considering previous research has indicated that non-attribute product factors were more influential than product attributes (Park & Srinivasan, 1994), the experience in virtual environments may positively influence brand equity more so than product features themselves. Also, considering that advertising has been demonstrated to be more effective in influencing brand equity than sales promotions (Sriram et al., 2007), virtual environments present new channels to reach and interact with customers. Virtual environments present opportunities for individuals to engage in flow, which can then influence the brand image that customers develop and retain.

Virtual worlds create an environment where customers can actively engage in activities offered by companies and some of the activities are related with product development.

Companies are interested in increasing the level of brand equity felt by customers for two reasons. First, total customer experience leading to customer satisfaction can be created when there is active involvement of the customers (Mascarenhas, Kesavan, & Bemacchi, 2006).

Secondly, customer participation in product development along with the business can help to reduce self-serving bias (Bendapudi & Leone, 2003; Shin, 2006). Self-serving bias is detrimental to the companies because it reflects customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tendency to reduce the deserved positive claims on companies while increasing the unfound blames on the companies. Further, the more actively engaged customers are, the greater the brand equity they perceive.

Figure 2 summarizes the discussions in the paper and the development of the conceptual model.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 15

Figure 2. Conceptual Model

Figure 2 highlights the affordances that could be made available on a business virtual world site to enhance the flow experiences of customers, which in turn help to increase their perceived equity or added value of a brand. Future research will be carried out to test this model in a business virtual world setting.

According to our model which is developed from a review of the literature, businesses need to capitalize on affordances available in the virtual world environment. By enhancing customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; flow experiences while interacting in a business virtual world site, customers are more likely to enjoy and interact with the site to the extent that their perceived equity of the brand also increases.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 16

Conclusions We have proposed a model to explain how the virtual world environment can be used by businesses to enhance brand equity. The model links environment-induced and business-enabled affordances to enhance the flow state, which in turn increases customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; perceived brand equity.

While we attempt to identify a list of relevant affordances for business use to increase their brand equity, our list is not exhaustive. More research is needed to identify a comprehensive list of affordances that could be helpful to businesses for enhancing the flow experiences of customers and for increasing their perceived brand equity.

This paper makes several contributions. First, this research is the first attempt to identify virtual world affordances of flow antecedents. We identify meaningful affordances which could benefit businesses and increase their brand value or equity. By increasing the engagement of customers at a business virtual world site, stronger customer values and perceived brand equity can be attained. Acquiring new customers through a virtual world could be cheaper due to the reduced geographical boundaries and increased access to specific segments of the market.

Increasing customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; brand equity is expected to yield a higher level of customer retention.

Therefore, identifying these affordances is important because companies can focus on instituting those affordances in their business presence within a virtual world to bring favorable outcomes.

Second, there has been little research conducted in virtual worlds due to the short history and the lack of business adoption until recently. Our research is one of the very few first articles to examine the significance of virtual worlds to businesses. Third, we expect to contribute to both the academic and business worlds by adopting the theory of flow to explain the usefulness of the virtual world technology for marketing by businesses. While researchers have examined consumer behavior on Websites using the flow theory, there is little or no research done in a virtual world setting. Finally, we develop a conceptual model which can be tested empirically.

By identifying useful affordances for business use, our research attempts to contribute to the weak knowledge base in this area and provides some pointers to help businesses grab the golden opportunities presented by this new technology.

Acknowledgement We would like to acknowledge the funding provided by the Lattanze Center at Loyola College to support this research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Virtual World Affordances 17

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Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 “Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds” November 2008

Second Life and Hyperreality

By Michel Maffesoli, Centre d'Études sur l'Actuel et le Quotidien, Universite Rene Descartes – Sorbonne Paris V

This is a brief essay, we call "think-pieces", designed to stimulate a discussion on a particular topic. For this series of essays we propose the following question: "Consumer behavior in virtual worlds, is it really any different to the real world, or is it simply a case of 'old wine in a new bottle'?"

Keywords: virtual worlds; post-modernity; hyperreality; Second Life; mythology.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Second Life and Hyperreality 2

Second Life and Hyperreality

By Michel Maffesoli, Centre d'Études sur l'Actuel et le Quotidien, Universite Rene Descartes – Sorbonne Paris V

We are used to this big claim carried by modern positivism: “Truth will not escape us”.

This has been the engine of a self-confident history, at least from an idealistic point of view. It had a goal, an ending, and a meaning. Cause and effect of the whole lie in one truth. This is the foundation of all major theoretical systems of modernity.

Myths do not care about such truth. At most, they carry some little tiny truths. Mythology is the art of episodes, nice stories that one tells himself, which allow tribes to find their own structure.

Historians of religions and mythologies remind us that meanings of a myth are always plural, not unique. A myth is made of a multiplicity of “lessons”, all being various versions, each telling differently this or that aspect of the legend, of the tale. When reunited together like a mosaic, they create the meaning.

This is exactly what Second Life is. A multiple life is possible. Each element of this multiplicity carries its own truth, refracting the plurality amongst individuals, but reuniting into one person.

This may seems paradoxical, and it certainly is, when contrasted with the ideology of transparency that has progressively imposed itself since individuality was invented. The individual, which is, by definition, “indivisible”, becomes it only when, after going through educational processes, he is certain of his sexual identity, then his ideological identity, then his professional identity.

In such transparency, highly rational, comparable to what Paul Valéry called “the brutality of concept1”, the individual is conceptualized, which etymologically means “locked up in a definition” (concepire). As the image of God, he is unique and must think and act consequently.

Is Second Life compensation? Is it the beginning of another mythology? For sure, through its various avatars, each person is hidden, under the secret, and throw its less avowable desires in the welcoming shapes of all his avatars.

“Avatar”, in itself, is a very significant term. It is not, as commonly interpreted, a bad event, an accident which interrupts the harmonious stream of life. Avatar, in the Hindu mythology, means a reincarnation of a Divinity. Through their metamorphosis, they constantly distort the image we have of them, they shake the concept, and the definition we think we know about those Gods. A continuous metamorphosis clearly described in the Mahâbhârata.

1

P. Valéry, Oeuvres complètes, Pléiade, 1974, vol.1, p.795

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Second Life and Hyperreality 3

Fig. 1 – An avatar in Second life, and a statue from the Hampi temple in India2.

The same phenomenon is perceivable in Second Life. What we find in all virtual worlds, is the abandon of the “official” identity to the benefit of an illusion, some rubbing, and detours; allowing the individual to protect himself while expressing all potentialities, all different possibilities which creates him.

The “I is another3” by Rimbaud is no longer a simple poetical exaggeration, but an “hyper reality” gearing itself in myriad of different specimens. Each mask is the expression of a metaphor; proceeds by suggestion, and therefore faces, while being protected, the vertigo of human existence.

In the labyrinth of life, one is always many. In the maze of Second Life, one continuously bursts out of pleasure. Beyond the principle of reality of our professional life, of our family routine, we live, or we dream, sometimes both at the same time, the fairy tales, or the nightmares

2

The first photograph was found on Google. The second photograph is a personal photograph of Serge Soudoplatoff.

3 Rimbaud, letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May, 1871.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Second Life and Hyperreality 4

which allow us to escape from the exhausting habits which, little by little, destroys our vital energy. On the contrary, our avatars allow us to live phantasms and imaginations, which have a reinvigorating function.

Romain Rolland defined with a great subtlety the essence of bourgeois’ literature: “you do not read books, you read yourself through books4”. This is a perfect definition of the Gutenberg galaxy. Reading is a perpetual dialog between one individual and his dreamed mirror.

According to one’s taste, one can be Rastignac or Madame Bovary, d’Artagnan or Gavroche, Julien Sorel or la Princesse de Clèves. All those characters are archetypes allowing us to express all our parallel lives, crystallizing a collective memory, building each of into of a community of destiny, therefore of a culture.

This is what “digital culture” is about. A “galaxy of imagination”. One does not read avatars, one reads himself through avatars. The friend of books became the friend of virtual worlds. The reality principle is abandoned to the profit of a phantasm that becomes reality. But this is a metamorphosis as I have described earlier: superfluous puts aside what is essential; phantasm becomes stronger than spirit of seriousness.

But all this creates a culture. Just as fans of Proust or Balzac existed, secret societies exist inside Second Life. Little tribes, networked together, create the foundation for the growth of the postmodern “being together”.

Let us remember the first meaning of mythology: a shared secret, which is a link between his owners.

Each individual, through his successive avatars (and the possibilities are infinite) will create links. It does not matter whether this link becomes real or not, “hyper reality” is part of virtuality. Beyond addiction, experiencing “a second life” can be a completion.

This reminds us a simple thing: a certain period of our life, the importance is not to exist by or for oneself, but to exist through the lens of the others. The other decides who I am.

This is the myth of the postmodern narcissism, close to the myth of pre-modernity: a “group narcissism.”

4

L’éclair de Spinoza.

Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worldsâ&#x20AC;?

November 2008

Metaverse: A New Dimension?

By Yohan Launay and Nicolas Mas, ConceptSL Paris, France.

This is a brief essay, we call "think-pieces", designed to stimulate a discussion on a particular topic. For this series of essays we propose the following question: "Consumer behavior in virtual worlds, is it really any different to the real world, or is it simply a case of 'old wine in a new bottle'?"

Keywords: virtual worlds; network; synchronous; persistent; avatars.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Metaverse 2

Metaverse: A New Dimension?

By Yohan Launay and Nicolas Mas, ConceptSL Paris, France.

For some time, we have been talking about Virtual Worlds, 3D on the Internet (Web 3D), Web 2.0, and other social media. But what is the common point of all this? Information. A website is in fact the formatting of content from databases, a chat is an exchange of information between two or more individuals, an avatar is a (symbolic) representation of information about an individual (fantasized or not)…

We have always given technological constraints and limitations to the representation of Information. We tend to confine it to one or more dimensions, to a particular interpretation and even sometimes to a certain temporality. Do you not think information is timeless and without a particular form as the term “in-formation” (no-form) seems to suggest? Let us examine information as a whole: a fabric of information or ectoplasm, which takes shape depending of the context and to serve particular needs. Let’s consider apart the original “shape” (or “no-shape”) and the final form and its purpose.

Fig. 1 - When Information Takes Shape: we can figure it out like a cloud that has no real form, ethereal, weaving. It will have an ephemeral existence when it will have to combine into something (a support) that will, on demand serve your needs. Then it will come back to its ethereal state until the next request Abundance of Information and Challenges of Tomorrow With the current abundance of information, constantly renewed, its various “frozen” forms, end users are completely lost. They often spend more time sorting their mailbox and spam emails than reading what is really interesting!

In reality, the challenges that corporations will face tomorrow (and are starting to see today) will require the creation of a new dimension, beyond the 2D, 3D, hypertext, and other vertical and horizontal exchanges.

There is a need to create a dimension—mixing the real and virtual, the temporal and the timeless—where information is sent to us when needed, in the form needed for its understanding, whatever its original form.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Metaverse 3

This will be accomplished through the combination and integration of different technologies available today—mobile, internet and other multi-media devices—and technologies yet to develop, such as communicating & intelligent objects, sensors, widespread WIFI, RFID, new interfaces with machines, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), augmented reality, nanotechnologies…

Perhaps this dimension, a smart and goal-oriented mixture of all other dimensions, may be called called “Metaverse”… a world / universe where technology merges with philosophy.

Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worldsâ&#x20AC;?

November 2008

Symbolic and Experiential Consumption of Body in Virtual Worlds: from (Dis)Embodiment to Symembodiment By Handan Vicdan, College of Business Administration, The University of Texas-Pan American; Ebru Ulusoy, College of Business Administration, The University of Texas-Pan American

Abstract This study examines the symbolic meanings of the body concept in a virtual world called Second Life (SL). Using audio-visual approach to netnography, we investigate the ways in which consumers are involved in SL, the meanings attached to their avatars, the process of (re)constructing their avatars, and the experiences lived through their avatars. In light of our findings, we draw attention to the conceptualization of body as experience, which brings the enhancement in the perception of body as a means of self-presentation to experiencing the body for the sake of the body. Furthermore, we introduce the concept of symembodiment as a means of articulating the presence of body in SL and reemphasizing the nonresolvable embodiment/disembodiment paradox of the body in the virtual world.

Keywords: avatar; body; Second Life; virtual worlds; netnography; audio-visual research.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

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Symbolic and Experiential Consumption of Body in Virtual Worlds: from (Dis)Embodiment to Symembodiment By Handan Vicdan, College of Business Administration, The University of Texas-Pan American; Ebru Ulusoy, College of Business Administration, The University of Texas-Pan American

The concept of body has long been an interest for consumer researchers. The main focus of this interest evolved around the corporeal body (1) as a means of self-presentation and socialization (Thompson & Hirschman, 1995) and (2) as a project that modern consumers work on (Featherstone, Hepworth & Turner, 1991; Schouten, 1991). Furthermore, social scientists, mainly from sociology and philosophy, have started to question and discuss the presence of the body with the emergence of new communication technologies. Some argued that these technologies have enabled people to break out of the finitude of their embodiment and engage in disembodiment (Balsamo, 2000; Stone, 2000; Turkle, 1995; Ward, 2001). Others have contested the idea of the body becoming futile in virtual worlds, and have advocated the essential role of embodiment in any human experience (Argyle & Shields, 1996; Flichy, 2007; Froy, 2003; Hansen, 2006; Mingers, 2001).

In the beginning of these technologies, communication that took place in chat rooms, discussion boards, and the like was restricted to the written word, and later enhanced by voice.

More recently, the growing semiotic potential of the virtual worlds allows for visual representation of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s physical self through images such as avatars and photos, which brought another perspective to the embodiment/disembodiment debate.

Our research explores the symbolic and experiential construction of body through avatars in a three-dimensional virtual world called Second Life (SL), where experiences are completely user-created. Our research questions include the following: (1) How do consumers attach meanings to the digital self images they create? (2) How are these images constructed and reconstructed? (3) How and what do consumers experience through their virtual bodies?

Specifically, construction of symbolic corporeal selves through avatars has been interest to us.

We suggest that this phenomenon reflects the transforming urge of a modern consumer from perceiving his or her body as less of a tool for communication with and impression to others to an experience itself, an end that s/he playfully engages in for its own sake. Our explorations in SL reveal that, having gained the ability to play with the semiotic potential of the virtual worlds, consumers engage in the creation and recreation of several avatars, each constituting another self. The presence of the body as well as the experiences and explorations through bodily creations (avatars) become symbolic, yet the illusory nature of the bodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presence in virtual worlds still remains, leading to the futility of resolving the embodiment/disembodiment duality. Consumers can create several bodily selves in SL, yet these processes are full of refractions from both First Life (FL) and SL. The construction of these bodies and the experiences lived through them in this symbolic realm are nevertheless affected by consumersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; FL selves and vice versa, further intensifying the body/mind dilemma in virtual worlds. Therefore, we introduce the concept of symembodiment as a means of articulating the

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presence of the body in virtual worlds, and further highlighting the non-resolvable and futile nature of the embodiment/disembodiment debate.

We begin our study with a discussion of the theoretical approaches to the body concept in virtual worlds in order to provide the theoretical foundations that inform our netnographic research. We then describe the research processes used in our study. Taking into account the notions of fluidity, symbolic realm, and multiplicity (of images, selves, and experiences), we present our findings. We greatly benefit from an audio-visual approach to investigate the construction of body in virtual worlds, which enriches our understanding of the symbolic aspects of body and helps with developing alternative perspectives to the conceptualization of body in contemporary world. Lastly, we discuss the implications of our findings on the presence of the body and the meanings attached to the body, draw attention to the non-resolvable nature of the presence of the body in virtual worlds, and present alternative conceptualizations.

Symbolic (Re)Construction of the Body in Virtual Worlds The body has been an integral part of the self-concept, and body image has come to play an important role in contemporary society as a means of constructing, symbolizing, and expressing one’s selves (Fisher, 1986; Schouten, 1991). As Joy and Venkatesh (1994, p. 339) suggest, “Our consumer culture (e.g., Westernized, post-industrial) is dominated by a preoccupation with the body. This preoccupation extends from such areas as food, dieting, clothing, fashion, exercise, to all kinds of phenomenological experiences with the body.”

Social scientists have conceptualized body as a project individuals work on and alter as a means of identity construction and reconstruction (Schouten, 1991; Shilling, 2003).

Furthermore, body has largely been treated as a medium that helps people explore and experience the world (Meamber & Venkatesh, 1999). One’s perception of his or her body is considered interdependent with social relationships and control factors that constrain this perception of one’s body in conformity with cultural ideals and normative as well as moral accounts (Thompson & Hirschman, 1995). Construction of body and the associated body image therefore, serves as a form of socialization and a means of signifying one’s self-worth, status in social relationships and lifestyles, and exertion of control over one’s self (Thompson & Hirschman, 1995). In sum, modern consumers treat their bodies as not an ‘end’ but as a ‘means’ of conveying meaning and a desirable image to others.

This urge to construct a body that helps individuals present their selves as a means of signifying a desired impression to others becomes a complicated phenomenon as we tap into the realm of the digital universe. As Meamber and Venkatesh (1999, p. 192) also put forth, “how do consumers reconcile their urge for physicality with the non-physicality of cyberspace?”

Recent advances in new media technologies enhanced the text-based communication on the internet with voice and later with visual aspects, such as avatars, photos, videos, and the like.

Thus, consumers gained the potential to manipulate signs and to play with the symbols of the virtual worlds, both in the form of text and images. Some of these virtual worlds provide individuals with the ability to create their visual representations or personified icons, and therefore express one’s selves in several bodily representations—ideal or possible, real or fantasy. Contemporary consumers live in a visual culture bundled with a multiplicity of signs and symbols. Therefore, the textual is replaced by the visual as the cultural order with the advent 3

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of new media technologies and communications (Venkatesh, 1999). Actions become symbolic in nature and evoke meanings that open up symbolic participation in fantasy, narrative, and code (Alexander, 2003). The construction of who one is tends to become a shorter-time project than was previously possible. This construction of several bodily selves may reflect the transforming urge of a modern consumer from perceiving his or her body as less of a tool for communication with and impression to others to an experience itself, an end that s/he playfully engages in for its own sake.

Consequently, body concept and bodily representations are also significant in virtual worlds. In the information or network society, the internet has brought a new logic to communication, where relationships and exchanges become increasingly based on fluidity—that is, individuals can perform temporal roles or express multiple selves based on a variety of experiences. New technologies offer the individual the potential to manipulate signs, play with the symbols of the virtual worlds, both in the form of text and images. The growing semiotic potential of the virtual worlds allows for visual representation of one’s physical self through appropriation and manipulation of digital images (Nguyen & Alexander, 1996).

Digital images help consumers with reconciling their urge for physicality with the nonphysicality of cyberspace in symbolic forms. As suggested by Reid-Steere (1996, p. 36), “The boundaries delineated by cultural constructions of the body are both subverted and given free rein in virtual environments. With the body freed from the physical, it completely enters the realm of the symbol.” The construction of body based on fluidity in the virtual worlds leads to the perception of the virtual body as more ‘fluid’. Furthermore, as Cavallaro (1998, p. 13) states, “A body that is fluid and fragmented may sound like fun. If the body is not one fixed ‘thing’ but many possible ‘bits’ of things, the opportunities for play and experiment become virtually endless.” In other words, freed from the constraints of a physical body, people playfully engage in novel forms of self-presentation and turn symbols into personal expressions (Schau & Gilly 2003). Therefore, the body is considered a medium that helps people explore and experience the virtual world, as it has also been conceptualized as a medium that helps with exploring and experiencing the actual world (Meamber & Venkatesh, 1999).

Avatar: The Body in the Virtual World Avatars are among the most popular digital images; or, in other words, symbolic forms used in the virtual world. Derived from the ancient Indian language Sanskrit, an Avatar is defined as an embodiment of a deity on earth. In the digital world it denotes “a representation of the user as an animated character” (Loos, 2003, p. 17); “general graphic representations that are personified by means of computer technology” (Holzwarth, Janiszewski & Neumann, 2006, p.

20); “graphic icons representing users through various forms” (Chung, 2005, p. 538); or “discursive or visual virtual selves” (Kolko, 1999).

Construction of avatars is user-generated, meaning that users have the control of creating and manipulating their avatars, constituting them with several attributes, gestures (using animated expressions such as smiling, winking, sticking a tongue out, etc.), and physical appearances (humanlike, non-human, half-human, cyborg, animal or fantasy creatures). Through these digital images, the presence of the body as well as the experiences and explorations become symbolic. That way, individuals construct their selves in varying personas through these avatars and experience alternative lifestyles in virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft, 4

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EverQuest, SIMS and SL. The use of avatars in creating “cyber-characters,” participation in games or chat rooms on the internet with personas other than ones experienced in actuallife, adventures in several virtual worlds, are all providing people with possibilities of projecting selves constructed swiftly and temporally. Webb (2001) also suggests that the avatar culture created in virtual worlds connects people temporally and loosely, yet brings the eventual emancipation to relocate their selves in another place.

SL provides outlets through which present experiences can be constructed and shared, and different selves can be explored and experimented. Meaning and substance are sought in present moments through experiencing and experimenting. Actions, virtual or actual, become means for creation of these experiences in the present, rather than tasks to be decidedly organized for future gains. In virtual worlds, individuals have numerous symbolic bodies to choose from and they greatly influence the kind of body they inhabit (Castronova, 2004). The symbolic nature of the virtual presence in SL enables people to playfully engage in their bodily creations called avatars. This symbolic (re)construction of these avatars becomes a means of creating multiple selves. Consequently, construction and reconstruction of avatars becomes a playful experience and achieves the desire to live in different bodies with various attributes that are symbolic creations of their selves. Today’s consumer no longer consumes objects, rather it is the symbol, the sign value that is consumed and produced in a perpetual cycle (Venkatesh, 1999). Virtual worlds, the worlds of free-floating symbols, where individuals are devoid of the constraints of their bodies, are embedded in the scheme of symbolic forms (Venkatesh, 1999).

Hence, the continuous construction of body through avatars becomes a symbolic experience, in which the body is present, not with its constraints but with its symbolic significance.

Second Life (SL) There are many outlets on the internet, in which present experiences can be constructed and shared, and different selves can be explored and experimented with. SL, described as “a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its residents1, is one of these outlets where consumers can construct, reconstruct, and experience multiple bodily representations.

Mainly, SL is “… a world with birdsong, rippling water, shopping malls, property taxes, and realistic physics. And life inside is almost as varied as it is outside.” (Roush, 2007, p. 39) that was opened to the public in 2003 by the American company Linden Lab, and it has been growing day by day in terms of the number of registered users, as well as the territory of this virtual world as expressed by Roush (2007, p. 39): “Second Life, which started out four years ago as a 1-square-kilometer patch with 500 residents, has grown into almost 600 square kilometers of territory spread over three minicontinents, with 6.9 million registered users and 30,000 to 40,000 residents online at any moment.”

SL community describes itself as2 : 1

Second Life: What Is Second Life? <<http://secondlife.com/whatis/>>, accessed 26 Oct. 2008.

2

Ibid.

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“a global community working together to build a new online space for creativity, collaboration, commerce, and entertainment. We strive to bridge cultures and welcome diversity.

We believe in free expression, compassion and tolerance as the foundation for community in this new world.”

Consumers are enabled to experience and experiment freely with their bodily creations due to the symbolic nature and the semiotic richness of virtual worlds. In SL, people gain the ability to play with the symbolic tools of this semiotic universe. The symbolic nature of the virtual presence in SL enables people to playfully engage in their bodily creations or, in other words, their avatars. Symbolic (re)construction of these avatars becomes a means of creating multiple selves and brings the playful experience and the achievement of the desire to live in different bodies with various attributes that are symbolic creations of their selves.

Methodology Initially, advances in new media technologies enhanced the text-based communication on the internet with voice and later with visual aspects, such as avatars, photos, videos, and the like.

This enhancement has many implications on human experiences to become more visual due to the dependence of everyday life experiences on such media as television, films, and the internet (Mirzoeff, 1999) that privilege the visual. Furthermore, new media technologies, like most marketing and social phenomena, became visual in nature in an environment where markets and economies have been increasingly relying on images (Schroeder, 2002).

As visual aspects gain more significance in virtual worlds, there is a need to develop different approaches to netnographic research methodologies to gain deeper understanding of these aspects and other aspects that relate to the visual. We propose that audio-visual research, which has been extensively utilized in ethnographic and participant observation research, can also be utilized in netnographic research as a way to make this research stream richer in exploration of the recent internet phenomena such as virtual worlds. This way, we could develop an emotional understanding (Denzin, 1989) or experiential knowledge (Belk 1989). In other words, the use of audio-visual signs other than words will possibly enable us to develop a deeper and more thorough understanding of persons, situations, events, and places of our interest.

We conducted netnographic research to capture the behaviors of people in Second Life community, as netnography is “an interpretive method devised specifically to investigate the consumer behavior of cultures and communities present on the internet” (Kozinets, 1998, p.

366). Additionally, an audio-visual approach in netnographic research enables us to communicate the understanding we have developed with greater effectiveness. This is mainly due to the construction of everyday reality in virtual worlds different than the outside world in terms of multiple audio, as well as visual imaginations. Revealing this imagination is easier through an audio-visual communication of our research. Furthermore, we think that the audience of the virtual world research pays greater attention to the visual, making it a necessity for the virtual world researchers to think, do research, and communicate findings visually and better meet the visual expectations (Belk, 2006) of these audiences.

Our research in virtual worlds provides an illustrative example of a netnographic research conducted with an audio-visual approach. First, we describe our data collection process. Then, we reveal our findings on the semiotic potentials of virtual worlds regarding the body concept.

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Our project focuses on the meaning of the body concept in virtual worlds—more specifically, on the symbolic construction and experience of the body and the meanings consumers attribute to their bodily experiences. The body and the virtual world are both parts of contemporary visual culture. Thus, the visual nature of these concepts makes visual research more attractive for us to investigate these phenomena. We were interested in exploring the conceptual changes in the body concept due to momentous changes in contemporary culture, and particularly in the meanings of the body in virtual worlds. In addition, the unprecedented growth of a 3-D virtual world, SL, made us recognize the abundant possibilities it offers as a visual research outlet, which led us to start on a research project together. Our research protocol is composed of the following steps: 1. We became residents of SL. We created avatars that represent ourselves in SL by choosing from one of the default avatars and making modifications to them. One of us preferred to be as loyal as she could to her FL body features and created a female avatar. The other preferred to create two avatars, one being a gothic girl and the other, a bald and sexless creature reflecting her different ideal selves.

2. According to Kozinets (1998, p. 366), “netnography, like ethnography in cultural anthropology and cultural studies, strongly emphasizes full participation in the culture being studied, as a recognized cultural member.” Therefore, we fully participated in SL culture and conducted participant observations. We conducted our observations both separately and most of the time together. We videotaped most of the observations we did together. On average, we spent three to four hours a day (mostly at night) in SL for ten months. We did our observations in different places, which were representations of popular places in FL, such as themed environments, amusement parks, popular cities, and ISTE-International Society for Technology and Education-island. Based on these observations, we developed deeper insights into the structure of SL and specified our focal area of interest for this study. Accordingly, we developed a framework for possible questions to ask our informants.

3. In locating our informants, we used personal networking, or in other words, the snowball sampling method. We asked the people we knew if they knew anyone who actively resides in SL. 4. After identifying a few potential informants, we asked referring persons to act as intermediaries in communicating with these informants. We did not have limitations in finding informants only in first life. As a matter of fact, our objective was to conduct interviews with people in both SL and in their first life physical settings to be able to gain deeper insights into the phenomena we were interested in. We thought that the comparison of offline data with online data might also be beneficial to our research as a means of articulating the strengths and weaknesses of our methodological approach. We conducted our online interviews in our respondents’ houses and in some other public spaces in SL. Our major data source for this study was composed of our experiences as residents in SL, and online and offline interviews (only the interviews were offline, but during these offline interviews, the informants were online on SL, which enabled us to reflect both on their on-screen and off-screen aspects of SL experiences) with the informants. All of the interviews were indepth and semistructured. However, a few of the earlier interviews were led more by the informants rather than by us. Thus, we sometimes experienced shifts from semistructured to unstructured interviewing in the first few interviews. As our understanding of the phenomena developed, we took the lead in discussions. However, we let the informants express themselves as much as they wanted in the areas of inquiry. We followed an iterative approach where we 7

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built our inquiry areas on all previous interviews for the next interview. Interviews lasted from forty-five minutes to almost two hours. Our informants’ age ranged from 21 to 60. Four of our informants were female, and four of them were male.

For the purpose of this research, we interviewed three people (Skyler, Jesse, Fred) in physical everyday life settings, such as their offices or a computer lab at a university. As mentioned earlier, these interviewees were also logged onto SL during the interviews. This was similar to using projective techniques. In addition, we interviewed five people (Raven, Esme, Spiff, Ginny, Cecil) online in their SL settings. First, we asked informants to talk about their initial involvement in SL and their feelings when they first found out about SL. Then, we asked them to describe what an avatar means to them and how having an avatar influences their SL experiences. Then we asked them to talk about the processes of avatar creation and recreation and what influences them in these processes. The informants talked about the number of avatars they created, the reasons behind creating several avatars, and how they created and modified their avatar(s). Lastly we asked them to talk about the characteristics of the avatar(s) they created and whether there are any similarities or differences when they compare the characteristics of their avatar(s) to their first life selves. In sum, the questions mainly focused on the feelings and motives concerning their lives in SL, the processes of the (re)creation of virtual bodies/avatars, the motives behind these processes, and the experiences with these avatars in SL. We transcribed verbatim each of our respondent’s videotaped responses. Each of us analyzed all the transcripts separately to identify the themes emerged. Then, we cross-checked our results to find the common recurring themes in both analyses.

Findings We classify our findings as the role of avatars in involvement in SL, “avatar” meanings, avatar construction, and avatar experiences. Then, we articulate these findings and their theoretical implications in the “Discussion” section.

Involvement in Second Life We found that abundant opportunities in symbolic bodily creations and multiple bodily experiences have been important motives in the initial involvement of our informants in SL. Consider, for example, Skyler’s statement: “You actually do go ahead and live in your Second Life. So I was pretty interested in it.

Then I heard you could do different characters, you don’t have to be just human, you can put whoever. I guess your mental image of yourself is onto the virtual world. And there is (sic) abilities to make yourself to look exactly like how you’re doing in real life and then you can do different things such as make yourself a creature, or make yourself look twenty feet tall. All these different things like that. So I was very interested in it. When I heard about it, when I heard what you can do with it, it was very interesting” (Skyler, offline interview).

As this statement reveals, being able to create and experience any bodily self that is desired is an important motive for involvement in SL. Whereas first life is limited in the bodily creations, SL provides consumers the freedom to construct and reconstruct their desired bodily creations and experiences. This leads to higher involvement of consumers in SL. Raven expresses bodily freedom as a motive for her involvement in SL: 8

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“We’re born with set bodies. They look a certain way; they will always look a certain way and that’s it. My mind doesn’t have those constraints. Raven is a woman that my mind projects as me. I guess if you’re given the opportunity to be anything, to think outside the box like that, why stick with what you are in real life, when you could be an animal you admire, a beautiful fish...” (Raven, online interview) Moreover, not only creating and experiencing their own bodily constructions, but also experiencing the concept of body in general through different and multiple forms of other consumers’ bodily creations they encounter is a motive that appeals to SL consumers. Skyler states: “…that’s kind of cool too when you run into people, you know, in different costumes, they have different avatars, different creatures I guess you can call them…” (Skyler, offline interview) Avatar is not a motive only for involvement in SL, but also a motive for involvement in experiences without worries about appearance. Consider for example Spiff’s expression: “I found in Second Life with (sic), and I guess this is because of having an avatar, is (sic) you get to know people really quickly and easily, cause you’re not so worried about your appearance as you might be in real life”. (Spiff, online interview) Avatar Meanings In virtual worlds, bodily preoccupations take place through avatars. Our research findings of the meanings consumers attribute to their avatars revealed that preoccupation with the body is also an essential part of virtual lives.

“Avatar” mainly means creation and recreation of multiple virtual world selves reflecting various imaginations and visions of SL consumers. For example, Skyler describes “avatar” as: “…a creation that isn’t really like a picture, it’s like a cartoonish virtual image of yourself”. (Skyler, offline interview) In SL, “avatar” meanings expand beyond pure representation of first life self. Avatars do not only have meanings in terms of self representation, but also in terms of self construction. It means experiencing multiple selves. Ginny’s statement reveals meanings of “avatar” in the sense of possibilities of projecting selves that are constructed swiftly and temporally: Sometimes you just get tired of being who you are and you wanna be something else.

You know, you wake up one day and then you go, “You know what? I think I wanna be a Neeko, or the next day you wanna be a mermaid, or sometimes I wanna be a fairy, It just depends on what you feel that day. I think it definitely extends the experience as you go through. You get to see different lifestyles; you get to be somebody else for a while”. (Ginny, online interview)

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Avatar Construction Entering SL requires the creation of an avatar. In this creation process, a few default avatars are given to consumers as options to choose from. However, the avatar creation process usually does not end there, but starts at and continues from this point. This process usually becomes an ongoing creation and recreation process as the options to choose from to create avatars are abundant. This continuing process is reflected in Ginny’s questioning of having only one avatar: “I like to see how many different avatars I can actually make. There are so many things to choose from out there, so many different lifestyles you can lead. Why be restricted to one?”

(Ginny, online interview) The constitution of body as a communicative medium (Domzal & Kernan, 1993), and as a project though does not totally disappear in virtual worlds, as Esme proposes in her avatar creation process: “When I first came into Second Life, I adopted an avatar that was very plain, and I was steadfast about I was not going to be very sexy and I was not going to spend any money, and I was not gonna wear little tiny shorts and skirts revealing clothes. But I saw that I actually stood out by being boring looking, and, so I spent a lot of time thinking about what, what kind of presentation do I want to have…” (Esme, online interview) Yet, the focus becomes more of “body as experience” in SL through the enabling of consumers to playfully engage in symbolic avatar creation and experience different bodily selves. This playful engagement has been an important motive in occupation with the body more than any other motives. Specifically, our findings reveal the excitement with experiencing completely different body features compared to the ones one has in first life. How Spiff constructed his avatar is an example of the playful engagement in becoming someone else: “Well, I guess I wanted to just make myself different than I was in real world, just maybe to experience something different. Well, white, 41 years old, still have some of my hair, being black and bald looks pretty good.” (Spiff, online interview) Other consumers’ creations as well as consumers’ own visions influence the creation process of avatars. mSkyler reflects the influence of others on his avatar creation process: “I already knew that you could create your own avatar to whatever you wanted. But when I saw that they have the wolf there, I got all excited and I was like oh right on…I saw different creatures who were walking around, that’s what led to me to wanting to be something else.” (Skyler, offline interview) The process of avatar construction and reconstruction is itself a core experience in SL. Cecil’s expression about his avatar construction process is an example to this process being a focal experience: “It’s interesting enough that when I was building the avatar, I don’t know why I was attracted to that. I didn’t actually seek out to become a half human, half borg. I just saw it when 10

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I was putting on clothes, trying on things, it just appealed to me to be half technology, half human.” (Cecil, online interview) Another point we encountered in the data on avatar construction is that consumers create several bodily selves in SL, yet these processes are full of refractions from both first life and SL. The construction of these bodies and the experiences lived through them in this symbolic realm are nevertheless affected by consumers’ first life selves and vice versa, which further intensify the body/mind dilemma in virtual worlds. Jesse reveals this interplay between first life body and the avatar: “When I was creating my first avatar, I know she’s brown skin, she’s not thin, I made sure she was of average height which I am; I made sure she was of average weight which I am.

And, but, everything else is kind of different. So, but I tried to make a little bit of myself in her…And if I wanted to, I can try to make myself to look more like the character, cause I can straighten my hair, put make up on too, and just put my contacts, just like her, cause I have been wearing contacts too. So I can kind of make myself look like her, instead of her look like me.”

(Jesse, offline interview) Avatar Experiences Both the opportunities to create avatars and the opportunities to live body-related experiences are abundant in SL as Esme proposes: “…there are silly things that you can do that are just fun, like you can go skiing, bike riding, or you can go to a club, and go dancing. And I think it’s just sort of good, silly fun.”

(Esme, online interview) In addition to individual bodily experiences, avatars engage in bodily interactions with other avatars through virtual touching. This aspect further enhances experiences. For example, Ginny states the abundance of both individual and interactive bodily experiences in SL: “Here you could actually, you could virtually hug someone, or, or, give them a kiss, or any kind of touching, dancing, things like that. You can swim, I mean, fly, it just goes on forever.” (Ginny, online interview) Yet, we also found that SL is not free from some physical constraints and it has its own construction of physical distance that influences the experiences of SL residents. Esme states a situation where she talks about the influence of physical distance on SL residents’ feelings: “I was talking to a man at ISTE one day who was actually asking the question why people stand so far apart. If you look at how people stand in real life and you compare that, in proportion to how they stand in Second Life, people stand much further apart in Second Life, unless the avatars are being intimate with each other. The day he brought it up, we were in a circle of about eight people. And as soon as he said it, we all stepped forward, you know, several steps, and we all commented on how actually much better we felt that we were closer. But then, I’ve noticed that since then those same people will stand far apart.” (Esme, online interview).

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We found in SL that people have the ability to engage in bodily experiences that they would not be able to engage with their real life bodies because of their physical constraints or psychological constraints, such as phobias. We also found that even though these experiences take place in the virtual world, people may still feel some physical effects as a result. For example, Ginny talks about such effects: “When I’m a human I go, there’s parasailing, I love to leap off of things. I’m terrible about that. My husband tells me I have a symicidal avatar. Because I love to jump off the buildings, and just fly off wherever I wanna go. There is parachuting, where they get up in the air and just let go. That’s pretty interesting because that free fall effect is, wow, you know, kind of gives you a blood rush there.” (Ginny, online interview) Having avatars that are created as mental images of people that represent them in SL is found to enhance the excitement with experiences. Skyler’s excitement about flying with his wolf avatar reveals the value of bodily experiences in virtual worlds: “That’s another aspect that you actually have the ability to fly. So, you know, it’s kind of crazy to see a flying white wolf going around everywhere. Other people fly too. It’s just, it’s really neat, because who doesn’t wanna try to fly just with themselves. I guess Matrix style, or Superman style, or anything of that sort. That’s pretty neat that you actually get to experience that because it’s your second life, it’s your virtual life.” (Skyler, offline interview) We find that since people in SL create their avatars that are reflecting their mental images of who they want to be, they build higher levels of empathy with their avatars, which strengthens the feeling aspects of their experiences. Fred’s explanation of his flying experience reveals this empathy and how this empathy enhances what he feels through his avatar experiences in SL: And I had a hard time like landing, but I finally figured it out. Before I used to, I used to fall. Cause you could fall.

Researcher: But nothing happens when you fall?

“Oh no, no, I mean you can just see the stress that he goes through…You know actually I’m terrified of heights, so every time I’m on and I’m flying, I have this sensation of as if, honestly, as if I’m doing it. It’s strange cause I’m terrified of heights. But I like to do it. Isn’t that weird? That’s probably what I enjoy the most, flying.” (Fred, offline interview) Along with making gestures with their avatars, touching, flying, and performing various physical activities in SL, people can experience various audio and visual elements of the body that they cannot experience in real life due to physical or social constraints. In terms of visual avatar characteristics as experiences in SL, Skyler states that: “Something I really can’t do, I guess, in real life are tattoos and everything of that sort for future job instances. But I can do that on here, because you can place tattoos on yourself as well.” (Skyler, offline interview)

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Audio aspects of avatars in SL can also be special experiences in SL that lead to more immersion into SL experiences. What Cecil expresses with his two types of voices that he gets by using a voice filter reveals how experiences are enriched in SL through these characteristics: [Using female voice] “But I think I can do more with the voice changer, make it a little bit more authentic and the characterization amusing. But I like the female voice when I want to get in touch with my, my female side. Sometimes I read poetry in Second Life. I like to read Sylvia Plath and I think it helps a little bit to have the female voice, rather than you know, my [using cyborg voice] “Hi, I’m Cecil Borg, you’ll be assimilated” voice.” (Cecil, online interview) Discussion From Body as Self-Presentation to Body as Experience In the postmodern realm, the body is conceptualized as a means of communicating or conveying an impression and that the utmost deployment of the body is to signify meaning (Domzal & Kernan, 1993). Scholars have explored the goal of self-presentation in virtual places (Schau & Gilly, 2003) and articulated the ways of reaching this goal, in which social actors are involved in projecting a desired impression (Goffman, 1959). It has also been suggested that such impression requires corporeal or embodied display and consumers engage in displaying signs and symbols to communicate their desired impression and express their identities (Schau & Gilly, 2003). Hence, the body serves as a communicative intermediary to convey such impression. This visual representation of one’s self in bodily creations called avatars has considerable impact on how one communicates with others and conveys meaning to others. As a matter of fact, the act of creating virtual selves is considered rhetorical since communicating through an avatar incorporates the realm of gestures and visual representation (Kolko, 1999) As our informants also articulate, the constitution of the body as a communicative medium (Domzal & Kernan, 1993) does not disappear in virtual worlds. However, it becomes more of a body as experience in SL through the enabling of consumers to playfully engage in symbolic avatar creation and experience different bodily selves. This process of symbolic bodily construction distances itself from the idea of perceiving the body as merely a means of communicating one’s selves. It becomes more of an immersive experience of constructing and reconstructing one’s selves, therefore indicating the experiencing of the body for the sake of the body, and less of a purposeful signification of the body to convey a meaning or an impression to others. In other words, the role of the body is transformed from a means to communicate or signify impression to an end in that the body itself becomes the experience.

It has also been suggested that extreme reliance on an “economy of visual pleasure (text and avatars)” alleviates the concern for social bonding (Webb, 2001, p. 586). This may also indicate that consumers are more concerned with experiencing and experimenting with the construction and exploration of digital selves and less concerned with the intention of communicating one’s desired selves to create impression. Immersion into constant exploration of SL (where consumers constantly teleport their avatars to explore different virtual places in SL) and the construction and reconstruction of bodily selves (where consumers keep changing the appearance and physical features of their avatars) becomes a focal concern in SL.

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From “Disembodied” Self to “Symembodied” Self Virtual worlds subvert the oneness or singleness of the identity. The construction of who one is and how one is constructed in the gaze of the others become user-generated processes that welcome multiplicity and change. The opportunities to live “parallel lives” (Turkle, 1997, p.

1100), create multiple representations of one’s selves as well as explore new aspects of one’s selves (Reid, 1998; Turkle, 1997) are staggering. Just like the endless choices of these virtual worlds, one’s identity, as Turkle (1997, p. 1101) describes, “is the sum of one’s distributed presence”, which she calls “windowing” and suggests that “the self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings… The life practice of windows is a distributed self that exists in many worlds and plays many roles at the same time.” Hence, the internet’s potential to provide individuals with alternative lives and construction of several identities that transcend the limits of embodiment (Venkatesh, Meamber and Fırat, 1997) is eminent.

Yet, the technological and cultural changes mentioned earlier heat up the debate of the non-resolvable fate of the body in the virtual world. Scholars (Hansen, 2006; Madden, 1993; Takayoshi, 1994; Turkle, 1995) have contested the idea of the body becoming futile in the virtual world, and advocated the indispensable role of embodiment in any human experience, therefore rejecting the notion of the Cartesian body-mind separation. Embodiment or corporality ought to be present in identity processes (e.g. self-presentation) (Rook, 1985) and serve as a moderator in social interactions (Stryker, 1980) through the ways one experiences and deploys his/her body (Domzal & Kernan, 1993).

Others have emphasized the corporeal body serving no longer as a limitation. In the digital realm, Haraway (1997) argues that the indispensable presence of the body for presentation of a self becomes obscure as participants of digital media break out of their corporeality and constraints of their bodies, an opportunity that allows individuals for new designations of gender, sex, physical forms (cyborg, hybrids), and indefinite symbolic associations. Beetham (2006) explores the unprecedented significance of writing in online domains by stating that such writing goes beyond time and space borders and enables individuals to engage in disembodied communication by breaking out of the finitude of their embodiment. Kozinets (1998, 1999) also describes virtual spaces as discursive places in that a dynamic communication is convened among individuals. Beetham (2006) suggests that the cyber world, where people forming communities can embrace their virtual selves and leave behind their embodied selves, is the ultimate playground for the liquid, shifting postmodern self. The body becomes no longer a limitation to reflect their subjectivity, and the ability to overcome the limitations of the body allows for such subjectivity to be presented in disembodiment. Through disembodied subjectivity, individuals convene to communicate in digital public places.

Nevertheless, the semiotic potential of the digital realm allows for visual representation of one’s physical self through avatars, images, photos and the like. Webb (2001, p. 562) defines virtual identity as “embodied, sensuously experienced and contingently rhythmic and mobile.”

Schau and Gilly (2003) suggest that in personal websites, individuals are driven by the desire to explore and display other selves. Virtual worlds enable individuals to present multiple selves and make these selves comprehensible in visual, textual, audio, animated semiotic richness (Schau & Gilly, 2003). Freed from the constraints of a physical body, people playfully engage in novel forms of self-presentation and turn symbols into personal expressions (Schau & Gilly, 2003).

Computer-mediated environments grant access to semiotic tools, cultural artifacts, and various 14

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forms of expression (Appaduari, 1996). In communicating their identities people manipulate signs (Wiley, 1994), at times to represent embodied presences and at other times experiencing a disembodied existence (Brewer, 1998). They can freely choose to conceal the undesirable aspects of their actual physical and psychological selves or to proudly express their desirable aspects in the digital realm, aspects that are sometimes hard to convey in the physical realm (Schau & Gilly, 2003).

With SL, presentation of the self is enhanced by immersion into SL experiences, which take the form of symbolic construction and reconstruction of bodily selves through the semiotic scheme of the virtual worlds. Consumers are enabled to playfully immerse into life experiences and experiment with these lived moments through their multiple avatars. In order to move away from the embodiment/disembodiment debate and reemphasize the fact that this paradox is not to be resolved, we need to understand the symbolic creation and experiences the body is involved in. We call this process symembodiment, in which consumers (re)construct and playfully engage in the symbolic creation and experiencing of their avatars.

For example, during our interviews, one of our respondents, Ginny, became a mermaid and all of a sudden, she grew a tail and experienced the transition into a leopard. Our half-human cyborg respondent Cecil changed his deep voice into a soft female voice while he was reading poems in SL. Jesse, who adopted an “elf” self in her daily SL, also experienced a monster self when she wanted to scare others to have fun. Ginny expressed that she loved to jump off the buildings and experienced “symicidal” (symbolic suicide) avatar selves, and Raven experienced symbolic death in combats in SL (Ulusoy & Vicdan, 2007). All of these observations reveal that the body is experienced for the sake of itself rather than solely being used as a medium of selfpresentation or communication.

Engaging in Non-Resolvable Paradoxes in Virtual Worlds The practices with new technologies signal that people want to have input and partake in controlling their lives and the meanings that both construct and emerge from the moments of experiences in their lives. Modern discourses and the advent of technologies give them the impulse and the confidence that such participation must be and can be achieved. They want to be independent and free of nature and any particular way of being and living, they desire to experiment with different identities, experiences, and modes of life. This explains the exploding popularity of virtual worlds.

The momentous changes in culture and the technological landscape both accentuate particular modern paradoxes and bring them to further attention. Often in trying to come to terms with and understand these paradoxes, however, the modernist intellectual momentum impels many to try and find resolutions for the paradoxes they become aware of. Yet, resolution is impossible. A necessary mindset change has to accompany the changes in culture and technology; that these paradoxes are not to be resolved but to be engaged with to playfully and critically seek balances that present possibilities of finding meaning and substance in lived moments (Kellner, 1989; Kroker, 1992). Postmodern sensibility calls for a playful, if critical, engagement with the potentials of experiencing different modes of being and finding meaning in the existence of the “other” (Caputo, 1997).

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These paradoxes are also well articulated in other literatures, from psychology to sociology and philosophy. One paradox involves the construction of the self. The corporal body is considered a resource for self-construction and can be modified and played with as a means to construct different meanings of the self (Callero, 2003). A self tends to be impossible to construct without reflections from the “other(s)” (see Gergen, 1991; Lacan, 1977; Ricoeur, 1992). In effect, despite the single body that is inhabited, a self completely distinct and independent of the other(s), one constructed or designed completely by one tends to be illusory.

Every one, each self, is full of refractions of others. What is left for each to do, therefore, is not claiming uniqueness, independence, separateness, or, on the other extreme, conformity, determinism, uniformity, but extraction—from the point of subjectivity that is allowed by the fact that each specific experience is happening at a particular time and in a particular context, from a particular perspective—of specific meanings that are and can be shared by others inhabiting the same moment and the same space.

From this point of recognition, the discourses well represented in Zwick and Dholakia (2004) regarding (dis)embodiedness of the experiences on the internet constitute signs of another non-resolvable paradox. The corporeal body is always there, even when absent, but also always absent, even when present. The internet technologies intensify the recognition of the mind-body dilemma. The mind and the body are forever intertwined in their distinction. Again, trying to find a solution in terms of whether they are distinct or inseparable distracts people from experiencing the meanings that can be derived from different moments when varying balances of the two elements occur, in different moments and in different contexts. The urge from modernist ideologies to resolve paradox rather than playfully and critically experience them thus blocks deeper immersion into life’s moments and stunts extraction of meaning and substance in life.

Modern marketing’s response to dilemmas and paradoxes of life has a similar effect. Products are offered to resolve the tension creating, for a metaphor, a black-hole that sucks all the richness of information/meaning from the situation leaving it with a single answer, rather than expose a process where the players can experiment with and engage and explore the variety of different balances from each of which different meanings can be derived.

This impulse further contradicts the emerging aspirations that people increasingly exhibit; as observed from the trends in using the new internet technologies, they seek to experience a multiplicity of selves in a multiplicity of modes of living and being. The modern impulse of seeking an ideal life is waning, while the desire to experience multiple alternate lives that allow extraction of different meanings from life waxes. Given this trend, often voiced expectations and concerns that people will now simply want fast food, to only watch television and not read (Weeks 2007), only virtual lives, only non-corporeal experiences, and the like, will likely prove unwarranted. Rather than become stuck in one or another form of experiencing life or being, the postmodern impulse tends to seek to experience this and that, not this or that (Firat, 2005).

There is no resolution of life’s paradoxes, there is no single grand future to be arrived at on which all will agree and all will commit to; there is no promise of a future for which sacrifice is justified. Instead, the only chance is to seek and find meaning and substance in the moments lived, through playful and critical engagement with conditions of humanity that are and will always be paradoxical. Ironically, promising future(s) may only be possible if and when rich meaning and substance is found in the present moments.

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Consumers are engaged in continuous construction and reconstruction of present bodily experiences in SL. The cult of the hyperreal in this digital realm is flourished with the ability to play with such multimedia, present digital selves through this playful engagement with all kinds of sensory forms (audio, images, texts…) that are components of such media, and make sense to others in this multiplicity of experiences. In the world of hyperreality, a bodily symbol is presented for the sake of itself (Baudrillard, 1988). Postmodernist sensibility invites the (re)cognition that all social reality is constructed, and that the distinction between the real and the fantastic is more in the orientation one has towards one’s surroundings than in the nature of those surroundings. Hence, through this blurring of distinctions between fantasy and real, thus the hyperreal, consumers become experiential subjects in the network society (Venkatesh, 1999).

Conclusion Our findings from the inquiry of involvement in SL, “avatar” meanings, avatar construction and avatar experiences basically reveal that the body concept is perceived and experienced differently in many ways when compared to its perceptions and experience in first life. In virtual worlds, the body concept is more a reflection of contemporary consumers’ desire to experiment with different identities, experiences, and modes of life independent and free of nature and any particular way of being and living. This is contradictory to the perception of body as a “project,” where the construction of the body and the associated body image served as a form of socialization and a means of signifying one’s self-worth, status in social relationships and lifestyles and exerting control over one’s self (Thompson & Hirschman, 1995). In short, the body itself becomes the experience in SL, rather than solely being a communication or impression management medium as it is perceived in the first life.

In addition, audio and visual research enabled us to have deeper insights about the semiotic potentials of virtual worlds. Sonic and visual imaginations and constructions that are different from the world outside are easier to grasp through using audio-visual research methodology. Our research approach also enabled us to realize the paradoxes more easily. This may be due to the fact that people talk about their SL experiences reflecting upon their first life experiences and they sometimes try to rationalize their SL experiences. Audio-visual research helps with capturing the paradoxes in people’s SL behaviors, lifestyles, and constructions, as well as their accounts about them.

In conclusion, the presence of the body in virtual worlds becomes symbolic in nature and enables people to playfully engage in constructing and reconstructing several bodily selves. We see individuals to create and recreate several avatars. Some reflect their FL selves on their avatars and emphasize their actual selves. Others experience a totally different being (e.g. animals, mermaids, cyborgs) or create their ideal selves. This immersion into avatar creation and experiences reveals the transformation in the meaning of the body from a means to convey impression to others to experiencing the body for the sake of the body. In SL, the body itself becomes the experience. We see individuals engage in several bodily experiences in SL, experiences that they can or cannot immerse into in FL (e.g., flying, skydiving, skiing, dancing) and experiences that they symbolically (e.g., death, suicide) and literally immerse into (e.g., having the sense of blood rush while the avatar is falling down). They gain the ability to engage in bodily experiences that they couldn’t engage with their FL bodies because of physical or psychological constraints. Nevertheless, consumers build higher levels of empathy with their avatars, which strengthen the sensory aspects of experiences. Thus, there is no point when SL 17

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experiences are purely separated from those of FL and vice versa. FL selves are reflected on SL selves and vice versa during avatar (re)creation. SL consumers both reflect their FL selves on SL selves (e.g., keeping social distance in SL just like in FL; making avatars look like their FL selves and reflecting their SL selves on their FL selves, gaining skills through SL and reflecting that self-esteem gained in SL on FL experiences).

Therefore, as a means of moving away from the embodiment/disembodiment debate concerning the presence of the body in virtual worlds and reemphasizing the fact that this paradox is not to be resolved, we need to understand the symbolic creation and experiences the body is involved in. Freed from the physical constraints, the body is experienced in the symbolic realm of the virtual worlds. We call this process as symembodiment and our explorations in SL reveal that body is present in virtual worlds, without its physical constraints but with its symbolic meanings.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research Our first limitation stems from the constraints of netnographic method as a qualitative research methodology, since netnographic research lacks the degree of generalizability that positivist research offers. In addition, we mostly focused our participant observations on the popular sites in SL, the places where the majority of the residents preferred to visit. SL is a very broad virtual environment. Another limitation is due to the sampling protocol we followed. We used our personal networking to interview our respondents. Nevertheless, snowball sampling method bears the limitation that the sample chosen for the study may not be representative of the general population of SL. Future research efforts should recognize the psychological aspects of FL and SL self reflections on each other, as well as the roles ascribed to different avatars by consumers. While we articulated the experiential aspects of avatar construction in SL, motivational and psychological factors that lead to such experiences would complete the bigger picture concerning the construction of bodily creations and how these bodily creations influence and are influenced by consumer selves.

From a theoretical perspective, our goal was to make two important statements: 1) To present the shift from the body as a medium of self-presentation to body as experience 2) To provide an alternative perspective to the embodiment/disembodiment debate concerning the presence of the body in virtual worlds. We introduced the concept symembodiment to articulate the presence of body in virtual worlds and emphasize that the body is present in virtual worlds with its symbolic significance, not with its constraints. Our explorations also revealed that consumer FL selves and SL selves are in constant negotiation in the process of avatar construction and experiences. Nonetheless, future research should direct its focus on the elaboration of these processes and how different cultural positions affect these processes.

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Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 “Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds” November 2008

The Social Construction of Virtual Reality and the Stigmatized Identity of the Newbie

By Robert Boostrom, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Abstract Virtual worlds—persistent virtual reality spaces—are becoming available to users, often for free, via internet connections. Due to the immersive character and malleability of these communities, new forms of technology-mediated social interaction are emerging. In this paper, ethnographic research conducted in Second Life is used to outline (1) how the reality within these virtual worlds is constructed, (2) what role secondary socialization plays in these groups, and (3) the way the stigmatized identity of the neophyte user (the “newbie”) is conceptualized, confronted and addressed by virtual world residents. This research suggests ways of viewing consumer behavior within virtual worlds and further social research directions.

Keywords: virtual worlds; newbie; social constructionism; secondary socialization; stigma.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Social Construction of Virtual Reality 2

The Social Construction of Virtual Reality and the Stigmatized Identity of the Newbie

By Robert Boostrom, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

The sun shone high in the sky as I walked from the saloon toward the water tower at the edge of town. I wanted to explore the train station a bit in the hopes of finding more free clothes.

I strolled down the middle of Main Street in my black cowboy hat, vest, and chaps. To either side of me, one-story clapboard buildings, like the gun shop and the doctor’s office, lined the wooden sidewalks. As I approached the water tower, near the town gallows, I noticed a ruckus.

A mild argument had erupted over a shooting. When I arrived on the scene, the casualty was on his way to the saloon to drown his sorrows, cursing the shooter and the situation in general. The townsfolk questioned each other, accused each other, and the better natured joked about the whole unfortunate business. Some people seemed to be truly riled, but it was hard to tell. I followed the shooting victim over to the saloon determined to hear his tale. I wanted to know how he viewed the event and what effect it was having on him. While on my way to him, however, a newbie popped up to complicate matters.

I could tell he was a newbie just by looking at him. First, his duds—his very person— were all wrong. Nothing about him said “Wild West”. All the other folks in the area were tall, proud characters in period costumes of settlers, townsfolk, gunfighters, or Native Americans. He was shorter than normal, and wearing the standard-issue white t-shirt and jeans from orientation.

He did not fit in. Second, his hair was unmistakable. He had the same blonde, non-descript hairdo that I had given up months before. Third, he was having a tough time conversing. As others stood in place, turning to each other to chat, he was running up to folks and expressing his general confusion rather than trying to go with the flow of the conversation. The newbie wanted guidance.

I took pity on him, and responded to his inquiries. I was the first to really deal with him directly, as far as I could tell. I tried to ease his worries. I suggested that perhaps he should have a drink and I gave him one. He accepted this. Next, I recommended that he should consider trying to blend in by getting some western wear. I attempted to lead him to where he could get free clothing, but he had a hard time following me. Once we got where we were going, he had no idea what to look for or how to use it. I tried to explain the details to him. “You need to click on the picture on the wall.” “You need to add the item to your inventory and right click on it.”

Everything I told him made him more confused and made me wish I was doing something else. I eventually suggested that he should work to get the clothes on and that I’d leave to give him time to change. My leaving was more for me than for him. I saw him again a few minutes later, running around town in the same conspicuous outfit he had been wearing.

This story does not come from the southwestern desert in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is an experience that I had while in Second Life (SL), a virtual world accessible through the internet. More specific than simply a virtual reality (Scroeder, 2008), SL is a virtual world in that it is a persistent social space (Schroeder, 2008; Bell, 2008). In this world, users create the objects and themes for thousands of different types of social spaces. These spaces are

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used for socializing, playing games, pursuing hobbies, or even working. Users move about in these spaces with avatars, which are three dimensional agents for their actions (Bell, 2008).

The important communication tools of SL are: Dynamic written text, such as chat sessions and instant messages (IM); Static written text, such as user profiles, notes, and signs; Avatars, which are the three dimensional representations of users; Objects, which are any items that can be worn or attached in some way to an avatar; and Locations, such as a Wild West town, a museum, or a nightclub.

Dynamic text is generally synchronous, occurring in real-time or near real-time. IMs can be asynchronous, because if a resident is not in SL (not in-world, as it is described by residents in SL), then the message is stored until the resident returns. IMs can also be sent to an email account for the user. Static written text is used for a variety of purposes, such as to describe user interests through avatar profiles. Avatars, as representations of users, can be shaped and gendered in an almost infinite number of ways. Objects can be anything from a clothing item, weapon, or vehicle. Objects often have scripts embedded in them that affect how an avatar works, such as a vehicle that propels an avatar forward or a drink that makes an avatar hold it in front of her. Users develop locations by integrating objects into some kind of theme, such as a park, an oil rig in the middle of an ocean, or a tiki hut.

These elements were considered to provide the analysis of this paper. These elements allow for widely variable communication and action. Residents can create different environments and these environments invite particular kinds of social behavior.

What we glean from this Wild West experience is the manner in which a virtual world is constructed socially by residents of SL and the challenges that the person new to a virtual world can pose. Newbie, within a virtual world, is the title that is given to social actors who lack knowledge of the environment and in some key way can detract from the environment for themselves and others. All the social actors in the previous story were working their way through the situation with an understanding of the place and social situation except for the newbie. Each social actor was attempting to contribute in some way to the reality that was being constructed except for the newbie. Through inexperience in this case, the newbie is a potential hazard to the work of other social actors and thus the identity of the newbie is stigmatized to a degree.

With increasing interest in virtual worlds, there will be more newbies. As of now, Second Life is one of the more commonly known versions of a publicly available virtual world, but with other versions coming from companies like Sony (Sony 2007), more people will become involved. Gartner reports that by the end of 2011, 80% of people will lead some kind of life in a virtual reality much like SL (Gartner 2007). These systems allow users to have avatars, make objects, and buy things. In the case of SL, one can purchase Linden Dollars (L$) with US dollars through internet-based open exchanges much like a foreign currency exchange. Once one has Linden Dollars, one can use them to buy clothes, land, cars, or even buy new avatar body shapes and skins.

Because virtual worlds are gaining acceptance and new residents, businessesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;both traditional and virtualâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;will have a growing interest in serving these customers; improved understanding of life within these spaces is essential to providing satisfactory service. Virtual

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worlds will become difficult for corporations to ignore; they will need to know how to engage these environments effectively.

Castronova (2005) describes virtual worlds as “the logical next frontier” for marketing because of the potential for consumer interest in these spaces and engagement in the activities there. However, he also warns that marketers must be part of the environment and add—rather than try to simply extract—value. Marketers must attempt to connect to virtual world residents in a manner consistent with the established interactive structure. Social life within these spaces must be well understood rather than simply wallpapering virtual worlds with new advertising.

The flow of these spaces must be respected so that residents can get marketing messages while still experiencing what they came to the virtual world for in the first place: fun (Castronova 2008).

In this paper, I will use ethnographic data to suggest how virtual reality, or a virtual world more specifically, is socially constructed. Using a theoretical framework adopted from symbolic interactionism, I will then suggest how the newbie identity can challenge that either directly and intentionally, or through negligence. I will then discuss how each resident of SL negotiates her way through this newbie identity while attaining secondary socialization, developing awareness of newbie signifiers, and taking action to shed the markers of this identity. This research shows how elements of social psychology can be applied to social life in virtual worlds and leads to ideas about how consumer behavior in virtual spaces can be viewed as identity work.

The objective of this paper is to look for the activities that define interaction and group life in SL. The rules that define interaction in this world are considered and used to form an initial understanding of the kind of reality that is constructed. The processes by which people develop an understanding of what it is to become a resident of SL, the markers associated with those that have not been successfully socialized, and the work done by individuals to attain internalized and externalized elements of the socialization process are then suggested.

Literature Review The first course of action is to place SL in relation to the concepts of virtual reality and virtual worlds. Schroeder (2008) states that virtual reality technology is a computer-generated space that gives the user a sense of “being there” such that the user feels as if they are in another physical space. The goal is not sensory illusion, as was the idea in early virtual reality technology as described by Castronova (2005). Rather, the idea is to create a computer-generated representation of a space that the user can explore and with which she can interact. Building on this, virtual worlds are persistent virtual reality spaces (Schroeder 2008). Bell (2008) identifies SL specifically as a virtual world.

Problematizing virtual worlds, and SL in particular, requires that we establish SL as a kind of society. Taking a cue from Blumer, we can consider it a society in that groups of individuals come together to engage in activities. When describing human group life, Blumer (1968) stated:

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(F)undamentally human groups or society exists in action and must be seen in terms of action. This picture of human society as action must be the starting point (and the point of return) for any scheme that purports to treat and analyze human society empirically. (p. 6, emphasis in original) Therefore, what defines a society or human group behavior is the action taken. This provides us with the first set of questions to ask in the analysis of SL. What activity is occurring?

What action is being taken by sets of individuals that make them a group?

What an individual does in SL can be viewed sociologically from a few different perspectives. First, there is the action people take. What actions do individuals undertake in SL, and how does the action of a collection of people contribute to a kind of group life? In other words, what activity does the individual undertake to inhabit a social role? Blumer (1969) suggests that if associative interaction can be identified, then one can witness roles being enacted and culture being performed (p. 115).

Creative use of SL communication tools provide the context for interaction. Residents are creating a reality using elements of their communication tools. Understanding the reality that is created in these environments parallels questions of how reality is created in our everyday lives, leading us to consider how virtual worlds might be analyzed by applying other elements of social theory. Berger and Luckmann (1966) provide a useful perspective in their conception of the social construction of reality.

When we discuss SL, a computer-mediated virtual world, it is not the first society to which anyone belongs. SL, as is suggested by the name, is a secondary social environment.

Therefore any socialization process would be secondary socialization. As Berger and Luckmann (1966) define it, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Secondary socialization is any subsequent process that inducts already socialized individuals into new sectors of the objective world of his societyâ&#x20AC;? (p. 130). It is a socialization process that makes use of primary socialization, and yet it is distinct because the skills that make one a successful social actor in a primary environment will not all carry over to the new, secondary environment.

Defining a socialization process as secondary suggests that elements within primary socialization can be leveraged. Some might argue that the socialization process is not secondary due to the amount of information that must be learned to function effectively. Referring back to the introductory story, the newbie in the Western town had difficulty maneuvering, interacting, and using clothes and other inventory items. This suggests he was having a difficult time learning how to navigate in SL. Although that skill set might be a large hurdle for some, it is not always so. Many come into SL after having used games or other devices that would provide some experience making the SL environment feel more intuitive.

Beyond technical issues of maneuverability, however, are important aspects of group participation. To get to the Western environment, because of where it was situated, the newbie would have needed to search for it and select it. Selection of the environment suggests familiarity with Westerns on some level and hence a degree of experience in interpreting the actions within the space. Most environments in SL have components of social environments learned through films, television, books, or other narrative sources. For example, those who participate in an

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environment such as a Dr. Who-themed area are bringing their knowledge of Dr. Who to the space to interpret the social action there. Previous knowledge can be applied.

Socialization is essentially training the individual to be capable of inhabiting an identity.

Social processes develop the understanding of the roles in society and prepare the individual to assume an identity. The individual becomes acutely aware of how to properly fit within the social group as a member of that society. When socialization is either neglected or lacking, their action becomes negatively labeled. Berger and Luckmann (1966) point to this when they discuss those who have not been successfully socialized (p. 165). They describe this situation as a kind of “asymmetry” between the reality that is held by the individual and the reality that is held by the group.

This kind of labeled identity fits with Goffman’s work on stigma. Stigma, as used by Goffman, refers to attributes associated with a stereotype of a discredited identity. Goffman (1963) states that stigma is related to information about an individual’s “abiding characteristics” as opposed to thoughts, feelings, or intentions (p.43). Labeling an individual with a kind of stigmatized identity can often come from visible characteristics. The individual may carry some kind of symbol that is used by others to assign stigmatized identity. Conversely, an individual might lack a prestige symbol that would socially place her outside of a stigmatized identity. This relates to what Goffman (1953) wrote about symbols of class status, saying that, “A sign of position can be a status symbol only if it is used with some regularity as a means of ‘placing’ socially the person who makes it” (p. 295). In other words, symbols that appear with some kind of frequency can designate that someone should not be labeled with a stigmatized identity because that symbol or object vouches for the individual’s status.

The final question shaping the current research is “How does the hypothesized stigma identity function and what does the label do?” In the case of the newbie, the label becomes a way of grouping those with whom one interacts with hesitation. The label also serves as a kind of corrective action. Making individuals aware of the stigmatized identity will lead individuals to find ways to remove stigmatized symbols and present prestige symbols. To learn how this works, the individual may look for those that have been socialized and so rid themselves of the stigma associated with a lack of socialization. Goffman (1963) calls these individuals “heroes of adjustment” (p. 25).

Identity work becomes important to shed a stigmatized identity. This social action achieves two goals. First, it is an attempt by the individual to obtain the necessary information from secondary socialization to truly function within the group and gain all that group life has to offer. This is a kind of internalized sense of socialization. Second, the unsocialized individual is trying to present signs of socialization and manage her identity in such a way that she is not seen as unsocialized. This is a kind of externalized sense of socialization that shows the individual is aware enough to avoid actions that would label them with an unsocialized identity.

These two aspects of identity work, internalized and externalized, are similar to Hochschild’s (1979) discussion of “emotion work.” Hochshild describes surface acting as a presentation of emotions to others and deep acting as the sensing of emotions within oneself. Her discussion of surface acting becomes surface socialization and her discussion of deep acting becomes deep socialization. And, much like her conception of emotion as being something that we change internally through work that happens on the surface, identity work is done to take the

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presented identity of the socialized individual and change the internal sense of how socialized one is. The results of surface work become deep, and the individual interacts with herself. This brings us back full circle to Blumer (1969) and his thoughts on interaction with the self: (T)he process of self-interaction puts the human being over against his world instead of merely in it, requires him to meet and handle his world through a defining process instead of merely responding to it, and forces him to construct his action instead of merely releasing it. (p.

61) The ideas cited above provide a scope for this paper, and in many ways, this study is reminiscent of other work that has been done in virtual spaces. For instance, Kendall (2002) uses a similar sociological perspective to investigate activity in a Multiuser Dungeon (MUD). This work, however, looks specifically at the newbie experience. Providing a deeper understanding of the way that socialization works in virtual spaces can give insight to businesses that wish to develop better products and services to assist virtual world users in adapting to their new environments.

Method The research approach for this paper is much in line with previous studies related to virtual spaces such as online communities that communicate through online forums (Kozinets 2002), MUDs (Kendell 2002), or virtual worlds designed for gaming (Taylor 2006). Kendell (2002) described her work with MUDs as an online ethnography, and noted that an ethnography of a world in which people communicate through written text is, in a sense, “writing about writing” (p. 233). To a degree, that is also the case with Second Life; much of the communication in these spaces tends to be in text (though speech capability was made available during the data collection period). Additional to the text, however, is the visual presentation of the virtual world. In virtual worlds, much like the physical world, the look of the space and its inhabitants influences the action taken. This required that screenshots and field notes be used to capture some data that would otherwise be lost if the sole source of data was the chat log.

In some ways, this work might be viewed as part of the next generation of netnography.

Kozinets (2002) defines netnography—his term for ethnography on the Internet—as a “qualitative research methodology that adapts ethnographic research techniques to the study of cultures and communities emerging through computer mediated communications” (p. 62). In outlining a series of steps for finding virtual locations and performing netnography as a marketing research data collection technique, Kozinets tended to steer marketing researchers away from active participation in MUDs and chat rooms as they “tend to be considerably less market oriented in their focus,” but this is likely due to the predominant state of these worlds at the time of his writing. Within the last few years, markets in and around virtual worlds have gained importance and generated interest (Castronova 2005, Malaby 2006). Because of this, what may have seemed like a waste of time when Kozinets outlined netnography—marketing researcher immersion in virtual worlds—appears to have great potential and may eventually need to be considered as a standard element of effective marketing campaigns.

Data for this paper were collected through online ethnographic/netnographic research.

There were essentially four data sources. First, I spent several months in SL as a resident. This period lasted from July 2006 to January 2007. This period was characterized by exploring the

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spaces in SL and getting a general feel for what SL was. Also during this period, I chatted with fellow residents and began joining groups to gain familiarity with the environment (as well as joining groups for fun). Over the course of these several months, I was in SL for a couple of hours a week for a total of approximately 50 hours.

Second, a formal period of data collection and participant observation in SL occurred from February 3, 2007, to April 15, 2007. This is the primary source for data within this paper and provided the bulk of my information about what makes up the social fabric of the virtual world and the elements of the newbie identity. Field notes were collected during this period and many chat conversations with consenting participants were also obtained to gain insight on the types and purposes of interaction.

Third, unstructured interviews with five subjects were held within SL using the computerized chat feature of SL. Interviews were conducted with subjects who reviewed and emailed back informed consent forms. Chat sessions for formal interviews generally lasted approximately an hour and a half, with the shortest interview lasting about forty minutes and the longest interviews lasting about one hour and forty-five minutes. Subjects were selected based in part on their ability to contribute to an understanding of how socialization occurred within SL. Three subjects were encountered through avatar-to-avatar interaction during travels within SL, one subject was approached through contact information at a shop that she ran in SL, and one subject was a relative who became interested in trying SL while data was being collected for this project. Time spent in SL, doing formal participant observation and unstructured interviews, was approximately 100 hours.

Finally, information was collected from various sources outside of SL. During the time of the research, there were residents running blogs, news websites, instructional videos and â&#x20AC;&#x153;machinimaâ&#x20AC;? (films created using computer-generated worlds for animationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for more information, see Jenkins 2006). These various sources were generally used to provide information about how to negotiate the SL space.

Data was collected in a word processor during in-world sessions and field notes were written in an iterative process during and immediately after sessions. Screen shots were also used as a data collection method to capture information regarding surroundings quickly. Field notes and chat logs captured for use in this study totaled approximately 159 pages with over 70,000 words. These pages were reviewed with coding assigned to different recurrent elements. An overview of the coding was then entered into an observation log to provide a broad categorization of the data contained in individual files.

Because interviews were done within SL using chat, the interview text does not appear the same as normal tape transcriptions. To maintain the character of the original interviews, all quotes in this paper are presented much as they would appear in SL. Each line that is presented here was one line from the actual chat log for the interview. No corrective notation is added to the interview quotations so that the exact quote from the respondent is maintained.

Results As stated earlier, the questions that are being reviewed within this paper are how group life works in SL; how the interests, goals, and rules of group life are learned through secondary

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socialization; and how the individuals work to shed the stigma of the unsuccessfully socialized identity, the identity of the newbie. To demonstrate this, perspectives gained through ethnographic research are presented below and considered regarding the way a virtual world is socially constructed and the way that the identity of the newbie is conceptualized generally and dealt with by individuals specifically.

Social Construction of Reality As was discussed in the literature review, to examine a virtual world under the lens of sociological social psychology, one must consider what action is being taken and consider how individuals are receiving secondary socialization to properly function as members of the group.

Within SL, the first important thing to consider is the formal and informal structure behind interaction and the rules used in social situations. Below are descriptions of both formal rules and other types of rules—both explicit and implicit—that are applied to interaction in SL. After these are considered, a general discussion related to socialization in SL is presented.

Formal rules of the user agreement.

One element of virtual worlds that easily demonstrates its structure as a community is that there are explicit rules of activity. SL has specific user rules as part of its terms of service, described as “Community Standards.” These rules directly address what are referred to as the “Big Six” behaviors that infringe on the rights of others, which are intolerance, harassment, assault, disclosure (sharing another resident’s RL personal information without consent), indecency, and disturbing the peace (Community Standards, n.d.). These rules are enforced by the developers of SL, Linden Lab. Not only are such rules posted, but an effort is made to make it clear to residents that rules are enforced and that punishments may be inflicted on those who do not follow them.

Linden Lab posts police blotters. These are available either from the SL web site or as an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. In this manner, one can keep up to date with the areas in SL where issues are occurring and can note the action taken, such as suspending the resident from all SL activity for a period of time.

Other rules.

While there are formal rules that are considered enforceable throughout SL, there are also localized rules and suggestions for conduct that residents generate. Again, these can be enforced through SL police departments, but more often they are just taken as suggestions for properly interacting in a particular space.

One informant, Vrekasht1, was a friend that I met while visiting a Star Trek-related area of SL. She was a fairly new resident, and she was an excellent informant because I was able to learn from her what it was like to gain familiarity with SL and what it is like to become a highly involved member of a community with a very specific mission, such as creating information and displays related to Star Trek. In an interview with her, she described a situation when she and some friends saw someone attempting to break the rules and the way that this was handled: 1

All names for me, informants, and locations that are given in this document are modified to maintain privacy.

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Vrekasht: *LOL* Marty tried to take me to a nightclub the other day, and the first thing that happened was a naked dancing fat man started chasing us around Vrekasht: Yeah Me: That's nice. Hey, if you wanted that, you'd club in rl. Am I right?

Vrekasht: Heh Vrekasht: I think the sort of mod/overseer/greeter had a hand in this - because a giant box suddenly started covering him that said "PLEASE PUT YOUR DICK AWAY" Me: LOL Me: That's hilarious.

Vrekasht: Yes *L* In the situation described, it is not apparent whether any further sanctions were placed on the offending individual, but it is clear that some kind of action was taken to publicly sanction the offender and demonstrate that deviations from the rules and social norms of the club would not be tolerated.

Early in my experiences in SL, I began going to virtual nightclubs. Many clubs are very similar to RL. There is music, which generally provides the theme of the club and in some way fits with the décor; there is space for avatars to dance; and there is a standard mode of dress. One of the first sites visited for this research was a jazz club. I quickly learned from this place that clothing one’s avatar is an extremely important practice in SL and is essentially a duty owed to the community. Whereas everyone else at this club was wearing some degree of finery, with male avatars in suits and tuxedos and female avatars in lovely gowns, I was wearing my newbie outfit which consisted of blue jeans and a white t-shirt. I soon wore a sport coat over this outfit to disguise it to a degree, but after a time I purchased a tuxedo.

What I describe as my experience seems in many ways common. This has led some places, to include the one I mention, to post rules for patrons. For example, one jazz club I liked to attend posted a list of rules and suggestions for conduct. Not all of the rules on this list were “rules.” The sign that was posted began by making a suggestion regarding the attire of patrons, stating specifically that clothing was not optional and implying formalwear was preferred, though not mandatory. Some clubs have more rigid rules, such as requiring avatars be in formal attire and providing free suits to help residents meet the requirements.

Other clubs require less formal attire. For instance, I attended an ‘80’s music club where all of the avatars were wearing some form of casual clothing. Mine was the lone avatar that was not wearing clothing that either had denim or leather, but at the time my avatar was a dinosaur.

(In figure 1 my avatar is the raptor dancing in the foreground.) This club did not have formal rules for dress, but the informal rules – the “unsaid” rules, as they might be described—suggest that the attire should follow a particular protocol.

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Figure 1

Secondary socialization. Residents of SL need to learn how to operate in the new environment and effectively interact with other residents as a kind of secondary socialization.

Some of the keys to this have already been discussed. First, residents need to have a basic understanding of the rules. Beyond presentations of the rules, however, residents need to learn what communities are in SL and how to properly interact within them.

Secondary socialization is primarily achieved by watching how other members of the group interact. For instance, I learned through interaction that most greetings in SL include the first name. All avatars have a label above them that provides their names and one group affiliation2. For instance, assume my avatar’s name was Alton Wickerstrom. Upon meeting someone, they would say something like, “Hi, Alton!” whether they knew me or not. I began to realize that this was the expected form of interaction throughout most of SL. Even when meeting a stranger, one is open to this kind of greeting.

As SL is a diverse community with many different groups, localized behavior is also important to understand. For instance, at some clubs, one learns that the preferred form of communication when two avatars are face to face is not chat, which all within 30 virtual meters may “hear,” but IM, which is not distance-sensitive and which is private. Quite often I would be in a club with a dozen or so avatars with all of them dancing and none of them chatting. This did

2 During most of my time in SL working on this project, I had a group affiliation listing me as an RL researcher. My group affiliation varied from this only in situations when I joined a new group and my affiliation would default to the new group without me realizing it. For instance, I joined a group that was interested in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books and this changed my group affiliation to “Mostly Harmless” for a few days.

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not mean that communication was not happening; it sometimes meant that communication was occurring in private IM channels.

Stigmatized Identity of the Newbie During my research I became aware of the stigma associated with being new. Newness for me was experienced as a kind of awkwardness when I would realize that I was somehow out of alignment with my environment. By recognizing my own awkwardness, I came to realize two things. First, there was a general negative impression of the new person in SL, usually referred to as a “newbie.” The negative impression was not usually very strong, and not universal, but also not uncommon. Second, the status of newbie is one that, for every individual, must be overcome.

No one joins SL as a veteran resident. All members must pass through the experiences of the newbie to some degree.

In this section, I will provide some resident definitions of the newbie. Next, I will describe behavior that is explicitly deviant and ascribed to the identity of the newbie. Then, elements of the newbie that are more subtle and more difficult to see in oneself will be explored.

I will then conclude with examples of action taken to perform identity work to divest oneself of the label of the newbie.

Defining newbies.

I gained an interest in understanding the newbie identity early in my research. For a couple of interviews, the status of newbie was something that I would bring up to learn the informant’s thoughts. However, in three of the five formal interviews, the topic of newbies came up while discussing other things. For instance, Julia was chatting about exploring new areas in SL. She stated that if a place was interesting, then it was either empty or, if it was somehow sexual, it was filled with newbies. This is the conversation that followed: Me: Tell me about newbies.

Me: How do you spot them?

Julia: they are either nice or a pain in the ass :) Julia: if they are very new - the walk :) Me: Yeah, I must admit, I haven't "corrected" mine yet, despite the area of the research.

Julia: but I remember how I was helped when I was new. and if they are nice, I help them as well From this brief discussion, we see that (1) when a place is filled with newbies, it is about as bad as if it was empty. In other words, either way, one will not have pleasant social interaction in this location. We also see that (2) although newness makes a newbie, it is not the criteria by which they are spotted. Julia’s mention of “the walk” is a reference to the use of animation overrides for an avatar. At the time of the interview, I was just becoming aware that I needed to address this which is why I mentioned that I had not yet corrected my walk.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Social Construction of Virtual Reality 13

The final thing that we see is (3) that she recognizes that she was once a newbie, too, and that if the newbie is “nice,” she will help the newbie as she was helped when she was new. This was a common theme. Based on my experience, most SL residents try to be friendly and helpful to each other. For the vast majority of subjects, the Community Standards are not something that needs to be read for civil interaction. Most residents are understanding, helpful, and assist newbies to the extent of their own patience.

Newbies, from Julia’s description, simply need to learn more about the environment.

They need to understand the tools that are available to them in SL to live better second lives.

This concept was echoed in the ideas of another informant who stated that those who used chat over IM were generally newbies. From his perspective, too, the newbie simply did not know the tools available to more effectively operate in SL. Another informant, Vrekasht, contrasted “newbie” with “noob,” stating that she thought that the first sounded more like a term of affection but the second was only meant as derogatory.

She only used the term newbie to describe herself at the time she was interviewed, which was about a month after she had started using SL. When I asked her how she used the term in reference to herself, she said, “Apologetically, usually. *giggles*.” Calling oneself a newbie is a way of seeking forgiveness and understanding.

Deviance and the newbie identity. One of the informants for this study had a job logging abuse reports with Linden Lab against disturbing patrons for a club. We planned to meet for an interview on a Sunday morning, but he was dramatically delayed. When he arrived for the interview, we started by me asking him about work: Antony: how are you Alton Me: Good! How was work?

Antony: jeesh Antony: so many reports Antony: newbies As this suggests, Antony’s felt most of the situations within SL when there were issues with residents ignoring rules were the fault of a newbie. The key to understanding the behavior, much like when looking at these situations in RL, is intent. When someone intends to break rules or ignore conduct standards, then they go beyond being a newbie and may be referred to as a griefer. While we were discussing how weapons work in SL he stated that some weapons just “grief” people.

Me: Now how would you define grief?

Antony: upsetting people in here that are doing there usual daily thing Antony: taking time out of there way by interfering with there life

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Social Construction of Virtual Reality 14

Antony: for no reason other than to pick onthem Those who grief, based on Antonyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective, tended to be newbies who looked at SL as more of a game rather than a place for people to interact socially. He assumed most griefers simply did not properly understand life in SL. Lack of knowledge and the newbie identity. Though Antony blamed most of the abuse reports in SL on newbies, he also had spent a lot of time helping newbies manage life in SL. He mentioned assisting them with finding good clubs, and objects that were within their avatarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inventory.

As the quote from my interview with Julia suggested, I had to learn how to fix my walk. I learned from walking with other informants that my walk was jerky and less efficient. I learned through Vrekasht, who had been in SL for far less time than I had, that an animation override would provide more fluid movement for my avatar. From Julia, I received an animation override and some suggestions for getting additional poses to work with the override.3 Julia was assisted as a newbie by people that helped her learn about taking pictures in SL and picking outfits. She mentioned that if newbies were nice, she helped them as she was helped.

I was one of the newbies that she was willing to help. Not only did she provide the animation override, but she took me to a blues club and showed me around. What she was doing was providing me with the tools to have an enriched experience in SL. She was attempting to help me achieve internalized secondary socialization by showing me one of her favorite clubs and externalized secondary socialization by providing me with a better walk through the animation override.

Avoiding the newbie look. Developing a better understanding of SL is the way one works toward an internalization of the secondary socialization process. This is important, but part of achieving internalized socialization is showing externalized socialization and looking the part. In this way, it is important for one to act in a way that distances one from the stigmatized newbie identity.

My first act was to move myself away from the newbie look. Figure 2 shows me as I looked for the first few months in SL. I had made some early adjustments to my avatar, making myself shorter and heavier than most, but my face was the standard clean-shaven look and my hair was the dead-giveaway newbie style. As a resident who participated only a couple of hours a week, I slowly learned the importance of paying more attention to these details. I changed my usual look around the time that I began formal data collection for this project. Figure 3 shows my avatar in a look that is more like what I usually have now, with a purchased tuxedo, pointier head hair, and facial hair.

3

I met Julia because I had seen her work as part of a collection of vendors who sold poses and animations. I contacted her originally to collect data for a related project, on markets within SL for gestures and the purchasing of communicative competence, but she was extremely helpful in other areas as well.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Social Construction of Virtual Reality 15

Figure 2

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Social Construction of Virtual Reality 16

Figure 3

Changing these elements of appearance help to present oneself to others as someone who knows what he is doing in SL (though I still have a hint of newbie about me most of the time).

Informants and my experiences in SL led me to see the importance of finding ways to make an avatar look distinctive. This leads back to the idea of the market in SL. Much of the money spent by those interviewed was spent on items that would change avatar appearance. For instance, I asked Cassius about his first purchase: Me: So, what sort of stuff have you bought? When, where and why did you spend your first $L? Cassius: hmmm... think I spent it on hair Cassius: There's a natural desire to fit in, and newbies definitely stand out Me: Yeah, I started to feel that myself after a while.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Social Construction of Virtual Reality 17

Cassius: I've bought a few clothes... this suit for example.

Cassius also mentioned within this interview that it was other residents, people who had been in SL for a long time, that suggested buying hair. In this way, Cassius found “heroes of adjustment” in veteran users. They were people who were no longer newbies and could guide Cassius.

The type of consumption discussed by Cassius, and the reasoning behind it, is representative of many residents in SL. Purchases are made to present a look and define a person as socialized into SL. Clothing, hair, and objects are purchased to show that one belongs. This can be done in a general sense, as Cassius describes, or it can be done to present a look that defines an individual as belonging to a particular group.

For example, after Vrekasht had been in SL for about a month, she began building small replicas of characters from Star Trek television shows and movies. With some encouragement from others, she began selling these virtual plushies for a few L$ as an attachment for avatars.

Plushies were briefly worn on the shoulders of those in the Star Trek community along with other objects, such as Star Trek uniforms. Though she sold the plushies at one area in SL, they were worn in other areas related to Star Trek. In effect, they became a symbol of group membership.

Discussion This study suggests that secondary socialization in SL has several important components.

First, it draws heavily from RL. Conceptions of reality narratives and proper social interaction are pulled from the world in which primary socialization occurred. The action that Blumer asks us to look for which makes up group life suggests that the multiple narratives combined in SL have the potential to create a new narrative to feed back into RL. SL, like RL, is a world of creativity that is shaped by residents. It is not a game with set rules. It is actively altered by those who participate in it.

Second, the success of secondary socialization is something that SL residents evaluate in each other and themselves. Those who either act in a way that is uncivil or unsocialized are stigmatized. This stigmatization leads to reduced interaction with fellow residents. However, the stigma is one that everyone senses in herself at some point and most members of SL are willing to do what they can to assist a newbie. SL, again like RL, has social identities that vary in desirability and identity work can be done to learn how group life works and thus leads to socialization.

Third, living in a virtual world requires the individual to collect virtual stuff. One cannot be anything but a newbie in the eyes of others if one’s wardrobe is empty and one has not spent the time, effort, or money to alter one’s appearance. It is possible through creativity and search activities to present a socialized appearance; however, the market offers the quickest solution to looking the part. Also, free items tended to be items that required less work by the person who made them so purchased items can be of higher quality. Identity work can be pursued by shopping. What Goffman noted about RL applies to SL as well; status symbols can be part of the identity work toolkit. It is through consumption that we can become socialized and express our connectedness to the rest of the group.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Social Construction of Virtual Reality 18

Consumption to develop a particular kind of identity varies depending on the group to which one wishes to belong. Being a member of the group at a jazz club is different than being a member of the group in a Wild West town or at the Star Trek museum. Future research might be done to survey members of different groups to see if the same categories of items are purchased to pursue socialized identities across social groups.

Additionally, it would be of interest to marketers of physical world products to provide support for virtual communities matching up with their products and receptive to corporate involvement. Some companies have already tested the waters by providing their own spaces in Second Life and offering items that fit with the spaces that they have created. Based on this research, a better approach might be to identify a particular kind of community in virtual worlds and provide items that would be of common interest to community members.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Social Construction of Virtual Reality 19

Bibliography Bell, M. (2008). Toward a Definition of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Virtual Worlds.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1 (1).

Berger, P. & Luckman, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interaction: Perspective and Method. Berkley, California: PrenticeHall.

Castronova, E. (2005, May). Real Products in Imaginary World. Harvard Business Review, p.

20-22. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=759924 Castronova, E. (2007). Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Community Standards. (n.d.) Second Life. Retrieved April 28, 2007, from SecondLife.com Web site: http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php Gartner. (2007). Google. Retrieved April 28, 2007, from Secondlife.Reuters.com Web site: http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsI d=20070424006287&newsLang=en Goffman, E. (1951). Symbols of Class Status. The British Journal of Sociology, 2(4): 294-304.

Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York, NY: Prentice-Hall.

Hochschild, A. (1979). Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85(3): 551-575.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Kendall, L. (1992). Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online.

Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

Kozinets, R. (2002, February). The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities. Journal of Marketing Research, 39: 61-72.

Malaby, T. (2006). Parlaying Value: Capital In and Beyond Virtual Worlds. Games and Culture, 1(2): 141-162.

Schroeder, R. (2008). Defining Virtual Worlds and Virtual Environments. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1 (1).

Sony. (2007). The Wall Street Journal Online. Retrieved April 28, 2007, from WSJ.com Web site: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117331459114130286search.html?KEYWORDS=sony+second+life&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worldsâ&#x20AC;?

November 2008

Surveillance, Consumers, and Virtual Worlds

By Douglas R. Dechow, Chapman University

This is a brief essay, we call "think-pieces", designed to stimulate a discussion on a particular topic. For this series of essays we propose the following question: "Consumer behavior in virtual worlds, is it really any different to the real world, or is it simply a case of 'old wine in a new bottle'?"

Keywords: consumer behavior; data mining; surveillance

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Surveillance, Consumers, and Virtual Worlds 2

Surveillance, Consumers, and Virtual Worlds

By Douglas R. Dechow, Chapman University

In the almost twenty-year-old article “Old Wine in New Bottles” (Friedman, 1991), Milton Friedman discussed the changing landscape of tools and practices in economics.

Friedman described the transformation occuring in that body of practice because of mathematics, computers, collaboration, and even “data mining.” The end result was that the “efficiencies” of doing economics were improving, but the substance of the field had changed very little.

Many of the same tools and practices, particularly computation and collaboration, have been employed to produce virtual worlds (Bell, 2008). An emerging aspect of virtual worlds that deserves thought is the role of surveillance in the relationship between consumers and consumption in virtual worlds. An useful definition of this aspect is offered by Giddens (1987): surveillance is “the collection and organization of information that can be stored by agencies or collectivities and can be used to ‘monitor’ the activities of an administered population” (p. 174).

As opposed to the review of economics that Friedman offered, in which computation had made economists merely more effective but had had relatively little effect on the questions they studied, I argue that the substance of the relationship between consumers and consumption will likely be profoundly affected by surveillance and related capabilities in virtual worlds.

Consumer Surveillance & Malleable Environments In an analysis of Giddens’s work, Webster (2006) portrays the use of surveillance tools to capture transactional information, information which “contributes towards an individuated portrait of that person’s spending habits, clothing and food tastes, even preferred shopping locations” (p. 225). Webster’s transactional information calls to mind the scene in the film Minority Report where an eye-scanning system is used to tailor advertising to the character of John Anderton. In the film, the content of the advertising is, at some level, constrained by the character’s embeddedness in the physical environment.

The digital malleability of a virtual environment, however, removes these constraints. In a virtual world, where it is not only possible but, perhaps, even advisable to capture, store, and analyze the entire information history of an avatar’s—the human agent’s in-world representative—activities, what are the implications for the kind of tailored advertising that might be based on such surveillance?

Another example from television further illustrates this phenomenon: a recent commercial’s appeal was based on the notion of being able to transform the viewer’s business as quickly and responsively as the changing business environment. Urban hipsters negotiated a hypothetical commercial space that was a chic café at lunchtime and then a trendy clothing store later that afternoon. As the advertisement ended, the space was already transmogrifying into yet another business opportunity.

The physical world does not yet support this type of rapid remaking, but virtual worlds afford environments where this type of change is not only possible, it’s probable. So, the

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Surveillance, Consumers, and Virtual Worlds 3

malleability of a virtual world can be combined in intriguing and unpredictable ways with individuated surveillance data to produce a virtual environment that is specific to an avatar’s consumption history.

Schroeder’s recent definition of virtual worlds (Schroeder, 2008) opens with an emphasis on the importance being able to experience the presence of others in a virtual environment. The aspects discussed above—individuated surveillance data and malleable environments—can be used to create a virtual world with the appearance of a shared space, implying a shared experience. In fact, the means (and motives?) exist to create virtual spaces where participants have significantly different experiences of that shared space.

Consider the lighting setting in Second Life. The ambient lighting, and the resultant view, of the simulation space is under the control of the individual. One avatar/human agent pair can experience a shared simulation space as night, while the other avatar/human agents can set their spaces to midday.

It is possible to envision a situation in which the participants in a simulation experience the world around them in ways that have been tailored by their consumer history and that affect their future consumption behavior. For example, what if a store owner’s data-mining software were to indicate that, of all of the avatars currently in the store, one is the most likely to make a purchase? Will the store owner use that information to manipulate the price in a way that induces the likeliest avatar/human agent make the purchase? Now, imagine that this manipulation, the presumed lowering of the price, has taken place beyond the awareness of the other avatars in the store.

Consumer Comfort and Experience Let me return to the example of the lighting settings in Second Life. If upon entering a simulation space in Second Life I find that it is nighttime, I reflexively change the setting to provide more light. As a consumer, I also have reflexive responses to which I give little thought.

One cultivated response is that I drool every time Apple releases a new product. Presumably, such consumer responses could be valuable (to someone) in a virtual world. What will happen when my observations and interactions in a virtual environment are mediated by the activities of non-human agents?

Recently, an article about an artificial intelligence-based avatar in Second Life appeared in USA Today (Hill, 2008). Edd Hifeng, the avatar in question, is a creation of AI researcher Selmer Bringsjord. In earlier research, Bringsjord created the Psychometric Experimental Robotic Intelligence (PERI). An account of PERI’s achievements appeared in Rensselaer.mag (2002); PERI has performed well on sections of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised IQ exam. In the USA Today article, Bringsjord expresses the belief that Edd Hifeng’s descendants—non-human agents—will carry out interactions with people. The article reports, “Operators of ‘Second Life’ don’t seem concerned about synthetic agents lurking in their world.”

AI-based avatars could be used to manipulate the prices of goods and services in a virtual environment. Consider the scenario in which a virtual mall is seeded with AI-based avatars consuming virtual goods (which can be tied to physical-world goods). If an avatar/human agent pair is embedded in such an environment, that avatar/human’s past, physical-world experiences

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Surveillance, Consumers, and Virtual Worlds 4

could lead that avatar/human to believe that what he or she is seeing is an appropriate price to pay. And yet, in a virtual environment populated by AI-based avatars, such past experiences might be misleading or useless.

Conclusion It is possible, therefore, to posit scenarios where the marriage of consumer surveillance and an emerging technology, such as AI-based avatars, has the ability to influence consumer behavior. In such scenarios, surveillance data can be used to produce comforting, encouraging, and individualized environments in order to manipulate behavior. If the consumer surveillance indicates that an avatar/human is more likely to purchase in a bustling environment, artificial agents can provide a tool with which such an environment can be created. In addition, an experience that appears familiar or shared, but is not, will mislead. Perhaps, too, an Edd Hifeng descendent will compliment and cajole a consumer into a purchase. As consumers move into virtual environments, we must contemplate the extent to which surveillance may be used to shape our experiences.

Bibliography Artificial Intelligence with a Certified IQ. (2002, December 1). Rensselaer.mag. Retrieved from http://news.rpi.edu.

Bell, M. (2008). Toward a Definition of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Virtual Worldsâ&#x20AC;?. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(1). Retrieved from http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/283/237 Friedman, M. (1992). Old Wine in New Bottles, J. D. Hey (Ed.), The Future of Economics. (p.

33-40). Cambridge, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell.

Giddens, A. (1987). Social Theory and Modern Sociology. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Hill, M. (2008, May 18). Second Life has a special guest: artificial intelligence. USA Today.

Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com Schroeder, R. (2008). Defining Virtual Worlds and Virtual Environments. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(1). Retrieved from http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/294/225 Webster, F. (2006). Theories of the Information Society. New York: Routledge.

Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worldsâ&#x20AC;?

November 2008

On the Relationship between My Avatar and Myself By Paul R. Messinger, School of Business, University of Alberta; Xin Ge, School of Business, University of Northern British Columbia; Eleni Stroulia, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta; Kelly Lyons, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto; Kristen Smirnov, and Michael Bone, School of Business, Universityof Alberta

Abstract What is the relationship between avatars and the people they represent in terms of appearance and behavior? In this paper, we hypothesize that people (balancing motives of self-verification and self-enhancement) customize the image of their avatars to bear similarity to their real selves, but with moderate enhancements.

We also hypothesize that virtual-world behavior (due to deindividuation in computer-mediated communication environments) is less restrained by normal inhibitions than real-world behavior. Lastly, we hypothesize that people with more attractive avatars than their real selves will be somewhat more confident and extraverted in virtual worlds than they are in the real world.

We examine these issues using data collected from Second Life residents using an in-world intercept method that involved recruiting respondentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; avatars from a representative sample of locations. Our quantitative data indicate that, on average, people report making their avatars similar to themselves, but somewhat more attractive. And, compared to real-world behavior, respondents indicate that their virtual-world behavior is more outgoing and risk-taking and less thoughtful/more superficial. Finally, people with avatars more attractive than their real selves state that they are more outgoing, extraverted, risk-taking, and loud than their real selves (particularly if they reported being relatively low on these traits in the real world).

Qualitative data from open-ended questions corroborate our hypotheses.

Keywords: Avatar appearance; avatar behavior; virtual worlds; self-concept; self-enhancement; self-verification; deindividuation.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 2

In virtual worlds, people design 3D anthropomorphic digital representations of themselves called avatars.1 Avatars mediate participant’s interactions with each other and the environment. Avatars sit, walk, run, drive, fly, teleport, dance, and communicate with other avatars. The avatar is the “face” (and body) of a person within the virtual world. People can freely express themselves in the appearance of their avatars, limited only by their imaginations and the available technology.

A question arises as to whether, through their avatars, people project images of themselves that are similar to or dramatically different from their real-world images. In particular, are avatars more or less attractive than the people they represent? A related question arises as to whether virtual-world behavior is systematically different from (and possibly less inhibited than) real-world behavior. When connecting these two questions, a final question arises as to whether differences in appearance lead to differences in behavior. We consider these questions in this paper.

Questions such as these are important because virtual worlds have implications that go beyond how we play, to include how we buy, work, learn, and engage in group activities (Bartle, 2006; Balkin & Noveck, 2006). In the prominent virtual world Second Life, at least 126 real-life brands have some form of presence (be it in promotions, advertisements, market research, or service delivery; Barnes, 2007); more than 25,365 business are operated (mostly as stores, clubs, and property management companies; DMD, 2007); over 150 universities maintain campuses, buildings, classes, offices, or message-boards (with hyperlinks to Internet websites; Graves, 2008); and various public organizations and cultural groups utilize the environment for conferencing, public meetings, delivery of information, and performances or exhibits. Similar activities are evidenced in other worlds that focus on entertainment (e.g., World of Warcraft), creativity (e.g., Kaneva), children (e.g., Webkinz, Neopets, Club Penguin, and RuneScape), languages (e.g., Cyworld and HiPiHi), media (e.g., vSide), and education (e.g., ActiveWorlds and there.com). According to one estimate, 20 to 30 million people regularly participated in virtual worlds in 2006, spending an average of almost twenty-two hours per week within these spaces (Balkin & Noveck, 2006). Some even suggest that the 3D Internet will become as important to companies in five years as the Web is now (Driver et al., 2008), especially as efforts to build standard protocols to integrate virtual worlds mature (Shute, 2008). As activity grows in such avatar-mediated playgrounds and workspaces, it is increasingly important to understand how people represent themselves with their avatars and how virtual environments influence user behavior.

In this paper, we approach these issues by first framing avatar attractiveness in terms of two competing tendencies identified by social psychologists pertinent to self-concept and selfimage: whether people act more in accordance with motives for self-enhancement or selfverification. We then consider how virtual- and real-world behavior differ by investigating how the computer-mediated environment of virtual worlds may affect people to behave in ways not normal for themselves, including reduced social and psychological inhibitions. Lastly, we look at the interaction between avatar attractiveness and behavior against research that has shown that more attractive people tend to be more confident, extraverted, and aggressive in many of their 1

The term “avatar” derives from the Sanskrit word “avatara,” which means "incarnation.” In the context of on-line virtual worlds, the term denotes a graphical object corresponding to the user’s virtual body in the world. Neal Stephenson made this use of the term “avatar” popular in his novel Snow Crash (Stephenson, 1992).

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 3

behaviors than less attractive people (Langlois et al., 2000). We consider three hypotheses and test them using data collected through an in-world survey of participants in Second Life.

Past Literature Avatar Appearance The avatar’s appearance has drawn wide research attention in recent years. Abundant effort has been devoted to understanding the influence of the avatar’s appearance on individuals’ judgments of the avatar with whom they interact (e.g., Dehn & Mulken, 2000; Nowak, 2004).

The notion of avatar, in this research, includes not only human participants of a virtual environment embodied by digital representations, but also non-human virtual agents such as animated interface agents (i.e., computer programs that aid users in accomplishing different tasks on the computer). This research examines such issues as whether the presence or absence of an avatar image influences users’ attitudes toward the virtual agent, and how anthropomorphism of the avatar (i.e., the avatar taking a human versus a non-human form) affects the perceived attractiveness and credibility of the person represented by the avatar.

However, limited work has been done investigating how users of virtual worlds tend to design their own avatars. Earlier work has indicated that despite the technological constraints, people prefer to have control over their avatar design (Schroeder, 2002). It has also been conjectured that avatars are likely to be very realistic, and that people tend to carefully choose the images of their avatars to represent the characteristics essential to their identities (Schroeder, 2002; Taylor, 2002). Nevertheless, we still lack empirical evidence to support these conjectures.

The rest of this section of the paper sets the theoretical background to understand how people tend to craft their avatars relative to their actual selves. Since the avatar is a proxy of a person in the virtual world – an “entire self-representation” (Yee & Bailenson, 2007) – designing the avatar appearance reflects how an individual projects his or her self-concept or self-image.

To consider this, we review the literature on the two psychological processes pertinent to how people portray their self-concept or self-image. Whereas conventional wisdom considers these two factors as opposing processes, we build on a more recent integrative view that emphasizes the interaction of the two factors.

Self-enhancement.

Self-enhancement is a fundamental human tendency to “propel the ego upward” (Koffka, 1935). Self-enhancement theory is based on the notion that individuals are motivated to promote a positive self-concept and solicit positive feedback from other people, referred to as simple selfenhancement, and that those who hold negative self-views tend to distort personal information in a positive direction, referred to as compensatory self-enhancement (Hull, 1943; Kaplan, 1975).

Sedikides et al. (2003) examined the moderating effect of cultural background on the selfenhancement motive, demonstrating that individuals from Japan (with a collectivistic cultural background) self-enhance on collectivistic attributes, whereas individuals from the U.S. (with an individualistic cultural background) self-enhance on individualistic attributes. This finding challenges the belief that the self-enhancement motive is pervasive only in individualistic cultures and renders support for the universality of the self-enhancement motive.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 4

Self-verification.

In contrast to the preceding view, self-verification theory contends that people are motivated to maintain a consistent self-concept, preserve the truth about themselves, and seek objective feedback from others (Swann, 1987). People are motivated to self-verify because portraying one’s self-concept in a stable, self-congruent manner helps avoid psychological and interpersonal anarchy, bolsters a person’s confidence in predicting and controlling the world, and facilitates social interactions (Swann et al., 1989).

Interplay of Competing Motives.

On the basis of the observation that sometimes the same people seem to be subject to both self-enhancement and self-verification, some researchers propose to abandon an “either-or” approach in favor of a more reconciliatory view (Brown et al., 1988; Swann et al., 1989), suggesting that people are motivated simultaneously by self-enhancement and self-verification and that they will seek to satisfy both motives when possible.

In the same way that self-enhancement motives influence individuals’ self-presentational strategies to create one’s public image (Baumeister, 1982), we expect that participants tend to bias the construction of their avatars toward the direction of self-enhancement. At the same time, however, self-verification motives balance the self-enhancement motives, preventing the creation of an overly attractive avatar that is totally unrecognizable as the self.

Avatar Behavior In virtual worlds, participants exhibit a spectrum of behaviors through their avatars, navigating, viewing the world, driving vehicles, purchasing products, constructing buildings, joining clubs, interacting with other avatars, etc. It is important to understand the code of behaviors in the virtual worlds – whether behaviors are rooted in the real world, or whether participants are prone to behave in highly deviant ways in virtual environments. Recent research has produced rich evidence that people’s behaviors in virtual worlds tend to be congruent with those in the real world. Nevertheless, another line of research suggests that computer-mediated communication encourages individuals to break down their normal behavioral constraints, an effect known as deindividuation.

Two-way Transfer of Behaviors.

Existing literature provides empirical evidence of the similarity between individuals’ behaviors in the real and virtual worlds. It has also been demonstrated that behaviors established in the real world are transferable to the virtual worlds, and vice versa.

Much of the research has been devoted to understanding whether social norms and social behaviors in the real world are transferred into virtual worlds. In particular, Yee et al. (2007) found, in an observational study of Second Life, that in a virtual world setting, male-male dyads maintain larger interpersonal distance and less eye contact than female-female dyads. In addition, as interpersonal distance decreases, they are less likely to look at each other. These findings are congruent with well-documented social norms in the physical world. In a similar vein, Bailenson and Yee (2005) replicated the chameleon effect in a virtual environment, i.e., just as people who engage in mimicry of verbal and nonverbal cues of group members tend to be more likable than non-mimickers, mimicking avatars are more positively perceived by participants in a virtual

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 5

environment than non-mimicking avatars. Furthermore, the fact that people prefer to talk to attractive or interesting looking people holds true in virtual environments where more attractive avatars are more sought after for communication (Suler, 1996).

There is also emerging research directed at investigating the transfer of behaviors from the virtual to the real world. For instance, Messinger et al. (2009) found that Second Life participants who are satisfied with virtual presentation of products are more likely to engage in real life shopping for the products using store, website, phone, or catalogue shopping. In addition, Cabiria (2008) demonstrated that marginalized populations such as gays and lesbians find therapeutic benefit by participating in communities in virtual worlds, and then transfering these benefits to their real lives.

In short, previous research suggests permeability of behavior between real and virtual worlds allowing people to maintain consistent behaviors across their real and virtual lives.

Deindividuation and Lessened Inhibitions.

Deindividuation is a state of loss of personal identity that can lead a person to behave in a manner not normal for that person. It often arises as a result of being immersed in a large group or from a feeling of anonymity. Research on computer-mediated communication (CMC) suggests that anonymity, reduced self-regulation, and reduced social feedback can lead to the conditions that are important for deindividuation (Kiesler et al., 1984). Anonymity and lack of social feedback in CMC environments are also considered to elicit a deindividuation state that helps people to overcome social and psychological inhibitions (Kiesler & Sproull, 1992). Joinson (2001) found that anonymous participants in computer-mediated discussions disclose significantly more information about themselves than people who engage in face-to-face discussions.

Deindividuation is also proposed to be a cause of anti-social behavior such as rioting (Zimbardo, 1969), or deviant pro-social behavior (Gergen et al., 1973). Diener et al. (1976) showed that trick-or-treaters who are granted the opportunity to steal candy are three times more likely to steal when they are sure of their anonymity.

One can argue that the use of avatars in virtual worlds has changed the conditions of early CMC environments, which relied heavily on text exchange. For instance, the enhanced visualization of interacting avatars can reduce the sense of anonymity and physical isolation, and bring back some elements of social feedback, e.g., by showing head nods, smiles, eye contact, or changing interpersonal distance. However, individuals who â&#x20AC;&#x153;hideâ&#x20AC;? behind their avatars cannot be easily identified, allowing virtual worlds to provide a certain degree of anonymity. In addition, social feedback, such as nonverbal and paralinguistic cues, is constrained in scope in virtual worlds due to technological limitations, therefore, we expect participants of virtual worlds to experience some feelings of deindividuation.

Avatar Attractiveness and Avatar Behavior Having considered avatar appearance and how virtual- and real-world behaviors may differ, a natural consideration is whether avatar attractiveness influences virtual-world behavior.

Previous research on peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s physical appearance has suggested that attractive individuals have a higher level of confidence, and tend to be more extraverted and friendly than

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 6

less attractive people (Langlois et al., 2000). Taller individuals are perceived to be more competent than their shorter counterparts (Young & French, 1996). In a 3D virtual environment, Yee and Bailenson (2007) demonstrated that participants assigned a more attractive avatar of their same gender (regardless of their true appearance) maintain a shorter inter-personal distance with another avatar in a social interaction occasion; they also disclose more information about themselves than participants assigned a less attractive avatar. In addition, participants assigned a taller avatar negotiate more aggressively than those assigned a shorter avatar. This effect of avatar’s appearance on behavior is referred to as “the Proteus effect” (Yee & Bailenson, 2007).

We diverge in one respect from the analysis of Yee and Bailenson (2007). Whereas participants in their study were assigned either a more attractive or less attractive avatar, we consider the attractiveness of participants’ avatars relative to their real appearance. We then consider whether the use of an avatar more attractive than a person’s actual self will induce a behavioral effect. Like Yee and Bailenson (2007), we are interested in whether there is a main effect of avatar attractiveness on a person’s confidence and extraversion in a virtual world. We also consider an interaction effect whereby, if a person is unconfident or introverted in the real world, then having an attractive avatar may lead to a greater increase in their confidence and extraversion in a virtual world than for people who are confident and extraverted in the real world.

Hypotheses In the context of the above literature, we now propose hypotheses concerning (1) the choice of avatar appearance, (2) virtual-world behavior (relative to real-world behavior), and (3) the interaction between these two issues.

Brown et al. (1988) and Swann et al. (1989) suggest the possibility that people balance the motives for self-verification and self-enhancement, and we believe that such interplay of motives may be particularly applicable in the context of choosing avatar attractiveness.

Hypothesis 1: Striking a balance between competing motives for self-enhancement and self-verification, we hypothesize that participants tend to customize the image of their avatars such that the avatars bear similarity to their real selves, but with moderate enhancements.

For our second hypothesis, we consider how virtual- and real-world behavior differ in terms of the theory of deindividuation in computer-mediated communication environments.

Hypothesis 2: From the literature on transferable behavior between real and virtual worlds and on deindividuation in CMC environments, we hypothesize that virtual-world behavior tends to be similar to real-world behavior, but less restrained by people’s normal inhibitions.

Lastly, the interaction between avatar attractiveness and behavior reflects research that has shown that more attractive people tend to be more confident, extraverted, and aggressive in many of their behaviors than less attractive people (Langlois et al., 2000).

Hypothesis 3: We hypothesize that the use of an avatar more attractive than a person’s true self will induce greater extraversion, and that the increase will be greatest when the person is low on extraversion in the real world.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 7

Survey Methodology To examine these hypotheses, we conducted a survey of Second Life (SL) residents using an intercept-style recruitment method. Each respondent was paid 150 Linden Dollars for completing the survey, which required 10 to 15 minutes, or a smaller amount if they dropped out before completing the survey.

For an intercept-style recruitment method, it is important to develop and use field avatars that attract participants who are most likely to provide valid responses. It has been shown that attractiveness and expertise are key factors in designing effective avatars to interact with online consumers. Attractiveness influences perceptions of likeability while the expertise of an avatar can influence perceptions of credibility (Holzwarth et al., 2006). We created four field avatars to recruit participants, two male and two female and ran a pre-test measuring the participants’ perception of the survey avatars’ level of credibility, attractiveness, expertise, and likeability.

Our four avatars received high ratings on a 5-point scale for each measure.

To ensure that a diverse sample of participants was solicited, we used a randomized approach to decide which places our avatars would visit to recruit participants. Every possible three-letter combination between AAA and ZZZ was put into random order. Each letter combination was supplied to the SL “search place” function to yield a list of those places whose name or description contained that letter combination. Concatenating these search lists into one grand list, we selected every 10th place in the list to visit for 5-10 minutes and look for survey participants to recruit. We rotated use of the survey avatars so that each one visited approximately the same number of places. Our procedure allowed for randomization of lettercombinations, avatar order, and researcher order, while systematically visiting every nth location.

In order to make sure countries in different time zones were not penalized, data collection covered different times of the day, evening, and late night.

Survey respondents opened a web-based survey by “touching” a stationary board in a survey booth located on Flotsam Beach in SL (to which respondents were directed) or by touching a portable sandwich-board worn by our four survey avatars (see Figure 1). The survey began with a consent form and ended with debriefing and Linden dollar payout.

Figure 1. Our Survey Booth and One Survey Avatar with Sandwich board

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 8

Incomplete and non-serious (e.g., the response for 30 straight scale questions was ‘5’) surveys were removed from the data. The analysis that we report in this paper consisted of 97 complete surveys. The average age of participants in the study was 30.5 years, with more than two-thirds falling between the ages of 20-36. Fifty-six percent of participants were female with more than 70 percent of participants making less than $60,000 annually and three percent earning over $100,000. Most participants had completed high school, their undergraduate degree, or spent some time in university or college (90%), while only three percent had graduated with a Masters or Ph.D. degree. Participants had, on average, 25.8 hours of leisure time per week and the frequency of country of origin was U.S. 53, Netherlands 8, Great Britain 5, Philippines 4, China 3, Malaysia 3, Belgium 2, Canada 2, Germany 2, Italy 2, others 9, and not available 4.

These demographics very closely match the demographics of the overall SL population disseminated by Linden Lab, except that we have a somewhat disproportionately high representation from the U.S. (presumably because the solicitation process and survey were conducted in English).

From a methodological standpoint, this data collection approach may be of use for other scholars studying virtual worlds. For a review of the various other types of survey technologies employed in SL, see Bell et al, 2008. They also present a "Virtual Assisted Self Interviewing" (VASI) tool they developed to enable the collection of survey data within SL through a heads-up display that displays the questions to the interviewee and collects the answers which are then exported to a web application.

Survey Results The data from our survey results support our three hypotheses concerning avatar appearance, virtual-world behavior, and the effect of avatar appearance on virtual-world behavior. First, most respondents make body and facial features for their avatars similar to, but with some improvements on, their real appearance. Second, respondents reported in-world behavior similar to, but somewhat less inhibited, than their real-world behavior. Third, people with avatars more attractive than themselves tended to be more outgoing, extraverted, risktaking, and loud than their real selves (particularly if they reported being relatively low on these traits in the real world). Answers to qualitative open-ended questions corroborate our more formal tests.

Avatar Appearance We examined our first hypothesis, that “participants customize the image of their avatars such that the avatars bear similarity to their real selves, but with moderate enhancements,” in four ways (Tables 1 – 4).

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 9

Table 1. Avatar Attractiveness in Relation to Self “Is your avatar less or more attractive than your real self in the following dimensions?”

(1=less attractive and 7=more attractive)

Mean

SD1

t-test2

Overall

4.80

1.32

5.96

Body

4.72

1.30

5.40

Hair

4.65

1.38

4.64

Eyes

4.53

1.32

3.94

Style of Clothes

4.86

1.47

5.73

1

Stands for standard deviation.

2 Against the null hypothesis of 4 (same attractiveness).

Significance at the .001 level is indicated in bold.

We asked respondents “Is your avatar less or more attractive than your real self in the following dimensions?” (see Table 1). If respondents only felt a motive for enhancement, their answers would be closer to 7 than they were. If respondents felt only a motive of selfverification, they would have answered 4 (which the t-test significantly indicates that they did not do). The answers on average indicate that people create avatars that are similar to themselves, but somewhat more attractive in body, hair, eyes, style of clothes, and overall.

We next asked respondents similar questions for age, weight, and height (see Table 2).

When asked about avatar age in relation to their own, the modal response was “Same” but many more people answered “Younger” than “Older.” If we assign a value of 1 for “Younger,” 2 for “Same,” and 3 for Older”, then the average response would be 1.73, which is significantly less than 2 (“Same”). Generally, we may interpret that 63 people reflect a motive for self-verification and 30 reflect a motive for self-enhancement. (Note, however, that the evidence for selfenhancement may be conservative, if we consider that only 28 people in the sample were 35 years of age or older.)

Table 2. Avatar Features in Relation to Self (1)

(2)

(3)

“What is your avatar's age in relation to your own?”

“Younger”

“Same”

“Older”

mean

SD

t-test1

30

63

4

1.73

0.53

-4.97

“What is your avatar's weight in relation to your own?”

“Less”

“Same”

“More”

mean

SD

t-test1

38

53

6

1.67

0.96

-3.38

“What is your avatar's height in relation to your own?”

1

“Lower”

“Same”

“Higher”

mean

SD

t-test1

15

50

32

2.18

0.91

1.91

Against the null hypothesis of 2 (“same”).

Significance at the .001 level is indicated in bold.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 10

When we asked about avatar weight relative to their own and the modal response was “Same,” but many more people answered “Less” than “More.” Again, the average response (assigning a 1 to 3 coding) was 1.67, which is significantly less than 2 (“Same”). We might interpret this result as indicating that 53 reflected a motive for self-verification, and 38 indicate a motive for self-enhancement. Again, this may be conservative because with a mean age of 30.5 years, a large number of respondents may already perceive themselves to be at their ideal weight.

When we asked about avatar height relative to their own, the modal response was again “Same,” and more people answered “Higher” than “Lower.” The average response (assigning a 1 to 3 coding) was 2.18, which is only marginally significantly more than 2 (“Same”) at the .06 level. We again interpret the result as indicating that 50 people reflected a motive for selfverification, and 32 indicate a motive for self-enhancement. The results for this case are a bit more ambiguous because, while men may prefer to be taller, women may not. Perhaps the lack of significance indicates more about individual differences in people’s satisfaction with their real height than about a motive for self-enhancement.

In both parts of the survey described above, many people show evidence of selfverification. There is also evidence of self-enhancement, but the extent of self-enhancement in both Tables 1 and 2 appears to be quantitatively somewhat smaller. This could be explained by the possibility that respondents are already satisfied with the particular part of their physical self in question, in which case little enhancement would be necessary. In future research, it would be desirable to simply ask people whether they are happy with various aspects of their physical self, although this is a more sensitive topic for respondents. A less intrusive way to approach the balance that people strike between self-verification and enhancement is to re-ask the questions in Tables 1 and 2 slightly differently. We accordingly asked people elsewhere in the survey “Is your Avatar similar to or different from your real-self in the following dimensions?” (see Table 3) Table 3. Avatar Similarity in Relation to Self “Is your Avatar similar to or different from your real self in the following dimensions?”

(1=very different and 7=very similar)

1

mean

SD

t-test1

Overall

4.54

1.63

-14.79

Age

5.22

1.49

-11.75

Weight

4.82

1.54

-13.90

Height

4.52

1.68

-14.58

Hair

4.43

1.86

-13.56

Eye Color

4.85

1.92

-11.07

Style of Clothes

4.65

1.84

-12.56

Against the null hypothesis of 7 (very similar).

Significance at the .001 level is indicated in bold.

If people only felt a motive for self-verification, or if this motive completely dominated the motive for enhancement, then respondents would have answered close to 7 (“very similar”) for many of the traits in Table 3. In fact, people very significantly answered less than 7 for each of the traits. Therefore, we conclude that people are not completely motivated by selfverification when creating their avatars. They make their avatars different from themselves quite consciously, and, according to Tables 1 and 2, often with somewhat more attractive features.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 11

Our final way of assessing self-verification is to put the question directly to respondents.

We asked people how close their primary avatar is to their real self (see Table 4 below for the five possible answers). We, accordingly, reject the hypothesis that respondents, on average, make their avatars “as close to your self as can be made,” and we could not reject the alternate hypothesis that respondents make their avatars “a mix of similar and unrecognizable features to your real self.” This explicitly displays only a partial motive for self-verification.

Table 4. Avatar-Self Relationship Overall “Overall, would you say that your primary avatar is (check one):”

Count

Answer

(1)

14

As close to your real self as can be made.

(2)

22

Generally recognizable as your real self.

(3)

33

A mix of similar and unrecognizable features to your real self.

(4)

23

Mostly not recognizable as your real self.

(5)

5

As far from your real self as can be made.

1

mean

SD

t-test1

2.82

1.634

11.02

Against the null hypothesis of 1 (“same”).

When tested against the null hypothesis of 3 (“mix”) the t-statistic is -1.06.

Taken together, Tables 1 through 4 provide support for our hypothesis that “participants tend to customize the image of their avatars such that the avatars bear similarity to their real selves, but with moderate enhancements.” Tables 3 and 4 also isolate the tendency toward selfverification and show that this motive is only partially in effect. Tables 1 and 2 show that when people diverge from self-verification they go in the direction of enhancement.

Virtual-World Behavior We examine our second hypothesis, that “virtual-world behavior tends to be similar to real-world behavior, but less restrained by people’s normal inhibitions,” by asking questions of the form shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Question Format: Comparison of Virtual and Real Behavior “Please rate your behavior on the following dimensions in SL and in real life:”

Shy

Outgoing

In Second Life

1

2

3

4

5

NA

In Real Life

1

2

3

4

5

NA

This layout anchored 1 on the scale as “Shy” and 5 as “Outgoing”. Automated input validation coding was used in the web-survey interface to assure that respondents clicked on only one button for each row and completed both rows. Respondents were also asked to look over their entered responses before clicking on a button indicating that a screen was complete.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 12

Table 6. Comparison of Virtual and Real Behavior “Please rate your behavior on the following dimensions in SL and in real life:”

Shy (1)/Outgoing (5) Introvert (1)/Extravert (5) Risk Averse (1)/Risk Taking (5) Reserved (1)/Loud (5) Superficial (1)/Thoughtful (5) 1

SL RL SL RL SL RL SL RL SL

sample size 97 97 96 96 95 95

mean 3.67 3.33 3.58 3.38 3.62 3.21

SD 1.02 1.10 0.93 0.99 1.09 1.05

t-test1

14 45 27 9 25 41 21 7 5 23 40 27

96 96 97

3.30 3.06 3.88

0.87 0.93 0.95

1.85

2

97

4.18

0.76

1 0 4 2 4 3 4

2 14 18 10 11 12 20

1 2 2

RL 0

3 29 34 27 38 27 35

4 29 24 44 31 29 24

5 25 17 13 12 24 12

15 44 36

2.24 1.51 2.64

-2.43

Test of the equality of the two means (two-sided, two samples with different unknown variances). Significance at the .05 level is indicated in bold.

Using this question format, respondents were asked to rate their behavior on five dimensions in Second Life and in real life, including Shy/Outgoing; Introvert/Extrovert, etc., as shown in Table 6. This table summarizes all the data so collected along with the mean response for each scale. For example, on average, respondents rated their behavior in Second Life as 3.67 out of 5 on a Shy-Outgoing scale, while they rated their behavior in real life as 3.33 out of 5.

Finally, the table reports the applicable t-test that compares these two mean estimates.

We see that subjects report that their behavior is significantly more “Outgoing” in SL than in the real world. Subjects also report being more “Risk Taking,” more “Superficial,” and more “Loud” (although the latter effect is only significant at the .07 level). These results are consistent with our hypotheses about the general similarity (i.e., convergence) of real and virtualworld behaviors, but that virtual-world behavior tends to be less inhibited than real-world behavior.2 These results are corroborated by respondents’ answers to the open-ended question “Describe how anonymity in SL influences your behavior.” Many responses indicate that people are less inhibited in SL: …makes me a tad braver to do things i wouldn’t normally do...allows me to try things I'm afraid to in RL...I can do things in sl that I would not normally do…I can talk to other people easier…can look how I want to and not be as worried that people will judge me…I can wear clothes I would not wear in rl…I’m able to do things I wouldn’t in rl…It allows me to be more carefree about certain choices I 2 We also separated the sample into residents of SL for 6 months or more (“Veterans”) and residents of SL for less than 6 months (“Newbies”). The effects shown in Table 6 for the scales Shy/Outgoing, Risk Averse/Risk Taking and Reserved/Loud were replicated for Veterans (at the .1, .05, and .1 levels, respectively), but not for Newbies (for whom the tests were not significant at the .1 level).

Interestingly, the effect found overall for Superficial/Thoughtful is replicated for Newbies (at the .05 level), but not for Veterans. We also found in SL that, as compared to Newbies, Veterans are more Outgoing, Extraverted, Risk-Taking, Loud, and Thoughtful (at the .05 level or better). But in real life, there is not a significant difference between veterans and newbies for most of these traits. Whether veterans learn this behavior, or self-select for it, is an open question. This interesting line of inquiry merits future consideration, and we thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 13

make…can be more bold…can be more frank…it sure allows to do things I would not try in RL…i get to be myself but much more interesting and a lot more flirty…nice to not be seen for my RL looks…more open…more social…can be more bold…more open…

Although people report being less inhibited, these comments do not manifest a “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” schism between real and virtual-world behavior. This is reinforced by responses of individuals who indicate relatively little change: …it doesn't really; I don't play a character that doesn't represent how I actually am…it doesn't…it doesn’t really, because even though i see pixels there are real people behind them…real emotions…no influence…none so far…not …not a lot as i don’t see the point in changing too much of who i am to fit in…not influences…not much …nothing…nothing special.

Taken together, both our quantitative and qualitative data are consistent with the hypothesis that participants’ virtual-world behavior is similar to their real-world behavior, but less restrained by their normal inhibitions.

Influence of Avatar Appearance on Virtual-World Behavior We now examine our third hypothesis that “the use of an avatar more attractive than a person’s true self will induce greater extraversion [i.e., a main effect], and that the increase will be greatest when the person is low on extraversion in the real world [i.e., an interaction effect].”

Table 7 reports the outcome of regressing behavioral traits in SL (such as “Outgoingness”) on both the associated behavioral traits in the real world and a measure of avatar attractiveness. The dependent variables consist of the measures of virtual-world behavioral traits summarized in Table 6 (in the rows labeled “SL”). The first independent variable in each of these regressions consists of the measures of real-world behavior traits summarized in Table 6 (in the rows labeled “RL”). The second independent variable in each of these regressions is the measure of “Avatar Attractiveness Overall” reported in Table 1. Table 7 also includes the product of these later two variables as an interaction effect.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 14

Table 7. Regression Models: Influence of Avatar Attractiveness on Virtual Behavior1 Behavioral Trait in Second Life (Dependent Variable) Risk Outgoing Extravert Loud Thoughtful Taking Associated Behavioral Trait in Real Life2

0.92 (17.15)

1.04 (17.88)

0.89 (10.81)

1.08 (18.93)

0.84 (21.60)

Avatar Attractiveness3

0.33 (5.69)

0.13 (3.18)

0.19 (3.52)

0.09 (2.48)

0.10 1.12

-0.059 (-3.526)

-0.035 (-2.503)

-0.018 (-1.300)

-0.032 (-2.434)

-0.004 -0.185

0.95 .85

0.95 0.83

0.90 1.26

0.95 0.75

0.69 0.97

BTRL:AA4 R-Squared Res. Std. Err. 1

Significance at the .05 level or better is indicated in bold. t-statistics are shown in parentheses.

If the “Behavioral Trait in Second Life” is “Outgoing” [in Second Life], the Behavioral Trait in Real Life” is the measure Outgoing [in Real Life], and similarly for the other four columns. The variables are those reported in Table 6.

3 This is the variable “Overall Avatar Attractiveness” summarized earlier in Table 1.

4 BTRL:AA is the product of the variables in the first and second rows. This is an interaction term.

2

If our hypothesis is true, we should find a positive main effect associated with avatar attractiveness and a negative coefficient (relatively small in absolute value) for the interaction term. To be consistent with the previous section, we also expect a positive main effect associated with the behavioral trait in real life.

Our first result is that the coefficients on avatar attractiveness (i.e., the main effects) are indeed significantly different from zero and positive in the first four regressions. Thus, using a more attractive avatar leads to more outgoing, extraverted, risk taking, and loud behavior in Second Life. This is consistent with the first part of the third hypothesis that “the use of an avatar more attractive than a person’s true self will induce greater extraversion.” This replicates Yee & Bailenson’s (2007) findings from controlled experiments in virtual lab environments, although in the avatar-mediated setting that we examine of Second Life, people can choose the appearance of their own avatars.

Our second result, consistent with the previous section, is that the coefficients on the associated behavioral traits in real life are positive, significant, and generally close to 1. Indeed, if we left out all the terms involving avatar attractiveness, the previous section suggests that these coefficients would be greater than 1.

Our final result, for three of the regressions, is that the interaction terms are negative and significantly different from zero. This is consistent with the second part of our third hypothesis that the use of an avatar more attractive than a person’s true self will induce extraversion which is “greatest when the person is low on extraversion in the real world”. This goes beyond Yee & Bailenson (2007), who look at the main effect of changing the avatar appearance, but who do not consider possible interaction with the real person’s underlying behavioral traits (e.g., extravertedness).

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 15

To understand such interaction effects, we consider the following example. If we condition on a value for “Outgoingness” in real life of 1, it can be shown that raising Avatar Attractiveness from 1 to 7 increases the predicted value of “Outgoingness” in SL from 1.191 to 2.817, which is more than double. (We make this calculation using the values in Table 7 for the column labeled “Outgoing”.) If, instead, we condition on a value for “Outgoingness” in real life of 5, then raising Avatar Attractiveness from 1 to 7 increases “Outgoingness” in SL from 4.635 to only 4.845, which is a much smaller percentage increase. The other equations yield similar interpretations.

Conclusions and Future Lines of Inquiry This paper has considered the relationship between avatars and the people they represent in terms of appearance and behavior. We found that people, balancing motives for selfverification and self-enhancement, customize their avatars to bear similarity to their real selves, but with moderate enhancements. We also found that virtual-world behavior is similar to realworld behavior, but somewhat less restrained by normal inhibitions. Lastly, we found that people with more attractive avatars than their real selves are more confident and extraverted in virtual worlds than they are in the real world, particularly those who have low confidence and are introverted in the real world.

Although our results are useful, we acknowledge limitations of our data, including reliance on self-reports and small sample size. Similar limitations arise for related Netnographic methods (Kozinets, 2002). We hope that future work will address these limitations, including consideration of the following lines of inquiry: • Why do people maintain multiple avatars? Are they cultivating multiple virtual selves, just as many people cultivate a “work self” and an “informal self” in real life? And in how many worlds do people keep avatars?

• How often and for what reasons do people make changes in their avatars?

• How do people choose their avatars’ names? To what extent does choosing a name support self-verification (when avatar names are borrowed from real names or nicknames) or self-enhancement (when avatar names have positive connotations)?

• To what extent do the hypotheses in this paper about self-verification and selfenhancement carry over to virtual worlds different from Second Life? In particular, do the objectives of an environment (when they are fixed by virtual world designers and not at the discretion of participants) influence the choice of avatar appearance?

Overall, because of the accelerating use of avatar-mediated environments, it is desirable for us to understand people’s relationships with their avatars, both how people set the appearance of their avatars and whether and how behavior changes in avatar-mediated environments.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - My Avatar and Myself 16

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Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worldsâ&#x20AC;?

November 2008

Having But Not Holding: Consumerism & Commodification in Second Life

By Lori Landay, Berklee College of Music

This is a brief essay, we call "think pieces," designed to stimulate a discussion on a particular topic. For this series of essays we propose the following question: "Consumer behavior in virtual worlds: is it really any different to the real world, or is it simply a case of 'old wine in a new bottle'?"

Keywords: commodification; avatar; consumerism.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Having But Not Holding 2

Having But Not Holding: Consumerism & Commodification in Second Life

By Lori Landay, Berklee College of Music

What does it mean to own or to consume in a virtual world? Who does the owning - the avatar or the person? Are real needs and wants satisfied? How can we tell? These are some of the broader questions that come to mind when pondering if consumerism in Second Life (SL) is really ‘old wine in new bottles.’ An interesting metaphor that calls attention to one of the issues at the very heart of a consideration of consumerism and commodification in virtual worlds. The saying ‘old wine in new bottles’ suggests that the product is the same as before, but the container or label has changed. In a virtual world, there is neither the original product nor a new container, only what science fiction author William Gibson called a “consensual hallucination” (Gibson, 1984) which gives virtual world “objects” meaning, any value beyond dreams or fantasy, ascribes meta-material value to what is actually only code, digital information. How can we think about consumerism when there are no real consumer goods, only virtual ones? Are the needs and wants virtual, as well, or are those real? What does it mean to own something in Second Life? Is it like having something without being able to hold it?

Most people who spend time in a virtual world—myself included—will tell you that, yes, it is satisfying to own in SL. For example, I like some of the things I have built, and that I have bought land. It does not matter that there is no spoon, as Neo repeats to himself in the film The Matrix, or wine; in a world of illusion, what difference do the bottles make if I can pretend the wine is anything I like? One also could pose it the other, more cynical, way, too: who cares what the wine is, if I can change the bottle at will? To continue The Matrix allusion, that is how the traitor Cypher sees it. Of course, in asking the question about old wine and new bottles, the emphasis is on consumer behavior, not on the product—is it the same old consumerism that we

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Having But Not Holding 3

have in real life? At first sight, it may seem that the answer is yes: even a quick look around Second Life reveals that the acquisitive desires so evident in American and global cultures are predominant in SL too. It is as if no one questions why avatars need all the stuff that fill their houses, but that residents put up houses and started filling them with all the things that real life houses have. Avatars do not need to eat, so why do they need kitchens? (Nice kitchens.

Kitchens that make my real kitchen look pretty shabby, in fact.)

From the beginning of SL, real world metaphors predominated, and it follows that real world activities would as well. Early on, Linden Labs founder Philip Rosedale stated “I'm not building a game . . . I'm building a new country” (Terdiman, 2004). Although it is not a game, one might easily think that the official play is around consumerism and acquisition, as “What is Second Life?” (2008) highlights.

Fig. 1 – What is Second Life (http://secondlife.com/whatis/) Our imaginations are limited by the metaphors we can envision—and rez (short for "resolve," the term for how images become fully visible inworld). In Second Life, the majority of residents’ activities are understandably shaped by the parameters of their real or first life.

Because virtual worlds are based on the metaphors of real life, seeking to be simulations if not simulacra, users are going to use their real world activities, interests, and values as models for their virtual ones. In the subjunctive, playful realm of possibility that Second Life is, what else might people do? There are a lot of answers in Second Life already: art, education, games, politics, meditation, spirituality, music, and many kinds of imaginative things. One of the most interesting groups working in SL is “Not Possible in Real Life” ( http://npirl.blogspot.com/), or the very interesting SL installation that incorporates sound, movement, and image by DynaFleur inworld http://slurl.com/secondlife/Princeton%20South/81/87/41.

Other examples of going beyond the models presented by our material world abound inworld, but nevertheless new residents are quickly encouraged to participate in the SL economy,

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and the ways of doing that are primarily based on consumer behaviors that exist in the real world. Still, within the buying and selling system, there might be something else going on in virtual worlds that means there is some new wine, Red Bull, or maybe some other kind of bull available. Maybe we can shed some light on some of the social and cultural issues around consumer behavior in virtual worlds by shifting to a consideration of virtual commodification, which is like real world commodification, but liberated from ‘pesky’ materiality. Here is my definition: Like its analog model, virtual commodification is a process of transforming experience, ideas, and ideas about the self into the quantifiable products of inworld consumer culture, and placing those products in a social context in which people define things in terms of themselves, and themselves in terms of things, i.e., that “self” is created and understood through the goods and appearance of the goods people consume. Cultural representations and social practices reinforce the idea that the commodities an avatar consumes and displays not only express but are also the source of identity and worth, not anything intrinsic or internal.

In Second Life, there is nothing other than the goods and appearances of the goods that the avatars own. In Second Life, there are only clothes, ‘prim hair’, skins, cool cars, wings, and tails to indicate the inner qualities that I fervently hope and believe are experienced and communicated, and they are more important than appearances in real life. What are the implications for gender, age, physical ability, race, sexuality, class, and ethnicity in a world in which all of these aspects of identity are telegraphed visually, treated as commodities, and easily changed at will? Moreover, in SL, people’s physical spaces are malleable in the same way that one’s physical appearance is, and what you/your avatar puts on your land (if you have it) is a further reflection of you. It is a consumerist and commodified fantasy that a person’s appearance is the measure of their value, and can be made to reflect (or cover up) their true nature; it is the very creed of the “shelter magazines” and home improvement and design industries (so recently booming, now of course bust) that your home should reflect and create your ideal self and environment. In a virtual world without limitations of physical resources, genetics, or physics, what limitations are left?

As someone who in SL accidentally unlinked all the parts of her house and did something jarring to them, I can tell you that there are limitations of skill, time, and aesthetics. But really, I blame it on my avatar, L1Aura, and you can see and hear her side of it by following the links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpZa0Kt3kxo, or http://slurl.com/secondlife/Boga/186/137/26. Which brings us to the final topic here in this consideration of commodification and virtual worlds: what is the relationship between the person and the avatar? Are avatars commodities? Are they characters we create? Simulations?

Simulacra? Are they aspects of us? Are our avatars like the Perky Pat dolls in the Philip K. Dick novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), and we are living through them? More to the point for this discussion, if I want something and L1 gets a virtual version of it, am I happier?

Why? How? Ultimately, the most interesting questions arise when we consider what effect experiences in virtual worlds have on our lives in the real, material world. The Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University (http://vhil.stanford.edu/) is engaged in several fascinating projects that explore these connections, including research into how the appearance of the avatar can shape the person’s social behavior in the virtual world, what Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson term the “Proteus effect” (2007), and perhaps in the real world as well. One study found that when people used an avatar based on an aged version of themselves, they allocated more

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research- - Having But Not Holding 5

resources for retirement (Ersner-Hershfield, Bailenson, & Carstensen, 2008). To be sure, there are implications for how the marketing and public relations fields might try to harness the potential influence of virtual experiences on real world activity that are sobering to consider.

There are also reasons to be hopeful: research suggests that virtual experiences and identity can have a positive effect on real life, and my own participation in a Massachusetts General Hospital/Benson Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine study of teaching people the Relaxation Response in Second Life reinforces this.

Perhaps the easy owning of SL can satisfy real life desires for consumption? After spending some time shopping around for houses before deciding that a free one would suit me just as well, I’ve found myself looking at different styles of actual houses and thinking: “I could own that if I wanted to” (in SL, of course). Perhaps this is akin to the perspective of the miniaturist who starts to see the world around him or her foremost as a model for the dollhouse world that can be manipulated, collected, and controlled. Can I install a nice kitchen in my empty SL house and will that make me feel better about my real kitchen (which is really fine)? Can people channel and divert the barrage of consumerist messages that bombard them from every possible medium and direction into virtual activity? In this economy, maybe we had better hope so! Perhaps there is a way to separate the psychological, creative, spiritual, political, sexual, and emotional desires that feed consumerism (manipulated by advertising and mass consumer culture in general) from actual material needs, and seek out ways of satisfying desires that do not have detrimental implications for a real world of limited resources, and have a chance of actually making people happy.

Bibliography Baard, M. (2008, March 3). MD to fight stress in Second Life. Boston Globe. Retrieved November 3, 2008, from http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/03/03/md_to_fight_stress_in_sec ond_life/ Baudrillard, J. (1995). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor,MI: University of Michigan Press.

Story, D. & Enfield, D. (2008). DynaFleur – An immersive art installation. Retrieved November 6, 2008 from http://slurl.com/secondlife/Princeton%20South/216/209/66 Ersner-Hershfield, H., Bailenson, J., & Carstensen, L.L. (2008). A vivid future self: Immersive virtual reality enhances retirement saving. Poster to be presented at the Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, Chicago, IL. Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. New York: Penguin.

Not Possible in Real Life. Retrieved November 5, 2008, from http://npirl.blogspot.com/ Terdiman, D. (2004, May 08). Fun in Following the Money. Wired. Retrieved November 8, 2008 from http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/2004/05/63363?currentPage=all Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N., & Ducheneaut, N. (2008, in press). The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior. Communication Research.

Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 “Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds” November 2008

Virtual Worlds Research: Global X Local Agendas

By Gilson Schwartz, Dept. of Film, Radio and TV, School of Communication and Arts, University of São Paulo

This is a brief essay, we call "think-pieces", designed to stimulate a discussion on a particular topic. For this series of essays we propose the following question: "Consumer behavior in virtual worlds, is it really any different to the real world, or is it simply a case of 'old wine in a new bottle'?"

Keywords: virtual worlds; Brazil; global; research agendas.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Virtual Worlds Research 2

Virtual Worlds Research: Global X Local Agendas

By Gilson Schwartz, Dept. of Film, Radio and TV, School of Communication and Arts, University of São Paulo

As a frequent traveler attending numerous symposia, workshops, and conferences on the theme of virtual worlds, I feel a growing uneasiness with the marked differences of perception, approach, and agendas between global conferences and local Brazilian scene. After all, as one of the former European colonies, it should be natural to expect a continuous convergence between research programs.

This is not the case and a sign of these differences can be obtained by a very simple exercise in comparing the mapping of themes and frameworks observed at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) 9.0 conference, held last October in Copenhagen, and the Brazilian Cyberstudies Association (ABCiber) conference, held this November in São Paulo. These are probably two of the most comprehensive and prestigious gatherings of scholars, students, and research fellows focusing on a variety of digital culture issues, although one should of course refrain from believing these conferences are the most representative, relevant, or well-attended.

A more extensive investigation of research agendas focusing on digital culture throughout the world would certainly clarify the problem. This is just a “provocatory” (provocative + introductory) note.

A preliminary remark is also needed concerning the different approaches of these two academic conferences. While the AoIR elects a major theme for its annual encounters, the ABCiber is a more open attempt at collecting the most active research results in Brazil. This leads to a more organized profile and to a certain emphasis in the overall program at the AoIR meeting. The AoIR is almost three times the size of the ABCiber annual meeting, so we will focus on the relative weight of different issues and keywords in their respective programs.

In general terms, the Brazilian agenda has a more theoretical twist, judging from paper titles and keywords. The Brazilian academic production, as presented in these conferences, was much more focused on case studies and empirical reports (both quantitative and qualitative) at the AoIR gathering, while about 40% of the papers presented at the ABCiber meeting were theoretical, philosophical, or literary accounts of the emerging digital culture. My papers also follow this pattern—a case study for AoIR and a conceptual essay for ABCiber. It is also noticeable that while the internet researchers’ association is now holding its ninth conference, the Brazilian Asssociation of Cyberculture Researchers is only holding its second.1 Some remarkable differences arise from this very simple exercise. Papers related to or mentioning the keywords “networking” or “social network” comprehended 15.6% of the AoIR 1

The complete collection of papers and presenters is online at: AoIR 9.0: Rethinking Place, Rethinking Community - http://conferences.aoir.org/Final_Programme_-_October_6_2008.pdf and ABCiber – Brazilian Association of Cyberculture Researchers -http://www.cencib.org/simposioABCiber/programa.htm#programa.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Virtual Worlds Research 3

program, while only 8% in the Brazilian conference. Social networking platforms are also clearly more frequent at the AoIR conference as a result of the conference call for “rethinking community.” The “wiki” phenomenon, however, is totally absent in the Brazilian program, while 1.4% (5 papers) take this platform as an object for research at the AoIR program. In relative terms, however, other platforms are equally represented in the research agenda of both events, such as YouTube (about 1%) and gaming (8% in Brazil, 10% at the global AoIR).

Surprisingly, “virtual worlds,” “avatars,” and “Second Life” are equally represented at both events (about 3% of the papers)—a result that tells us something about the importance of the 3D web as well as its potential for academic research, especially in Brazil, where broadband access is still a privilege for few lucky people (although many expected an Orkut-like explosion of SL to take place over the last couple of years in Brazil). The weight of “identity” related papers is also approximately equal in both events (at 3% in Brazil and 4,2% at the AoIR conference).

Some differences, however, are striking. Gender issues, for instance, are very scarce at the Brazilian gathering (about 1%), while always strong at the AoIR over the years (4.5% in 2008, although they have performed more strongly in the past). Another telling difference is the weight of journalism and education at the Brazilian meeting (12% in Brazil against 2.8% at the AoIR conference). This is clearly an outcome of the demographics of the ABCiber community, since educators and journalists are among the most frequent graduate students in cyberculture programs in Brazil, whereas the AoIR profile is clearly more varied. This is also a reflection of internet access in Brazil, which is pronounced in the media organizations as well as in schools whereas in the First World the web has already become a much more pervasive phenomenon.

A similar reasoning applies to city studies, since part of the academic community in Brazil is strongly attached to public entities such as digital inclusion programs, telecenters and other public telecommunication policies. The keyword “public,” however, is totally off of the radar at the ABCiber program, while the AoIR has 3.4% (12 papers) discussing the emergence of a public sphere and related issues.

Lastly, there was a shocking difference in the importance of digital mobility and cell phone usage as a subject for academic research, with only 3 papers at the ABCiber conference (2%), while the AoIR 9.0 collected as much as 19 papers on issues related to mobile culture (5.3%).

It would be premature to draw harsh conclusions from this “provocatory” exercise, however it is important to note the similarities and differences. An emerging interest in virtual worlds and the 3D experience is a surprising outlook, whereas the scarce interest in mobile digital culture is problematic in Brazil, given that the country has over 130 million users. This is a clear sign of “decoupling” between the Brazilian academic community priorities and the real life of internet and virtual world citizens in the country. I would even say that the Brazilian academic community has been surprised by the emergence of the cell phone boom, lagging behind the phenomenon except for a few pioneers.

Even though these numbers are a preliminary result of a highly personal account, I hope they will serve the purpose of fostering a transcultural evaluation of research agendas in our societies.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Virtual Worlds Research 4

Appendix 1: Themes and Keywords â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ABCiber and AoIR 9.0

ABCiber

Orkut Virtual Worlds, Avatars and Second Life Gender Journalism Blogs Network, Social Network, Networking Education Local (Place) Religion City YouTube Identity Wikis Public Cinema Games Cellphones, Mobility Papers Presented

5 4 1 9 6 12 9 2 2 8 1 4 0 0 4 12 3 148

AoIR 9.0

3% 3% 1% 6% 4% 8% 6% 1% 1% 5% 1% 3% 0% 0% 3% 8% 2%

1 0,3% 13 3,6% 16 4,5% 7 2,0% 20 5,6% 56 15,6% 3 0,8% 33 9,2% 10 2,8% 7 2,0% 4 1,1% 15 4,2% 5 1,4% 12 3,4% 2 0,6% 36 10,1% 19 5,3% 358

Vol. 1. No. 2.

ISSN: 1941-8477 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worldsâ&#x20AC;?

November 2008

Demographics of Virtual Worlds

By Jeremiah Spence, Department of Radio, TV & Film, University of Texas at Austin.

Abstract Virtual worlds, as both a concept and an industry, have changed radically over the past 10 years, from a toy for the technological elite, to an over-hyped marketing phenomenon, and with this radical change comes the need for reexamining the uses and utility of virtual world technologies and experiences. This paper provides such a reexamination. Within academia there are a number of issues that require further examination. The academic community appears to be divided into four camps: 1) those who embrace virtual worlds; 2) those who have ignored the evolving use of this technology; 3) those who are aware of but have not yet explored the technology; and 4) those who are entirely unaware that virtual worlds exist. Among those who study virtual worlds there is an overwhelming focus in terms of research, publications and funding on a single one of these worlds, Second Life, which serves only a fraction of the entire population utilizing virtual worlds or similar technologies. An overview of the size, shape and forms of virtual worlds may help with both of these issues, the ignorance of virtual worlds among some researchers and the overwhelming focus on a single example among others. This paper presents an in-depth survey and analysis of virtual worlds and related technologies.

Keywords: virtual worlds, typology, continuum, game space.

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 2

Demographics of Virtual Worlds

By Jeremiah Spence, Department of Radio, TV & Film, University of Texas at Austin.

Virtual worlds, as both a concept and an industry, have changed radically over the past ten years, from a toy for the technological elite to an over-hyped marketing phenomenon, and with this radical change comes the need for reexamining the uses and utility of virtual world technologies and experiences. This paper offers such a reexamination.

Within academia in particular there are a number of issues that require further examination. The academic community appears to be divided into four camps: 1) those who embrace virtual worlds; 2) those who have ignored the evolving use of this technology; 3) those who are aware of but have not yet explored the technology; and 4) those who are entirely unaware that virtual worlds exist. Among those who study virtual worlds there is an overwhelming focus in terms of research, publications, and funding on a single one of these worlds, Second Life, which serves only a fraction of the entire population utilizing virtual worlds or similar technologies. An overview of the size, shape, and forms of virtual worlds may help with both of these issues, the ignorance of virtual worlds among some researchers and the overwhelming focus on a single example among others.

Conceptualization and Definitions of Virtual Worlds In the broadest terms a virtual world can be conceptualized as “a place described by words or projected through pictures which create a space in the imagination, real enough that you can feel you are inside of it” (Damer, 2008). In this sense, a virtual world can be thought of as anything from the painted caves of our ancestors or shadow puppetry to such literary worlds as Dante’s Inferno (Bittarello, 2008), Eco’s monasteries (1983), Shakespeare’s tragedies, Japanese samurai stories, Orson Welles’ radio enactment of The War of the Worlds (1938), and the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix movies. The computer, by mediating the experience of communication and interaction with large quantities of information, makes it possible to expand the relationship between the imaginary and the real into a persistent three dimensional space.

In his novel Snow Crash Stephenson (1992) provided one of the defining depictions of a non-game virtual world with Hiro Protagonist’s exploits in the metaverse, a term that the novel introduced into the public discourse. Stephenson’s metaverse is a three-dimensional virtual world where users interact with each other via avatars and through immersive technology; the users in this metaverse are able to experience and interact from a first-person perspective. The concept of the metaverse as laid out by Stephenson in his fictional work has proved instrumental in providing a vision for real-world computer programmers and technologists to emulate in their development of a variety of new virtual worlds, from SnowMoo, Active Worlds, There, and Second Life to Croquet and Google Lively.

Building on the metaverse vision presented in Snow Crash, technologists developed a Metaverse Roadmap that presented a “ten-year forecast and visioning survey of 3D Web technologies, applications, markets, and potential social impacts [… including] the convergence of Web applications with networked computer games and virtual worlds, the use of 3D creation and animation tools in virtual environments, digital mapping, artificial life, and the underlying trends in hardware, software, connectivity, business innovation, and social adoption that will 2

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 3

drive the transformation of the World Wide Web in the coming decade” (Smart, Cascio, & Paffendorf, 2007).

Although no single definition of virtual worlds exists, scholars continue to explore the key factors that separate virtual worlds from non-virtual worlds. Before discussing those factors, a distinction must first be made between game space and non-game space. A game can be understood as a “multi-agent interactive representation of subjective reality that defines a problem space with which the player can act as a solution explorer within the bounds of the space,” (Hypography, 2007). Game space is a three-dimensional computer simulation that integrates elements of game into a persistent online massively multiplayer environment. Online games and online game spaces can be separated into two categories, those that are persistent and those that are not persistent. Persistence in this context refers to games and online game spaces that continue to exist when the user is not logged in, in contrast to the older style of computer games that stop when a user logs out. Contemporary examples of game space are the online worlds associated with World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and Ultima, among many others.

The concept of a virtual worlds can be distinguished from the concept of game space by the absence of the characteristics of a “game.” Bell (2008) presents a number of previously proposed definitions of a virtual world and proposes a synthesized, more contemporary definition that attempts to take into account changes that have appeared in virtual worlds over the past several years (Chesebro, 1985; Bartle, 2003; Koster, 2004; Castronova, 2004). Bell states that a virtual world can be defined as “a synchronous, persistent network of people, represented as avatars, facilitated by networked computers” (2008, p. 1). Bell’s definition has three key components: 1. “synchronous” indicates that shared activities necessitate synchronous or real-time communication 2. “persistent,” as explained previously, indicates that a “virtual world cannot be paused” or does not shutdown when the user exits 3. the “avatar” is “any digital representation (graphical or textual), beyond a simple label or name, that has agency (an ability to perform actions) and is controlled by a human agent in real time” (2008, p. 1).

Schroeder emphasizes the experiential element of virtual worlds. Schroeder defines a virtual environment or, equivalently, a virtual reality as “a computer-generated display that allows or compels the user (or users) to have a sense of being present in an environment other than the one they are actually in, and to interact with that environment” (Schroeder, 1996, p. 25).

The collaborative, multi-user element of virtual environments can be described as “environments or systems [in] which users experience other participants as being present in the same environment and interacting with them – or ‘being there together’” (Schroeder, 2006; 2008, p. 1).

How then does one differentiate between virtual reality or virtual environments and virtual worlds? Schroeder uses the term virtual worlds to refer to “persistent online social spaces,” which, however, leaves one with the problem of differentiating between virtual worlds, as presented in this definition, and online game spaces (Schroeder, 2008). Researchers have noted an increasing degree of socialization taking place in persistent online game spaces, such as World of Warcraft, which brings them closer to Schroeder’s definition of a virtual world; still,

3

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 4

the defining nature of the online game space continues to be the game (Axelsson & Regan, 2006).

The distinction centers on the emphasis on the social nature of virtual worlds without the “game” elements as the primary defining rules of the space. To state the distinction in another way: Games can exist in virtual worlds, but virtual worlds are not game spaces – they are social spaces. Frequently virtual worlds are described as serving the function of a third place or third space, referring to a public space where one shares leisure and social spaces with other people but that is neither home nor work. The third place is similar to the city square, town plaza, coffee shop, hang-outs, or salons of other eras (Oldenburg, 1991; 2000; Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). Oldenburg (1989) explains that “third places exist on neutral ground and serve to level their guests to a condition of social equality. Within these places, conversation is the primary activity and the major vehicle for the display and appreciation of human personality and individuality” (p. 89) The connection between virtual worlds and the third place frequently reinforces the educational process (Bruckman & Resnick, 1993; Schwienhorst, 1998). The connection between the third place and online game spaces, such as World of Warcraft, has been extensively studied (Steinkuehler, 2005; Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006; Wadley, Gibbs, Hew, & Graham, 2003). Although some have attempted to expand the term third place to include all forms of computer-mediated communication (Soukup, 2006), the concept, as outlined by Oldenburg, applies directly to social virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are places of neutral ground and foster a certain degree of social equality, where one might pursue conversation, content creation, and the exchange of the goods Tracing the development of virtual reality from the Sensorama simulator of 1962 to contemporary virtual modeling systems built on Silicon Graphics computers, Burdea and Coiffet define virtual reality as a high-end user computer interface that involves real time simulation and interactions through the visual, auditory, tactile, smell and taste senses (2003). The development of virtual reality technologies focuses on the three “I’s”: to feel the reality through immersion, to change and modify the reality through interaction, and to extend the function of the reality through imagination (Burdea and Coiffet, 2003).

Sivan sees the development of gaming worlds as the second component in the marriage of technologies that spurred the development of virtual worlds. Tracing a lineage from the first multi-user dungeons (MUDs) in the late 1970s to World of Warcraft and its contemporaries today, one finds that these increasingly complex gaming worlds provided the foundation for the development of the social aspect of virtual worlds (Sivan, 2008, p. 3; Bartle, 2004; Morningstar & Farmer, 1991; Taylor, 2006; Alexander, 2003; 2005).

Sivan describes real virtual worlds as depending on four elements: 3D (threedimensionality), community, creation, and commerce, which collectively are referred to as 3D3C. In addition to placing three-dimensionality at the core what defines a real virtual world, the concept of 3D3C emphasizes the social nature of virtual worlds and the roles that content and commerce serve in reinforcing the integrity and cohesiveness of a real virtual world (Sivan, 2008).

4

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 5

Commercial Virtual Worlds Landscape Obtaining accurate data on the size and shape of the universe of virtual worlds can be a complicated task, as most commercial virtual worlds consider their user data to be a trade secret.

This leaves the researcher dependent mainly on data from press releases or consulting firms, which may or may not be accurate. Even obtaining a baseline of the total population of current registered users of commercial virtual worlds is a challenging task; the most frequently cited number is 300 million registered users (Hays, 2008). This is not the same as the total number of regular or current users, which is considered by most companies to be a trade secret and which is suspected to be considerably less than total number of registered users.

Refining Virtual Worlds Definitions Building upon this foundation, this paper will use the following definition: Virtual worlds are persistent, synthetic, three dimensional, non-game centric space.

Virtual worlds are primarily social spaces that allow for other uses depending on the theme of the particular virtual world. Virtual worlds are either commercial or open source in design and implementation.

This definition characterizes virtual worlds as a distinct phenomenon, separate from MUDs; Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Eve Online; or other types three-dimensional online game spaces. Game spaces are virtual environments defined by their purpose of pursuing the objectives of a game.

Games have rules, levels, and, ideally, a conclusion where the objectives of the game have been achieved (Hypography, 2008). Virtual worlds, by contrast, are not defined by the rules and goals of a particular game but instead are frequently focused around socialization and content creation.

This is not meant to imply that MMORPGs do not have non-game activities taking place, such as socialization and commerce, but in a gaming world the primary function of the virtual environment is to facilitate the achievement of the objectives of the game. Similarly, game playing often takes place within a virtual world, but virtual worlds have many other activities taking place simultaneously which are generally as important as or more important than any game playing. These other activities include education, collaboration, support groups, sexual encounters, and content creation, among numerous other uses. In a virtual world, the user can easily stop gaming and, say, attend a university lecture or visit a nightclub.

The framing of virtual worlds as being persistent, synthetic, and three-dimensional delineates virtual worlds from pre-three dimensional online virtual worlds, imaginary worlds, or literary worlds. As the virtual worlds industry grows and becomes more sophisticated, the industry is becoming more segmented, and a number of specific focuses—beyond the basic focus on socialization and content creation—are developing.

In order to obtain a clearer picture of the metaverse, this paper examines both primary and secondary data regarding the various types of virtual worlds—or things sometimes referred to as virtual worlds—that are in existence. The paper also documents and analyzes secondary data on the sizes and target audiences of the various virtual worlds. The secondary data source comes from the Universe and Radar graphics of the KZero Consultancy (2008a, 2008b), which can be found in Appendix 2. It provide a solid point of origin for exploring the metaverse,

5

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 6

offering general data on target audiences, sectors of focus, and supposed number of registered users for over 90 “virtual worlds” as classified by KZero.

The original research presented here, building upon the foundation of KZero, involved visiting the websites of 112 “virtual worlds,” classifying them according to a macro-typology developed for this purpose, identifying the geographical location of each project, and, where possible, attempting to verify the population numbers for the different sites.

Commercial virtual worlds are rapidly growing both in size and sophistication as developers, investors, and marketing professionals develop increasingly refined and focused business models for monetizing virtual worlds. Increasingly the lines are being blurred between virtual worlds, as defined here, and other technologies. Game designers are finding that virtual worlds models are useful for increasing the amount of time user spend within the game space.

Virtual world designers are using gaming design technology to create increasingly sophisticated user experiences. Entrepreneurs and technologists continue to experiment with the integration of virtual worlds technology with other Internet technologies, such as instant messaging, group collaboration tools, and social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook, MySpace, or Orkut.

Continuum of Commercial Virtual Worlds As previously explained, the term virtual worlds has been used to refer to a large variety of very different creations. Using the above definition of a virtual world, the survey undertaken for this project found that of the 112 projects evaluated only 41 (or 37% of the total) could clearly be classified as a virtual world. Additionally, 10% of the sample were clearly games – the companies classify the projects as games, they use gaming terminology, and so on. That leaves the remaining 50% of the sample up in the air: How should they be classified if they are neither games nor virtual worlds?

To classify these remaining projects, it is useful to introduce the concept of a technological hybrid. This is analogous to the concepts of cultural, racial, and global hybridity (Bhabha, 1994; Garcia Canclini, 1995; Young, 1995) used by other authors in other contexts.

Generally speaking, the value of using the concept of hybridity in all these contexts is the same: It provides the necessary heuristic response to an over-simplified dichotomous distinction. In this case, the remaining 50% of the projects fall within a hybrid technological space which can be visualized as existing on a continuum between virtual worlds and game space.

6

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 7

Fig. 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Game Space Continuum by Jeremiah Spence

The linear continuum from virtual worlds to game space includes 95% of the projects surveyed; however, some of the most fascinating projects using some elements of virtual worlds technology fall outside this continuum. The 5% of the projects that did not fit along the continuum have been classified here as either Chat-Virtual Worlds Hybrids or Non-Persistent Virtual World Spaces (VW-NPS). One example of a chat-vw hybrid is IMVU, which allows a user to enter a chat room with an avatar to interact with another user. IMVU can be compared to instant messaging with a visual element. Non-persistent virtual world spaces are best illustrated by the example of Qwaq, which provides a virtual world space specifically for business meetings or group collaborations. The space is created for the purpose of the encounter, and then, after the encounter is over, it shuts down. The settings and accrued content are saved, and when the space is needed for another meeting the settings and content are retrieved.

Given this breakdown of the projects surveyed, this paper will not pretend to give accurate demographics for the games category, as the category would inevitably include the large multitude of MMORPGs and similar game spaces that exist. All projects/sites examined in this survey can be found in Appendix 1.

The following frequency tables provide a summary of the demographics of non-game virtual worlds and virtual worlds related projects.

7

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 8

Table 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Status of Project

What is it?

Virtual World VW-Chat Hybrid Non-persistent Space Game-VW Hybrid VW-SNS Hybrid

Status of Project Live or Open Beta In Development Live or Open Beta

Frequency 34 12 4

Percent 73.9 26.1 100.0

Live or Open Beta Live or Open Beta In Development Live or Open Beta In Development

1 22 15 8 5

100.0 59.5 40.5 61.5 38.5

VW

As can be seen in Table 1, there are 69 projects that are live or in the open beta stage, and there are 32 additional projects currently in the development phase or closed beta. If all 32 additional projects make it to the live phase, this will result in a total of more than 40 virtual worlds and more than 50 additional projects that integrate virtual worlds technology into their functionality. More succinctly, the metaverse is big.

8

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 9

Table 2 - Median Age Range of Users

What is it?

Virtual World

VW-Chat Hybrid

Non-persistent VW Space Game-VW Hybrid

VW-SNS Hybrid

Age Range 5-8 8-10 10-13 13-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-40 Total 13-15 15-20 20-25 Total

Frequency 2 3 10 3 6 10 3 9 46 1 2 1 4

Percent 4.3 6.5 21.7 6.5 13.0 21.7 6.5 19.6 100.0 25.0 50.0 25.0 100.0

25-30 5-8 8-10 10-13 13-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 Total 8-10 10-13 13-15 15-20 20-25 Total

1 6 15 6 1 7 1 1 37 1 4 1 5 2 13

100.0 16.2 40.5 16.2 2.7 18.9 2.7 2.7 100.0 7.7 30.8 7.7 38.5 15.4 100.0

The data in Table 2 clearly demonstrate that the overwhelming concentration of virtual worlds and users of related platforms is under the age of 20. This has a direct impact on the focus of virtual worlds research, an impact that cannot be overstated. The focus of research on Second Life causes the vast majority of virtual world activity to be overlooked. Furthermore, within 5 to 10 years these users will become post-adolescents and thus will be more affluent users and consumers of technology. Pedagogical and market-based tools and strategies will need to adapt accordingly.

9

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 10

Table 3 - Q3/Q4 2008 Total Registered Accounts, in Millions

What is it?

Virtual World

VW-Chat Hybrid

Non-persistent VW Space Game-VW Hybrid

VW-SNS Hybrid

Registered Accounts in Millions 0.1 0.3 1 1.5 2 3 13 15 19 21 100 Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data Not Open to the Public Total 1.5 20 Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data Total Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data 1 2 6 7 20 45 Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data Not Open to the Public Total 24 Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data Not Open to the Public Total

Frequency 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1

Percent 2.2 2.2 2.2 2.2 2.2 4.3 2.2 4.3 2.2 2.2 2.2

21 12 46 1 1

45.7 26.1 100.0 25.0 25.0

2 4

50.0 100.0

1 3 1 1 1 2 1

100.0 8.1 2.7 2.7 2.7 5.4 2.7

13 15 37 1

35.1 40.5 100.0 7.7

7 5 13

53.8 38.5 100.0

10

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 11

Based on the data in Table 3 the actual number of total registered accounts for virtual worlds is close to 194 million, while the total number of registered users of game-virtual world hybrids is 103 million. The total number of registered users of virtual world-social networking site hybrids is 24 million, and the total number of registered users of virtual world-chat hybrids is 21.5 million. The sum of these estimates of the total number of registered users of virtual worlds and related projects that integrate virtual worlds technology is 330.5 million; however, a number of qualifiers must be considered when interpreting this data. Most importantly, the total number of registered users is not the same as the total number of frequent users. For example, this data reports the total number of registered users of Second Life to be 15 million while the average number of users simultaneously logged in on any given day ranges from 50,000 to 100,000.

11

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 12

Table 4 - Sector of Focus of Project What is it?

Virtual World

VW-Chat Hybrid

Non-persistent Space Game-VW Hybrid

VW-SNS Hybrid

Focus Content Creation TV/Film/Books Sports Education/Development Fashion/Lifestyle Music Toys/Real World Games Role-Play/Fantasy/Quests Mirror World Misc Casual Gaming Socialising/Chat Total Misc Socialising/Chat Total

Frequency 8 1 1 5 2 1 2 1 4 1 4 16 46 1 3 4

Percent 17.4 2.2 2.2 10.9 4.3 2.2 4.3 2.2 8.7 2.2 8.7 34.8 100.0 25.0 75.0 100.0

Misc Content Creation TV/Film/Books Sports Education/Development Fashion/Lifestyle Music Toys/Real World Games Role-Play/Fantasy/Quests Misc Casual Gaming Socialising/Chat Total Content Creation Education/Development Toys/Real World Games Misc Casual Gaming Socialising/Chat Total

1 2 4 4 3 3 1 4 5 1 8 2 37 1 2 1 2 1 6 13

100.0 5.4 10.8 10.8 8.1 8.1 2.7 10.8 13.5 2.7 21.6 5.4 100.0 7.7 15.4 7.7 15.4 7.7 46.2 100.0

VW

Table 4 demonstrates that the overwhelming focus of most projects is chat and socialization, followed by content creation, with the exception of game-virtual world hybrids where the focus is more disperse.

12

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 13

Table 5-Where are the projects based?

What is it?

Virtual World

VW-Chat Hybrid

Non-persistent Space Game-VW Hybrid

VW-SNS Hybrid

Headquarters US Canada Europe Asia Multi-national Total US Europe Total VW US US Canada Europe Asia Multi-national Total US Canada Europe Multi-national Total

Frequency 32 1 9 3 1 46 1 3 4

Percent 69.6 2.2 19.6 6.5 2.2 100.0 25.0 75.0 100.0

1 28 1 2 1 5 37 10 1 1 1 13

100.0 75.7 2.7 5.4 2.7 13.5 100.0 76.9 7.7 7.7 7.7 100.0

Table 5 shows that a large majority of the projects are located in the United States, with Europe a distant second, and the rest of the world even farther back. Notably, no projects currently originate from Latin America or Africa.

Conclusion There are several conclusions that can be drawn from this survey of the demographics of virtual worlds. First, virtual world as a concept and construct must be clearly defined and delineated. Second, approxiametly 60% of the projects examined in this project fell outside the strict definition of virtual worlds and can be considered to exist along a continuum from pure virtual worlds to pure game space projects. Third, the metaverse is big. Fourth, the major concentration of virtual worlds users is under the age of 20. This cannot be ignored, and we as researchers and educators are doing a disservice to the field and the public if we continue to focus our research solely on Second Life. Fifth, the majority of functioning virtual worlds and related projects are focused on socialization and chat, and, finally, the majority of projects are being developed in the United States and Europe.

13

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 14

This large-scale survey sets forth the boundaries of what can be considered virtual worlds and what can be considered peripheral technologies. This is not to presume that peripheral technologies are of less importance; to the contrary, it is quite possible that important unforeseen developments in virtual worlds technology will come directly out of these peripheral technologies. However, the delineation of the realm of virtual worlds provides the researcher and the research community with a clear agenda for focusing and clarifying the scope of new studies.

It cannot be emphasized enough that the on-going focus of researchers on Second Life, although convenient and seemingly comfortable to the over-30 crowd, is a detriment to the research community and society at large. As the concentration of both virtual worlds use and development is taking place in the under-25 demographic range, researchers must follow suit and explore these new platforms. This expanded scope of research should not be concentrated solely under the guise of “youth in virtual worlds”—since the vast majority of virtual worlds use is targeted to the under-25 demographic, all examinations of virtual worlds should include these “younger” spaces. Therefore, “Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds,” “Culture of Virtual Worlds,” or “Pedagogy and Learning in Virtual Worlds” cannot, with intellectual honesty, be considered to be inclusive or exhaustive if one does not go beyond the bubble or comfort zone of Second Life.

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Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 15

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Alexander, T. (2005). Massively multiplayer game development 2. Hingham, MA: Charles River Media.

Axelsson, A., & Regan, T. (2006). Playing online. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.), Playing video games: Motives, responses, consequences (pp. 291-306). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bartle, R. (2004). Designing virtual worlds. Indianapolis, IN: New Riders Publishing.

Bell, M. (2008). Toward a definition of “virtual worlds”. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

1(1). Retrieved on November 1, 2008, http://www.jvwresearch.org/v1n1_bell.html Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge.

Bittarello, M. B. (2008). Another time, another space: Virtual worlds, myths and imagination.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(1). Retrieved on November1, 2008, from http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/282/236 Bruckman, A., & Resnick, M. (1993). Virtual professional community: Results from the MediaMOO Project. The Third International Conference on Cyberspace in Austin, Texas, 15 May 1993.

Burdea, G. C., & Coiffet P. (2003.) Virtual reality technology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Castronova, E. (2004). Synthetic worlds. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Chesebro, J. (1985). Definition as rhetorical strategy. Pennsylvania Speech Communication Annual, 41, 5-15.

Damer, B. (2008). A brief history of virtual worlds as a medium for user-created events. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(1). Retrieved on November 1, 2008, from http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/285/239 Eco, U. (1983). The name of the rose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

García Canclini, N. (1995). Hybrid cultures: Strategies for entering and leaving modernity.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hays, G. (2008, August 5). The social virtual world’s a stage. Retrieved on November 1, 2008, from http://www.personalizemedia.com/2008-metaverse-tour-video-the-social-virtualworlds-a-stage/ Hypography. (2007). What is an acceptable definition of “game”? Retrieved on November 1, 2008, from http://hypography.com/forums/linguistics/9953-what-acceptable-definitiongame.html Koster, R. (2004, January 07) A virtual world by any other name? [Msg 21] Message posted to http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/06/a_virtual_world.html KZero. (2008a). Universe. Retrieved on November 1, 2008, from http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?page_id=2537 15

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds 16

KZero. (2008b). Radar. Retrieved on November 1, 2008, from http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?page_id=2563 Morningstar, C., & Farmer, F. R. (1991). The lessons of Lucasfilm's habitat. In M. Benedikt (Ed.), Cyberspace: First steps. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 17

Virtual Worlds Virtual World Name

Status

Age Range Approximate Age

Population of Registered Users, in Millions

Sector

*Based on Kzero Data

*Based on *Based on Kzero Data Kzero Data

*Based on Kzero Data

*Based on Kzero Data

HiPiHi

Live or Open Beta

30-40

30

0.1

Content Creation

vSide

Live or Open Beta

15-20

18

0.3

Activeworld Live or s Open Beta

20-25

23

Kidscom

Live or Open Beta

8-10

There

Live or Open Beta

vMTV

Live or Open Beta

Website

Country Where the Project is Based

Region Where the Project is Based

MacroTypolog y

http://www.hipihi.c China om/index_english. html

Asia

Virtual World

Toys/Rea l World Games

http://www.vside.c US om

US

Virtual World

1

Content Creation

http://www.active worlds.com/

US

US

Virtual World

9.7

1.5

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.kidsco m.com/

US

US

Virtual World

20-25

20.5

2

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.there.c US om/

US

Virtual World

20-25

20.5

3

TV/Film/B http://content.vmt ooks v.com/mtv_centra l/

US

Virtual World

US

17

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 18

Whyville

Live or Open Beta

10-13

10.9

3

Education http://www.whyvill /Develop e.net ment

US

US

Virtual World

Gaia

Live or Open Beta

15-20

17

13

RolePlay/Fant asy/Ques ts

http://www.gaiaon US line.com/

US

Virtual World

Barbie Girls

Live or Open Beta

10-13

9.5

15

Toys/Rea l World Games

http://www.barbie girls.com/home.ht ml

US

US

Virtual World

Second Life

Live or Open Beta

30-40

33

15

Content Creation

http://secondlife.c om

US

US

Virtual World

Club Penguin

Live or Open Beta

10-13

11.8

19

Casual Gaming

http://www.clubpe nguin.com/

Canada

Canada

Virtual World

Stardoll

Live or Open Beta

13-15

15

21

Fashion/L http://www.stardol ifestyle l.com

US

US

Virtual World

Habbo

Live or Open Beta

10-13

12.8

100

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.habbo. Japancom/ Finland

Multinational

Virtual World

Action Allstars

In 8-10 Developme nt

9.2

Not Open to the Public

Sports

http://www.action allstars.com/

US

US

Virtual World

Amazing Worlds

In 25-30 Developme nt

30

Not Open to the Public

Mirror World

http://www.amazi ngworlds.com/

US

US

Virtual World

18

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 19

Cyber Town

Live or Open Beta

20-25

26

Not Open to the Public

Content Creation

http://www.cybert US own.com/main_ns frames.html

US

Virtual World

iheartland

In 20-25 Developme nt

24

Not Open to the Public

Content Creation

http://blog.iheartla US nd.com/

US

Virtual World

KooDooZ

In 10-13 Developme nt

12

Not Open to the Public

Education http://www.koodo /Develop oz.com/ ment

US

US

Virtual World

Medikidz

In 10-13 Developme nt

11

Not Open to the Public

Education http://www.mediki /Develop dz.com/ ment

UK

Europe

Virtual World

Muxlim

In 13-15 Developme nt

14

Not Open to the Public

Content Creation

http://spaces.muxl Finland im.com/

Europe

Virtual World

Mycosm

In 20-25 Developme nt

25

Not Open to the Public

Content Creation

http://www.mycos m.com/

US

Virtual World

Near

In 25-30 Developme nt

29

Not Open to the Public

Mirror World

http://nearglobal.c UK om/

Europe

Virtual World

Papermint

In 15-20 Developme nt

16

Not Open to the Public

Casual Gaming

http://www.paper mint.com/

Germany Europe

Virtual World

US

19

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 20

Vivaty

In 20-25 Developme nt

20

Not Open to the Public

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.vivaty. com/

US

US

Virtual World

Yogurtistan In 20-25 Developme nt

20

Not Open to the Public

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.yogurti stan.com:8080/js p/index.jsp

Turkey

Europe

Virtual World

3-D Explorer

Live or Open Beta

30-40

30

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.3dxplo rer.com/

France

Europe

Virtual World

Forterra

Live or Open Beta

30-40

30

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.forterr ainc.com/

US

US

Virtual World

Franktown Rocks

Live or Open Beta

10-13

10

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Music

http://www.frankto US wnrocks.com/

US

Virtual World

20

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 21

Frenzoo

Live or Open Beta

15-20

16

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Fashion/L http://www.frenzo ifestyle o.com/beta/

Hong Kong

Asia

Virtual World

GeoSim Philly

Live or Open Beta

30-40

31

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Mirror World

http://www.geosi mphilly.com/

US

US

Virtual World

Kaneva

Live or Open Beta

20-25

21

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.kanev a.com/

US

US

Virtual World

Lively

Live or Open Beta

15-20

16

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.lively.c US om/html/landing.h tml

US

Virtual World

21

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 22

MinyanLan d

Live or Open Beta

10-13

10

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Education http://www.minya /Develop nland.com/ ment

US

US

Virtual World

Multiverse

Live or Open Beta

20-25

23

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Content Creation

US

US

Virtual World

Nexus

Live or Open Beta

30-40

30

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Education http://www.ecsorl. /Develop com/solutions/EC ment S_EMNx.html

US

US

Virtual World

Planet Cazmo

Live or Open Beta

10-13

11

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Casual Gaming

US

US

Virtual World

http://www.multiv erse.net/index.ht ml

http://www.planet cazmo.com/

22

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 23

Protospher e

Live or Open Beta

30-40

30

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.proton media.com/

SmallWorld Live or s Open Beta

15-20

17

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

Taatu

Live or Open Beta

13-15

13.5

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Tootsvilles

Live or Open Beta

5-8

7

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

US

US

Virtual World

http://www.smallw New orlds.com/login.p Zealand hp

Asia

Virtual World

Socialisin g/Chat

http://worldcdn.taatu.com/ind ex.html

Europe

Virtual World

Casual Gaming

http://www.tootsvil US le.com/index.html

US

Virtual World

Belgium

23

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 24

Twinity

Live or Open Beta

30-40

36

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Mirror World

http://www.twinity. US com/en

US

Virtual World

Utherverse

Live or Open Beta

30-40

32

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.utherv erse.com/

Netherla nds

Europe

Virtual World

Vastpark

Live or Open Beta

25-30

27

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Misc

http://www.vastpa rk.com

US

US

Virtual World

Virtual Tweens / Ekoloko

In 10-13 Developme nt

10

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

http://vtweens.co m/

US

US

Virtual World

24

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 25

Vizwoz

Live or Open Beta

10-13

11

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.vizwoz UK .com/

Europe

Virtual World

Zwinky Cuties

Live or Open Beta

5-8

7

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialisin g/Chat

http://www.zwinky US cuties.com

US

Virtual World

Compiled by Jeremiah Spence, November 2008, from various sources.

25

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 26

Virtual World-Social Networking Site Hybrids Virtual World Name

Status

Age Range Approximat Population e Age of Registered Users, in Millions

Sector

Website

Country Where the Project is Based

Region Where the Project is Based

MacroTypology

*Based on *Based on *Based on *Based on *Based on Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data WeeWorld

Live or Open Beta

Club Cooee

13-15

14.3

24

Socialising/ http://www. US-UK Chat weeworld.c om/

Multinational

VW-SNS Hybrid

In 10-13 Developme nt

12

Not Open to the Public

Misc

Europe

VW-SNS Hybrid

Grockit

In 10-13 Developme nt

11

Not Open to the Public

Education/ http://www. US Developme grockit.com nt /login

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

Metaplace

In 15-20 Developme nt

19

Not Open to the Public

Content Creation

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

Onverse

In 20-25 Developme nt

23

Not Open to the Public

Socialising/ http://www.

Chat onverse.co m/

US

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

Rocketon

In 15-20 Developme nt

16

Not Open to the Public

Casual Gaming

US

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

http://en.bl og.clubcoo ee.com

Germany

https://ww US w.metaplac e.com/

http://www. rocketon.c om/

26

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 27

EGO

Live or Open Beta

15-20

19

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialising/ http://www.

Chat egocity.com/

US

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

Green

Live or Open Beta

10-13

11

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Education/ http://green US Developme .com/ nt

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

My Mini Life

Live or Open Beta

10-13

12

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialising/ http://www.

Chat myminilife. com/

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

SceneCast er

Live or Open Beta

20-25

24

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Misc

Canada

VW-SNS Hybrid

US

http://www. Canada scenecaste r.com

27

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 28

vLES Live or Virtual Open Beta Lower East Side

15-20

19.5

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Toys/Real World Games

http://www. vles.com/

US

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

Xivio

Live or Open Beta

8-10

8.6

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialising/ http://www.

Chat xivio.com

US

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

Zwinky

Live or Open Beta

15-20

17

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialising/ http://zwink US Chat y.smileyce ntral.com

US

VW-SNS Hybrid

Compiled by Jeremiah Spence, November 2008, from various sources.

28

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 29

Virtual World-Chat Hybrids Virtual World Name

Status

Age Range Approximat Population e Age of Registered Users, in Millions

Sector

Website

Country Where the Project is Based

Region Where the Project is Based

MacroTypology

http://www. weblin.com

Germany

Europe

VW-Chat Hybrid

*Based on *Based on *Based on *Based on *Based on Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Weblin

Live or Open Beta

20-25

21.5

1.5

Misc

IMVU

Live or Open Beta

15-20

20

20

Socialising/ http://www.

Chat imvu.com/

US

US

VW-Chat Hybrid

sMeet

Live or Open Beta

15-20

19

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialising/ http://us.s Chat meet.com

Germany

Europe

VW-Chat Hybrid

Visitoons

Live or Open Beta

13-15

13.7

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialising/ http://www. Spain Chat visitoonsch at.com/En/i ndex.aspx

Europe

VW-Chat Hybrid

Compiled by Jeremiah Spence, November 2008, from various sources.

29

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 30

Non-persistent Virtual World Space Virtual World Name

Status

Age Range Approximat Population e Age of Registered Users, in Millions

Sector

Website

Country Where the Project is Based

Region Where the Project is Based

MacroTypology

http://www. qwaq.com/

US

US

Nonpersistent VW Space

*Based on *Based on *Based on *Based on *Based on Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Qwaq

Live or Open Beta

25-30

29

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Misc

Compiled by Jeremiah Spence, November 2008, from various sources.

30

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 31

Game Space-Virtual World Hybrids Virtual World Name

Status

Age Range Approximat Population e Age of Registered Users, in Millions

Sector

Website

Country Where the Project is Based

Region Where the Project is Based

MacroTypology

*Based on *Based on *Based on *Based on *Based on Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Handipoint s

Live or Open Beta

5-8

7.5

1

Education/ http://www. US Developme handipoints nt .com

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Moshi Monsters

Live or Open Beta

8-10

10

1

RolePlay/Fanta sy/Quests

http://www. US moshimons ters.com/

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Webkinz

Live or Open Beta

8-10

9

1

Toys/Real World Games

http://www. webkinz.co m

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Buildabear ville

Live or Open Beta

8-10

8.8

2

Toys/Real World Games

http://www. buildabear ville.com

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

goSuperm odel

Live or Open Beta

13-15

13

6

Fashion/Lif estyle

http://www. Denmark gosupermo del.com

Europe

Game-VW Hybrid

Meez

Live or Open Beta

15-20

17.5

7

Socialising/ http://www.

Chat meez.com

US

Game-VW Hybrid

US

31

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 32

Jumpstart

Live or Open Beta

5-8

7.7

20

Education/ http://www.

Developme jumpstart.c nt om/

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Poptropica

Live or Open Beta

8-10

9.6

20

Casual Gaming

http://www. poptropica. com/

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Neopets

Live or Open Beta

10-13

10

45

Casual Gaming

http://www. neopets.co m/index.ph tml

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

8D

In 15-20 Developme nt

16

Not Open to the Public

RolePlay/Fanta sy/Quests

http://www.

8dworld.co m/English/ Home.html

US-China

Multinational

Game-VW Hybrid

Chugginton In 5-8 Developme nt

7

Not Open to the Public

Education/ http://www. US-UK Developme ludorum.co nt m/propertie s/chuggingt on.html

Multinational

Game-VW Hybrid

DMCWorld

In 15-20 Developme nt

18

Not Open to the Public

Music

http://www. US dmcworld.c om/home.a sp

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Empire of Sports

In 15-20 Developme nt

18

Not Open to the Public

Sports

http://www. empireofsp orts.com/

US

Game-VW Hybrid

US

32

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 33

Football Superstars

In 25-30 Developme nt

27

Not Open to the Public

Sports

http://footb allsupersta rs.com/

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

FusionFall

In 10-13 Developme nt

13

Not Open to the Public

RolePlay/Fanta sy/Quests

http://www. fusionfall.c om/

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Hello Kitty

In 8-10 Developme nt

8.7

Not Open to the Public

Toys/Real World Games

http://www. Japan hellokittyon line.com/us /index.php ?c=&s=

Asia

Game-VW Hybrid

Home

In 15-20 Developme nt

19

Not Open to the Public

Misc

http://com US-Japan munity.eu. playstation. com/playst ationeu/bo ard/messa ge?board.i d=b_EN_P S3_Home& thread.id=6

Multinational

Game-VW Hybrid

Interzone Futebol

In 20-25 Developme nt

22

Not Open to the Public

Sports

http://www. interzonefu tebol.com/

US-Brazil

Multinational

Game-VW Hybrid

Kidstudio

In 8-10 Developme nt

8.3

Not Open to the Public

Casual Gaming

http://www. kidstudio.c om/

Canada

Canada

Game-VW Hybrid

33

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 34

Konstructio In 8-10 n Zone Developme nt

8.4

Not Open to the Public

Content Creation

http://www. konstructio nzone.com /kz/app/ho me

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

LEGO Universe

In 10-13 Developme nt

10

Not Open to the Public

RolePlay/Fanta sy/Quests

http://unive rse.lego.co m/enus/Default. aspx

DenmarkUS

Multinational

Game-VW Hybrid

Pixie Hollow

In 8-10 Developme nt

8

Not Open to the Public

TV/Film/Bo oks

http://pixieh US ollow.go.co m/

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Robot Galaxy

In 8-10 Developme nt

9.2

Not Open to the Public

RolePlay/Fanta sy/Quests

http://www. robotgalax y.com

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

TechDeck Live

In 15-20 Developme nt

19

Not Open to the Public

Sports

http://www. techdeckliv e.com/

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Bunnytown

Live or Open Beta

9

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

TV/Film/Bo oks

http://playh US ouse.go.co m/v1/mark eting/index. html

US

Game-VW Hybrid

8-10

34

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 35

Digital Dollhouse

Live or Open Beta

10-13

10

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Fashion/Lif estyle

http://www. digitaldollh ouse.com/

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Dizzywood

Live or Open Beta

10-13

10

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Casual Gaming

http://www. dizzywood. com

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Lolas Land

Live or Open Beta

8-10

9

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Fashion/Lif estyle

http://www. lolasland.c om/

UK

Europe

Game-VW Hybrid

Mini-Match

Live or Open Beta

8-10

9

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

TV/Film/Bo oks

http://mini match.cart oonnetwor k.com/

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

35

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 36

Ourworld

Live or Open Beta

15-20

15.5

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Casual Gaming

http://ourw orld.com/v 11/

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Roblox

Live or Open Beta

10-13

11

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Content Creation

http://www. roblox.com /

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Seapals

Live or Open Beta

5-8

7

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Casual Gaming

http://www. US seapalswor ld.com/

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Spicy Town

Live or Open Beta

8-10

8.5

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

TV/Film/Bo oks

http://www. spicyside.c om/index.a spx

US

Game-VW Hybrid

US

36

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 37

Ty-girls

Live or Open Beta

8-10

8

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Toys/Real World Games

http://tygirlz US .com/

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Whirled

Live or Open Beta

8-10

9.1

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Casual Gaming

http://www. whirled.co m/

US

US

Game-VW Hybrid

Woogi World

Live or Open Beta

5-8

7

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Socialising/ http://www. US Chat woogiworld .com/

US

Game-VW Hybrid

ZooKazoo

Live or Open Beta

5-8

7

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

Casual Gaming

US

Game-VW Hybrid

http://www. US zookazoo.c om

Compiled by Jeremiah Spence, November 2008, from various sources.

37

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 38

Game Spaces Virtual World Name

Status

Age Range Approximat Population e Age of Registered Users, in Millions

Sector

*Based on Kzero Data

*Based on *Based on *Based on *Based on Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data Kzero Data

Chapatiz

Live or Open Beta

5-8

Cars

Website

Country Where the Project is Based

Region Where the Project is Based

MacroTypology

7.9

0.8

Casual Gaming

http://uk.ch France-UK apatiz.com/

Multinational

Game

In 8-10 Developme nt

10

Not Open to the Public

TV/Film/Bo oks

none

US

US

Game

Chobots

In 8-10 Developme nt

9.8

Not Open to the Public

Education/ http://www.

Developme chobots.co nt m/

Ukraine

Europe

Game

Club PonyPals

In 10-13 Developme nt

10

Not Open to the Public

Toys/Real World Games

http://www. US clubponypa ls.com/

US

Game

ERepublic

In 25-30 Developme nt

28

Not Open to the Public

Misc

http://www. erepublik.c om/en

US

US

Game

Freaky Creatures

In 10-13 Developme nt

12

Not Open to the Public

Toys/Real World Games

http://www. myfreakycr eatures.co m/

US

US

Game

38

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 1 - 39

Kiwi Heroes

In 10-13 Developme nt

11

Not Open to the Public

Education/ http://www.

Developme kiwiheroes. nt com/

My Animal Family

In 5-8 Developme nt

6

Not Open to the Public

TV/Film/Bo oks

Revnjenz

In 13-15 Developme nt

14

Not Open to the Public

Webcarzz

In 8-10 Developme nt

9.5

Spineworld

Live or Open Beta

12

10-13

Canada

Canada

Game

http://www. US bitstudio.co m/projects/ 3projects/4my-animalfamily.html

US

Game

Toys/Real World Games

http://www. US revnjenz.co m/revnjenz new/index. php

US

Game

Not Open to the Public

RolePlay/Fanta sy/ Quests

http://www. mindcontrol.co m/news.ph p?articleID =26

US

Game

Population Under 1,000,000 or Have Not Released Data

RolePlay/Fanta sy/ Quests

http://www. Sweden spineworld. com

Europe

Game

US

Compiled by Jeremiah Spence, November 2008, from various sources.

39

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 2 - 40

Appendix 2 Reprinted, with permission, from the KZero Consultancy, United Kingdom.

40

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 2 - 41

41

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 2 - 42

42

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 2 - 43

43

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 2 - 44

44

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Demographics of Virtual Worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Appendix 2 - 45

45

Vol. 1. No. 2.

ISSN: 1941-8477 “Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds” November 2008

The “New” Virtual Consumer: Exploring the Experiences of New Users

By Lyle R. Wetsch, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Faculty of Business Administration, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

Abstract The development of virtual worlds began long before the invention of computers; the minds of children at play would create fantasy or virtual worlds in which to explore or interact. However, the development of the computer provided an opportunity for these worlds to expand from within an individual’s mind to fixed video game environments and shared, interactive communities co-created by the users. The high growth of various virtual worlds globally that has occurred in recent years has prompted a number of Fortune 2000 companies to either enter the virtual space, or at least monitor the development and potential of avatar-based marketing.

Although the current number of participants in virtual worlds is growing, in comparison to the overall consumer population, these numbers still represent just a very small percentage. To maximize the value that can be achieved and enhance the return on investment in a virtual world presence, organizations need to not only successfully market to the existing members of the virtual world, but they also need to effectively recruit real world consumers into the virtual world and retain them through positive interactions.

Following the experiences of 40 undergraduate business students and 10 MBA graduate students as they enter the virtual world of Second Life for the first time, their 12 week journey is documented through weekly personal blog entries, online discussion groups, and exit interviews. The students’ comments and discussions provide insight into the mind of the new entrant to the virtual world. These insights guide suggestions for improving the experience of new virtual consumers in order to create long-term consumer relationships with an organization’s virtual presence.

Keywords: virtual consumption; new entrants; Second Life; virtual customer relationships. _____________________________________________________________________________ This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: - The “New” Virtual Consumer 2

The “New” Virtual Consumer: Exploring the Experiences of New Users

By Lyle R. Wetsch, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Faculty of Business Administration, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

Virtual worlds have been defined as “persistent virtual environments in which people experience others as being there with them – and where they can interact with them” (Schroeder, 2008). The increase in computer technology and consumer awareness has created an ideal environment for the growth of these environments. In 2006 it was predicted that there were 20 to 30 million people involved in virtual world environments (Balkin & Noveck, 2006). Since that time, the numbers have continued to grow with virtual worlds like Habbo reaching 8.6 million unique visitors per month (Kuusikko, 2008), CyWorld in Korea continually registering the average of 20 million visitors per month (Tae-gyu, 2007), Gaia Online attracting 2 million unique visitors per month with 300,000 users logging in daily (Au, 2007), and the virtual world Second Life currently has almost 15 million registered users worldwide (Second Life Economic Statistics, 2008).

There are a wide variety of virtual worlds targeted to every different age demographic and social environment. Some of these worlds are designed to operate more as gaming environments (NeoPets), others are more of a social environment (CyWorld), and some attempt to straddle several functions including business opportunities (Second Life). It is the business aspect of Second Life that allows its users to also be consumers. The actions and behaviours of these users/consumers need to be understood if virtual worlds are to provide an effective channel for consumer interactions with businesses.

Second Life Second Life (SL) is a 3D virtual world whose foundation was designed by Linden Labs and opened up to the public in 2003. At the time it was unique in allowing all of the content to be user generated and the users retained their intellectual property rights. During 2006 and 2007, extremely high growth rates were experienced (averaging upwards of 20% per month) and, although these rates are no longer being sustained, it continues to grow in both size and the number of users. The amount of land mass being utilized in Second Life grew by over 44% in the second quarter of 2008, over 500,000 users are heavy users, the peak concurrent users reached 67,000, and, despite a slowdown in the real world economy, there was a 9% growth in the number of profitable businesses in Second Life (Linden, 2008).

Second Life has been a starting ground for many real-life companies to explore the opportunities for virtual business and marketing; General Motors, Dell, Sony, IBM, and Wells Fargo all staked their claim to online real estate in computer mediated environments (CMEs) like Second Life. Companies have experimented in Second Life with activities ranging from research and design (Starwood Hotels and Resorts), sports simulcasts (Major League Baseball), press briefing and staff training (Sun Microsystems), education (Harvard University), news (Reuters), and the in-world sales of virtual product (Adidas, Toyota). A survey of 100 CEOs from Fortune 2000 companies found that 76% of senior executives are experimenting with alternative media such as blogs, Second Life, and social networking. The study commissioned by Weber

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: - The â&#x20AC;&#x153;Newâ&#x20AC;? Virtual Consumer 3

Â

Shandwick (KRC Research, 2007) found that 69% of those surveyed currently use social networking in their marketing efforts, while 37% plan to use it more over the next five years.

Avatar-based marketing (such as in Second Life) came last in the list of 20 media tools the senior executives planned to use over the next five years, but researchers believe that this will increase as more companies learn how to utilize these worlds more effectively (Senior Execs Big on New Media, 2007). The actual growth potential for virtual worlds is still speculative but some believe that it may be as important as the Internet to companies within the next five years (Driver, Jackson, Moore, & Schooley, 2008).

Figure 1: Business Usage of Second Life Mouse over image to active flash movie controls to view movie Research Problem Despite the growth of virtual world participants and an increased interest of organizations into the virtual world, most of the forays are experimental in nature without a sound basis for understanding how real-world consumer behaviour translates into virtual world behaviour. The information that does exist about Second Life users as virtual world consumers are typically based on experienced users who were early entrants, may have an online gaming background, and were likely to have entered Second Life prior to its commercialization by real-world companies. Because of this, these individuals may be resistant to the efforts of real-world businesses as they expand into the virtual world. Many companies such as American Apparel have experienced this resistance first hand and, because of less than expected success, many have abandoned their initial foray into the virtual world. Despite a number of companies exiting Second Life, McKinsey and Company continue to suggest that virtual worlds will become an indispensible business tool and be vital for organizations to reach the video game generation.

Organizations that choose to ignore Second Life should do so at their own peril (Richards, 2008).

Compared to the overall consumer population, the current growth in the number of participants in virtual worlds still represents just a very small percentage. To maximize the value that can be achieved and enhance the return on investment from an organizations virtual world presence, it is essential to not only market successfully to existing members of the virtual world, but real-world consumers also need to be effectively recruited into the virtual world and retained through positive interactions. Current churn rates (the number of users who abandon the world shortly after joining) are estimated to range from 60% to 85% (Shirky, 2006), so increasing our understanding of the experiences of these new users is important for continued business growth in virtual worlds.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: - The “New” Virtual Consumer 4

Theoretical Framework Consumer research has moved away from simply viewing consumers as information processors to consumers as socially conceptualized beings. This stage of consumer marketing research was identified as the ‘new consumer behaviour’ (Belk, 1995). The Internet has enabled a new type of social conceptualization where users can connect across disparate locations (Jones, 1999) with representations that are created through their own imagination, perhaps through online communities such as Second Life (Kozinets, 2002).

However, specific academic research into Second Life consumer behaviour is limited.

There is a significant body of work that provides a theoretical framework from which to build our understanding of the virtual world. While Second Life is much more interactive and three dimensional than any other environment previously designed, research has been completed on the social construction of virtual communities (e.g., Baym, 2000; Sveningsson, 2001) in a text based environment such as chat rooms and discussion groups. These elements are present in Second Life but the addition of a visual presentation creates unknown adaptations. The ways in which an individual’s identity is modified when interacting through a technological intermediary (e.g., Markham, 1998; Sondheim, 1996), or while interacting in online groups (e.g., Eichkorn, 2001), has been researched in the text environment, but the ability to create a unique persona through a customer-designed avatar that can represent either a person’s actual self or their ideal self takes these interactions to a new level and produces many unknown factors. The increasing detail that is available in the virtual environment is leading scholars to call for increased attention to how the online and offline worlds intersect, specifically with consumer behaviour (Baym, Zhang, & Lin, 2002).

Methodology This research study utilized a multi-method approach including survey methodology, netnography, and personal interviews. Netnography, or online ethnography is a methodology that has emerged within the past decade as an important means of studying and understanding virtual communities (Fox & Roberts, 1999; Kozinets, 1997, 1998).

To understand the experiences of new users to the virtual world, it was necessary to follow a controlled sample of participants during their introduction and socialization into Second Life. Business students from a mid-size North American university enrolled in an Internet Marketing course served as the subject pool for this study. In order to facilitate as wide a range of demographics as possible, two classes were involved in this study, one undergraduate class consisting of 40 students and one MBA class consisting of 10 students.

The 12 week journey of the participants began with students completing a short questionnaire at the beginning of the term to identify their internet-based comfort and specific experience that they may have had within virtual worlds such as Second Life. These surveys confirmed that the majority of students had no experience with Second Life or any other virtual world (three students had just begun exploring Second Life in preparation for the course), although several had experience with online gaming. In order to provide an introduction to Second Life and to encourage interest, all students completed an orientation session in the

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: - The “New” Virtual Consumer 5

computer lab to assist them at the beginning of their Second Life experiences1. Once the topic of Second Life was introduced in class, students created their own avatars to represent themselves in Second Life and began their own interactions, recording their experiences in their weekly blog entry (public entries were visible to other students in the class and private entries were limited to the course instructor and the student) and through the online class discussion group2. The author was also immersed within Second Life over the duration of the term to observe the participants as they interacted in Second Life, consistent with netnographic procedures established by Kozinets (1997, 1998).

The course utilized a virtual classroom on a private island to serve as a central meeting point for students, a lecture environment, online meeting rooms, and a social center. This provided the student groups with a place to meet and discuss projects and a staging point to connect with fellow students prior to their exploration of the virtual world, allowing for a social consumption experience.

Following the course completion, students were asked to allow their blog entries to be utilized for research purposes and whether they would be willing to participate in an exit interview to discuss their experience and comments in more detail. The student comments and discussions provided insight into the mind of the new entrant to the virtual world in real-time as they experienced it, commenting on their blogs at the time the incidents occurred to enhance the accurate recall of events.

Findings Throughout the 12 week virtual experience that the students shared, the majority of participants experienced similar highs and lows, positive and negative interactions, as well as a series of emotions including frustration, excitement, anxiety, and loneliness. The following section outlines some of the main findings about the students’ initial experience in Second Life.

Technical requirements.

The technical requirements to operate Second Life to its maximum potential on your computer are quite high. Whether it is the system requirements required for your computer (especially the graphics card) or the high speed network requirements, many of the students, even those with relatively new computers, experienced frustration.

“I have been logging on from my laptop, which although being only three months old, apparently doesn’t have a very good video card, causing long rendering times and significant lag when there are more than a few avatars in an area. This made the experience fairly choppy at times, to the point where I had to leave some areas.”

1

This is noted by the author to be different than a typical entrant into the virtual world who would not have access to an orientation session other than those available online. As class participants may not have any interest in the virtual world (unlike other new entrants) this orientation was important to develop some level of interest in the activity.

2 Blog is a short form for weblog, a frequent and chronological publication of comments and thoughts on the web. www.epolotix.com

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: - The “New” Virtual Consumer 6

“I find it too chaotic and the whole high end graphics thing really ruins it for me. I get very frustrated with the loading times and the ‘choppiness’ and this is probably the biggest factor for why my interests have been greatly reduced.”

“If I had to choose one critical area of improvement for Second Life I would have to say the technical resources required to run the program. Even with a computer that is only 7 or 8 months old, I am having a few problems with refresh rates within the world. Maybe you need both an ultra fast computer and an ultra fast Internet connection.”

Graphics.

While the technical requirements are significant and did cause many frustrations among the participants, for those that entered the virtual world with a system that met the optimum specifications the results were very positive. The visual experience that the participants experienced surprised many.

“I didn’t think I could find a place of relaxation on the internet.... I struggle to find a place of pure relaxation in real life. But Venice changed my entire view of why people get so involved in programs like SL. It was breathtaking, as far as a virtual world could be. I sat on this glass ridge which overlooked the water and with the sound of the waves and wind, it almost felt like I was really there.”

“The vegetation and art was just amazing. I thought it was unbelievable how a virtual world can be so intricate with details.”

“It was very exciting seeing images from the real world on the Island including houses, castles and all sorts of decoration.”

“The architecture here is amazing and is an absolute virtual marvel.”

Avatar control.

Individuals who were new to virtual worlds or online gaming experienced a significant learning curve in becoming familiar with how to control their avatar and how everything worked.

Those with gaming experience found the controls less than intuitive and contrary to those that they were used to. Many participants experienced difficulty with the interface and basic actions, even after completing the orientations.

“For the first number of days I tried to spend at least an hour on Second Life trying to get familiar with the site, however this didn’t seem to be an adequate amount of time to get a good feel for how everything worked.”

“I soon got bored when I could not control my avatar easily in terms of movement.”

“It takes a tremendous amount of time and understanding to properly immerse into the virtual world.”

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: - The “New” Virtual Consumer 7

Figure 2: Orientation Island Challenge Mouse over image to active flash movie controls to view movie The initial frustrations that were experienced with control tended to be alleviated as the term progressed and the participants gained more experience with their avatar and the Second Life interface.

“However, after going through the initial stages and learning some of the basic actions, I found Second Life more interesting and easier to manage over time.”

Griefers.

Griefing is a term that originated in the 1990s when it described ‘willfully antisocial behaviour’ in multiplayer online games. For some individuals, griefing has developed into a fullfledged culture and Second Life has provided them with a veritable playground where they can subject unsuspecting individuals to any manner of virtual trauma (Dibbell, 2008). This is one of the many reasons why universities have private islands in Second Life allowing them to limit the access to avatars that are actual students enrolled in the class. However, once the students began exploring the mainland, they became fair game for griefers, as would any new entrant to the virtual world. Despite the negative interactions identified below, griefing was experienced by less than 10% of the students.

“Perhaps I was eager, perhaps I was lonely, but I made the mistake of accepting a friendship request from an avatar named Felipe 12. After I did this something happened to my avatar. I have no idea what it was, but it was a disfigurement and I had no idea how to fix it. Honestly, my body parts are all over the place, like someone tore apart Barbie, juggled her and threw the pieces together....The next time I log in expecting to be fully dismembered and prepared to create a new account, to my surprise, I am normal again. I don’t know why or how, but I am thankful that I get to keep my avatar.”

“The unfortunate thing for these organizations is that there are people who go around and create an unwanted presence that could more or less deter people from ever visiting the island again. This creates a very rocky playing ground for new entrant SL businesses who are grasping at straws when it comes to legitimizing their business.”

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: - The “New” Virtual Consumer 8

Variety of experiences.

Second Life provided the students with a wide variety of locations and experiences, both positive and negative. One of their biggest challenges however was trying to identify appropriate locations as difficulty was noted with the search function within Second Life.

“Over the past little while of using Second Life I am completely amazed with all of the things to see and do.”

“I did notice a lot of traffic on mysterious or liberal islands, such as the Red Light District. An analogy can be drawn to the earlier days of the Internet when a lot of the activity surrounded the pornographic world. Additionally, because everyone has an alias in Second Life, there could be a sense of security when visiting these areas.”

“The search function in Second Life seems to be inefficient as well. Whenever I looked for a particular place or island, the search results would be inaccurate or misleading. The unfair disadvantage is that I performed searches with a ‘Google’ mindset, expecting immediate matches. However, I do expect that these things will eventually tighten up and become more effective.”

Figure 3: Fun Experiences Mouse over image to active flash movie controls to view movie Lack of people/interactions.

One of the biggest complaints that the new participants had when visiting Second Life was the lack of other people/avatars and the accompanying loneliness and disconnection that this led to. Many of the students resorted to pairing up with others in the class as they did not enjoy exploring the virtual world on their own. When they did locate individuals, in many cases they were not encouraged to interact, although some of the students did manage to make new friends in the virtual world.

“My avatar must be ugly or smell or something, no one wants to talk to me!”

“There’s a campfire with some people around, but they’re not a very talkative bunch. Maybe my avatar needs a bath or something, they left as soon as I got here.”

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: - The “New” Virtual Consumer 9

“I explained that I was new to SL and I really needed help ... with the certain aspects of SL that I was unable to grasp. She explained to me different things ... I am starting to understand how the economy of Second Life exists ... I feel that I have only grazed the surface of this fascinating world.”

Building is not enough.

Simply having a presence in Second Life is not enough. It is not a case of “if you build it they will come.” You need to have a purpose that provides some value to the consumers. The effort that you put into your location in the virtual world is recognized by the users, but so is the lack of effort.

“When exploring Second Life, most of the time I see islands and regions that sometimes have great flow, and a great overall feeling, but most of the time I see areas that seem to have been slapped together for the sake of having a presence in Second Life.”

“If you cannot offer any added value in your virtual world presence, don’t bother being there. If you can offer a better experience through traditional web pages, focus your efforts there.”

“A location lacking content is pointless.”

“This company allows you to play with virtual features that represent real life features. Personally, I grew affectionate for this company ... This is a company I will buy from in real life. Guaranteed.”

Conclusions and Implications There are many lessons that can be learned from the experiences of the students as they began their exploration of the virtual world: 1-Make sure that the technical requirements match the user capabilities. Much like in the early days of the Internet when a large number of users still had dial-up service. Designing your website with highly interactive graphics would create an unsatisfactory experience, but make sure you are maximizing what you can delivery to the user.

2-Make it easy for new entrants to learn how to explore your site. Many companies and locations in Second Life (such as CSI-NY) are designing their own ‘orientation island’ and interface for their real-world consumers that they are directing to their virtual world presence. This can give you control over some of the frustrations that new users experience.

3-Create a positive experience that is interactive – both with the site and with other avatars. The high churn rate of virtual worlds means that organizations will have a limited time period to show consumers the value. Their first experience must be a great one; they need to be involved and brought into the group quickly.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: - The “New” Virtual Consumer 10

Remembering the definition of a virtual world, the key is the INTERACTION. Without the interaction, there are better channels to present the information.

One of the participants began to ask friends and colleagues about their potential to explore virtual worlds to see what kind of reaction they would have.

“The people that I questioned represented most age categories ranging from 10 to 66 years of age. The responses were fairly consistent as most were aware at some level that virtual worlds exist but very few indicated that they had ever actively participated in any such worlds. A common response was that life was hectic enough in the real world and that there is no time for a second life! Many indicated that they use social networking sites such as Facebook, email, texting and instant messaging primarily to save time and it was commented that virtual worlds could not offer such a benefit and would actually require more of a time commitment.”

So, while the potential does exist for the virtual world environments, the suggestions mentioned above are important to address to reduce the churn of new entrants once they decide to explore the virtual environment, but, as with any new channel, before they will even begin their explorations there has to be an advantage to them, especially with respect to time. Keep the following in mind: “What value is this providing to the consumer?

If you do not know – how can you expect them to?”

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Vol. 1. No. 2 ISSN: 1941-8477 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worldsâ&#x20AC;?

November 2008

Real Virtual Worlds SOS (State of Standards) Q3-2008

By Yesha Sivan, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design & Metaverse Labs. Ltd.

This is a brief essay, we call "think-pieces", designed to stimulate a discussion on a particular topic. For this series of essays we propose the following question: "Consumer behavior in virtual worlds, is it really any different to the real world, or is it simply a case of 'old wine in a new bottle'?"

Keywords: consumer behavior; data mining; surveillance

This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Real Virtual Worlds SOS 2

Real Virtual Worlds SOS (State of Standards) Q3-2008

By Yesha Sivan, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design; Metaverse Labs. Ltd.

The purpose of this think piece is to call for inputs for an emerging worldwide effort to develop standards for virtual worlds. Such inputs will go into the build up of MPEG-V (Moving Picture Experts Group Virtual Worlds Standard) in the next three years. The MPEG group is part of the International Standards Organization (ISO). (This is a short summary of a presentation I gave in the Virtual Worlds London conference in October, 20081).

Assumptions Let’s establish a few assumptions: 1. Virtual worlds are destined to become big, in the sense of meaningful, influential, and making money for various current and new players. Every aspect of our lives will be affected by virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are not only going to be part of our lives, they are going to enhance, improve, and better our quality of life. Much like the Internet, virtual worlds will allow us to do “older” things more effectively, and do other things anew.

2. Real virtual worlds are defined as an integration of four factors: 3D view of the world, community, creation, and commerce (3D3C).2 The more we have in these factors the closer we get to real virtual worlds. In that sense IMVU, Second Life, and Entropia are more real virtual worlds than Club Penguin, World of Warcraft, and SIMS online.

3. Standards, as a concept and mechanism, are often misunderstood. People often link standards with competing concepts: open and free on one hand, propriety patents and limitation of creativity on the other hand. Like many other human constructs, standards are not inherently good or bad – it is what you do with standards that gives them value, be it good or bad.

4. Currently the virtual worlds industry operates more like the computer gaming industry than the Internet industry. Each developer, be it private (e.g., Linden, Forterra) or an open source (e.g., Sun Darkstar, OpenSim) is developing its own server, client, and rules of engagement. The inherent rationale of these efforts is a combination of “we know best” and “we will conquer the world.” While this may be the case (see Microsoft Windows, Apple iPod, or Google Search), the common public good calls for a connected system like the Internet where different forces can innovate in particular spots of the value chain.

1 2

See http://www.dryesha.com/2008/10/virtual-worlds-sos-q3-2008-state-of.html (Retrieved October 11, 2008) Sivan Y. (2008). 3D3C real virtual worlds defined: The immense potential of merging 3D, community, creation, and commerce. Journal of Virtual World Research, 1(1). Retrieved from http://jvwresearch.org/

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Real Virtual Worlds SOS 3

5. On a personal note: I have a specific take on this work that should be disclosed. I am part of the EU based Metaverse1 project. It is a consortium of 35 organizations mostly based in Europe to set “Global standards between real and virtual worlds.” This work will feed into the previously mentioned MPEG-V effort. Having said that, the efforts to develop standards for virtual worlds are just starting. It will take time. At this point, we are defining the path. We have a long way to go.

The Promise of Standards for Virtual Worlds

I just got new 3D goggles (Vuzix iWear VR920 3D goggles for US$400). This relatively inexpensive device allows you to view a virtual world by simply turning your head around. When you look up, you see the sky, when you look down you see your legs (your avatar’s legs). When the item arrived, I had to install a special driver for Second Life. Even then, it did not work with the latest version of Second Life, which means an older version had to be installed (not a simple task if Second Life has mandated the latest version). Furthermore, it did not work with IMVU nor with Sun’s Darkstar/wanderland.

In contrast, almost any computer screen that you connect to a computer works. Any mouse works by simply plugging it in. Standards mean better connectivity, ease of use (no need to install, follow versions, etc.) More so, standards mean more users will buy the 3D goggles and prices could go down to perhaps $200 or $100. Once standards are common, maybe other firms will find it lucrative to go in, thus raising competition, lowering cost, and gaining features and quality (which may not such good news for Vuzix).3 This is the most important value of standards. Standards allow innovation in specific points of the value chain, innovation that we need if we want to arrive the full potential of virtual worlds.

Often, the first example that comes to mind when talking about virtual worlds standards is the concept of “Travatar,” an avatar that allows you to travel from one world to another. The discussion about Travatars that travel from Second Life to World of Warcraft and back is hiding a much deeper issue. What I want is one avatar (maybe two or three avatars), all mine, all walking in worlds that share the same basic interface, basic creation tools, basic friends list, and basic commercial system. I want to use the money I make from selling songs in Second Life to buy space to hold meetings in Qwaq. I want to build a sword in Second Life and use it in World of Warcraft. I want the same sword to be used in a rehabilitation treatment for Parkinson patients.

Standards do not mean uniformity. In the same manner that we have specialized web sites (Amazon, eBay, and YouTube) we will have special firms that deal with specific aspects of virtual worlds. These firms will compete on speed, cost, quality, service, and features. They

3

For 3D goggles see http://www.vuzix.com/ (Retrieved 10:59, October 11, 2008).

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Real Virtual Worlds SOS 4

could decide what to focus on. At this point all the firms have to develop all components; they all develop avatar technology, access, servers, clients, etc. The market is not efficient.

Could you imagine having to use a different browser each time you need to go to eBay, Amazon, or CNN? People will not even start using the Internet. This is the current case with virtual worlds. It is no wonder that Second Life, at one time, had 1 million new users a month – only to keep less than 5000 of them 6 months later? (I’m being generous here).

Today virtual worlds use the monolith approach model. This model works for the gaming worlds (World of Warcraft, etc.). Each gaming firm develops its own stack. By controlling the client, the server and the rules of the world, the gaming firm used to gain value in terms of game play. In contrast, the Internet has a stacked approach with protocols (e.g., HTML, TCP/IP, DNS, Flash).

One key benefit to a stacked approach is enhancing “innovation points.” Each firm can focus on specific points of the chain and innovate. One challenge: virtual worlds are much more complex than the internet (x 100) and more intertwined. (Avatars need to wear clothing in different islands and still communicate with their friends).

Current Status of Standards in Virtual Worlds Thinking about standards for virtual worlds is a daunting task. The following set of charts depicts some of the concepts, names, and efforts that need to be examined and their methods of analysis. After I pressed this in the Virtual Worlds London Conference in October 2008, I received even more concepts and additions. The goal here is not to present an exhaustive list but more a method of thinking.

We list the concepts involved:

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Real Virtual Worlds SOS 5

How to present the issue?

Lively

Microsoft Earth

IBM Standards on Standards

Yesha’s Vir Words as Dimensions of domain for standards Standards

Earth Metaverse1 MPEG-V ISO/ TC / MPEG Style

Second Life

Open GL khronos Collada WOW

Croquet

OpenGrid Open Sim

Cobalt Open Metaverse LibSL libopenmv

OPENID IBM / SL / Architecture Group

Sun Darkstar / Wonderland

We cluster them in areas:

How to present the issue? – One Cluster Scheme Lively

Microsoft Earth

IBM Standards on Standards

Yesha’s Vir Words as Dimensions of domain for standards Standards

Earth Metaverse1 MPEG-V ISO/ TC / MPEG Style

Second Life

Open GL khronos Collada WOW

Croquet

OpenGrid Open Sim

Cobalt Open Metaverse LibSL libopenmv

OPENID IBM / SL / Architecture Group

Sun DarkStar / Wonderland

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Real Virtual Worlds SOS 6

The bottom line of this initial analysis is: 1. There are many players in the field, all with various goals and takes on the world. Some of these players may have a direct and meaningful contribution to the field.

2. Standardization itself is shifting. The recent spat between IBM led OpenDoc4 and Microsoft ECMA OpenXML5 (Blind, 20086) has exposed – again – the tension that this process generates. I assume that tension means value. In that regard see IBM Standards on Standards.7 3. Currently the Open-second life ecosystem has potential to turn into the standard. The co-opetition (a new word that mark both a competition and cooperation) between Linden and Open source work seems to advance the state of the art. Yet, some voices look at this endeavor as Linden’s attempt (planned or not planned) to stall the larger goal of standards. (Standards are not always about technical value; they are more often about business models).

Conclusion: A Call for Participation in MPEG-V MPEG-V is a new effort under ISO (the exact label is ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11/N9902). MPEG is a deadline driven process (final deadline is October 2010 for publication of ISO standard). The current top level MPEG-V architecture is now in its third version. We do not expect this to change much. Real work must take place now.

4

OpenDocument. (2008). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 8, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OpenDocument&oldid=250404349 5 Office Open XML. (2008). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 8, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Office_Open_XML&oldid=250256848 6 Blind K. (2008). A welfare analysis of standards competition: The example of the ECMA OpenXML standard and the ISO ODF standard. Paper submitted to the 6th ZEW Conference on the Economics of Information and Communication Technologies.

7 See http://www.research.ibm.com//files/standards_wikis.shtml (Retrieved October 11, 2008)

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research-- Real Virtual Worlds SOS 7

Currently, the Metaverse1 project (www.metaverse1.org) is a large contributor to MPEGV. In fact, one of the core goals of Metaverse1 is to make the standards, and MPEG is the channel for that. In some ways, Metaverse1 strives to build the GSM of virtual worlds, allowing both features, and business value to its participants. Metaverse1 includes about 35 organizations, both big firms (Philip, Alcatel–Lucent, Telefonca) and small firms and research organizations (like my own Metaverse Labs, Ltd).

In the weeks following the MPEG-V publication we have received further inputs, specifically from Wonderland (https://lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net/), Web3d (http://web3d.org/), Openmetaverse (http://www.openmetaverse.org/), and various business people in virtual worlds (“merchants”). We have also looked more closely at various building blocks such as OpenID (http://openid.net/) and Collada (http://www.collada.org).

There are many forces in this area, many competing technologies, business models, and personal, corporate, and public interests. The effort to develop standards is a political effort, in the sense of relevant and not relevant forces, in the sense of participation and leadership.

Let’s make virtual worlds relevant. Be a leader – join the standards effort.