Carol Williams's List: Virtual Reality Research

• More and more people are choosing to live some kind of  second life online. The role-playing game World of Warcraft, in which  players work together to accomplish missions, defeat enemies, and become ever  more powerful, boasts millions of players worldwide.

   

  But SL represents something different. Rather than a game  with set goals, it is a "life" that its residents decide to live, a virtual  world some see as an early version of The Matrix, depicted in a popular  Hollywood movie series.
• "In a virtual world, where there's no weather and no need for shelter, why do  people need to build houses, which they do?" Lester asks. "It really comes down  to our desire to have spaces that feel familiar so that we can socialize in  them." People even build virtual campfires and sit around them to talk, he says.

• Raph Koster
• He wrote an excellent book called A Theory of Fun that you all should  read.

• Fun is learning  in a safe-environment.
• Games are mini-worlds where we can try out all sorts of ideas and possibilities,  and see what works and what doesn't. Games let us fail with little penalty and  then let us try again.
• The game is merely a medium through which you play against the other  player.
• The very idea that time > skill is alien.
• To me, doing something yourself is far more valuable, and a much more  interesting test than getting 40 people to coordinate fairly mundane tasks.
• The best way to put  it is that it captures the concept of "being alone together" with other people.  Going to a movie by yourself so you share the experience with the others in the  audience. Going to a study hall where other people are studying, rather than  staying in your room alone. There is a very big demand for the ability to "be  alone together" in a shared social environment that allows grouping and  social interaction, but does not force it by making almost all end-game  content in the form of 40-man raids.

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