Title: Virtual Worlds Research: A Conceptual Primer
Abstract: The development of Virtual Worlds is not really new and probably began with the first Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) in the late 1970s. The early text-based or simply animated Virtual Worlds were the spark, lightning a rapid development of increasing technologically sophisticated artifacts. Famous examples in the 1990s, which were already relatively close to today?s graphics engines, include Alphaworld and Blaxxun. In the last few years, improvements in technology infrastructure, hardware and software fostered the emergence of highly sophisticated Virtual Worlds such as Active Worlds, There or Second Life (SL) among others. Since the early 21st century, millions of users have signed up for accounts and hundreds of companies have begun to set up shops in-world. The vivid opportunities for communication, collaboration, and cooperation in Virtual Worlds are changing online consumer behavior and we might currently be witnessing the evolvement of new ways and channels to conduct electronic commerce. Research on Virtual Worlds began in the late 1980s with first contributions along the constructivist paradigm of computer science and engineering. Until today, there are an increasing number of scientific contributions to the research of Virtual Worlds from different disciplines such as Psychology, Information Systems (IS), and Marketing. Because of its multi-disciplinary, research on Virtual Worlds is still lacking an overall terminology and research framework. Some of the core research streams address issues relating to the creation of new technological artifacts, the perception of different technologies, as well as the impact on mental and physical health. Despite its existence of Virtual Worlds, practitioners and researchers still face a variety of fundamental questions which have been unanswered such as why people are using Virtual Worlds, what creates a compelling experience in-world, or how Virtual Worlds can be used in the business value creation process. This special issue on Virtual Worlds of the Journal of Electronic Commerce Research (JECR) addresses these and other important and emerging questions. Research on Virtual Worlds can be broadly categorized into four different research fields as outlined in Figure 1. Research either can be focused on the behavior of users in Virtual Worlds by looking at individuals or it focuses on companies? activities hence by looking at organizations. At the same time, Virtual Worlds can broadly be categorized into more oriented or social interaction oriented. Both, social and Virtual Worlds, are based on social activities and social interactions, however the set of rules and constraints and user roles differ between the two categories of Virtual Worlds. For example, in social-oriented Virtual Worlds such as Second Life, no levels, scores, nor an end or game over exist. Even if the four research fields are interrelated in some respects, the proposed framework for Virtual Worlds research is at least suitable for the purpose of categorizing the contributions presented in this special issue. Research being conducted in field 1 (organization/game) of the framework addresses business-oriented issues in game-oriented Virtual Worlds. This field has been at the core of the existing computer/video literature for a long time and has been greatly explored by scholars such as Nelson (2002) and Chaney (2004) who did research about the options and effects of brand and product placement in computer/video games. In addition, research on advergames and similar advertising-related involvement of organizations in oriented Virtual Worlds is mostly part of marketing and advertising research which was not the focus of this special issue. Our special issues starts with a contribution from Stuart Barnes and Jan Mattsson referring to field 2 (organization/social) of the proposed research framework. Their empirical work entitled Brand Value in Virtual Worlds: An Axiological Approach addresses factors and concepts relating to organizational behavior and economics in the context of social-oriented Virtual Worlds. …
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-08-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 13
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