If you missed the recent conference on the role of faith in the Metaverse and a discussion on sex in virtual worlds held by some of England's best psychologists, we can recommend another for you.
The research nonprofit SRI International is leading a global study on how players behave in online worlds, with a focus on what real-world characteristics we bring to games and what in-world traits we take away.
Pixels and Policy looks at what could become the most interesting study of the year.
Do Virtual Worlds Contribute to Who We Are?
A recent press release outlining the project stresses the academic interest in whether virtual worlds are shaping and expanding our social selves.
We asked a similar question a few weeks ago, and the topic incited a lively discussion on whether the preponderance of virtual means of expression are doing more to augment or destroy individual sense of self. Now SRI is getting big money to conduct a worldwide study on just how the Metaverse changes us.
Despite being a study of global gaming, SRI decided to center the research at Nottingham University Business School. It'll be a big job, and it has involvement from companies across the globe:
The controlled gaming experiments will take place at Nottingham University Business School in the United Kingdom and its campuses in Malaysia and the People's Republic of China, and at Simon Fraser University and York University in Canada. Research will include human-computer interaction studies, user surveys and questionnaires, onsite participant observations and other ethnographic methods of study.
VERUS investigators will use the resources of SRI's Artificial Intelligence Center, Speech Technology and Research Laboratory, and Center for Technology in Learning. In addition, Multiverse Inc., a leading gaming platform developer in Mountain View, Calif., will provide specialized virtual environments for the study.
The study is a step forward in looking at virtual worlds from the perspective of social science, and the results will not only inform the next generation of immersive games - it could provide valuable data for organizations that use virtual world technology to provide support to the disabled or those dealing with injuries sustained in battle.
By looking at how we interact with each other in the virtual world, the SRI study could help in integrating formerly off-the-grid employees into virtual offices. If they dig deep enough, perhaps SRI will even address the latent racial and gender prejudices we carry with us into the virtual world. From a public policy perspective, those would be gems.
What Can We Expect?
As the planning and operational phases of the SRI study progress, it will be interesting to see what kind of standards of measurement they use to determine why we choose certain characters for a group, or why female avatars across the virtual world tend to reflect sexualized views of women.
As with all studies related to virtual worlds, there's a very real chance for flaws in the research model if such things are developed without care. Fortunately, SRI appears to have drawn its researchers from a deep pool of academics and industry professionals familiar with how virtual worlds operate.
Every study is an opportunity to expand the role of virtual worlds in hard and soft sciences, and by extension a new opportunity to explore how human beings are adapting to the increasing role of technology in their lives. This alone justifies the wide scope of SRI's study, and we'll be following it closely.
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