Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

What are different ways these virtual worlds can be used? What are the pros and cons? Be specific. How do virtual worlds foster creativity? What do you think the future of virtual worlds will look like?

Cite at least 2 of the assigned readings.


     The virtual worlds can be interpreted in many ways. Relatively speaking, virtual experiences in particular are used to display behavioral fiction-tropes such as a hero avatar or a villain. In the article, "Virtual world may impact real-world behaviour", the article proposes a case-study which involves 194 undergraduates to participate in two supposedly unrelated studies to the decision of being randomly assigned to play as Superman or Voldemort. "They were asked to taste and then
give either chocolate or chilli sauce to a future participant. They were told to pour the chosen
food item into a plastic dish and that the future participant would consume all of the food
provided" (2). From this study, the people who performed the study revealed that people that played Superman poured, on average, "nearly twice as much chocolate as chilli sauce for the '"future participant"', meanwhile people that played Voldemort "nearly twice as much of the spicy chilli sauce than they did chocolate"(2).  From this research alone, this case-study not only shows that the people that played their depicted avatars are "equivalent levels of self-reported identification with heroic and villainous avatars, alike", but also, "People are prone to be unaware of the influences of their virtual representations on their behavioral responses." Although this could be either pro or con to the matter, but in this case, it is definitely beneficial to apply implications that the virtual environment opt them into a certain entity, however it is a constraint for people as "powerful imitative effects can occur when people put on virtual masks (3)". Because of these avatars portraying either heroic or villainous behaviour, it is true to believe that virtual experiences do foster creativity as it festers the mind and depicts a sort of imitative reality that manifests and exploit open-mindedness to imaginations. In the future, I believe that not only will the virtual worlds be adaptive to people's imitations and expansion of creativity but also become something that may detrimental to societal health as it can disrupt social interactions/behaviours if exploited too much of the virtual environment.
       In contrast,  the article: "No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You",  discussed that this driven social networking site is called depicted by "Ms. Rayna, an avatar on Second Life" splurges on luxury brands by free-spending cohort. In this case, although players can trade physical monetary for virtual currencies,  people spend money, practically thousands, on a game for fun. Not only does this hurt the players financially, but also rely on virtual experiences over actual. In addition to this, although it is "fueling a robust company between avatar-to-avatar"(4), it demonstrates that the lifestyle of these self-driven avatars are used to depict their persona. Provided that this foster creativity, it is unhealthy to believe people to spend a lot of money for virtual currencies to vamp their character. Lastly, I believe this trend of social-networking sites with avatar customization will cease as it becomes more apparent to people that finances are too important to spend on virtual avatar-customization.

             


Cite:

1) "Virtual world may impact real­-world behaviour"
https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiYXJ1Y2huZXdtZWRpYXxneDoyOWIwYjc5ZTNlZjBhMTU4

2) "No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You"
https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiYXJ1Y2huZXdtZWRpYXxneDoxYzc0N2M4MmYxZjFlZGQ5