The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual
Worlds
Science (07/27/07) Vol. 317, No. 5837, P. 472; Bainbridge, William Sims
"Online virtual worlds can be useful research tools for behavioral, social,
and economic science, along with human-oriented computer science, writes
William Sims Bainbridge of the National Science Foundation's Division of
Information and Intelligent Systems. Popular worlds such as Second Life
(SL) and World of Warcraft (WoW) are accessed through personal computers
running special software that links to one or more servers that pass data
back and forth between users over the Net, and these simulations involve
three-dimensional spaces inhabited by manipulable objects, currency, and
sometimes interactive artificial intelligence characters. SL is
particularly amenable to formal experiments in social psychology or
cognitive science because it can support a virtual facility and enlist
research subjects like an actual laboratory, while WoW may be more suitable
to nonintrusive statistical research into social networks and economic
systems by virtue of its ability to produce a huge volume of information on
social and economic transactions. Virtual worlds are a prime environment
for creating online laboratories that can automatically recruit vast
numbers of research subjects inexpensively, an important factor in
experiments designed to explore the dynamics of complex causal systems.
Online game makers might welcome such experimentation as an opportunity to
make game play more interesting for subscribers. There is an ethical angle
to consider in such research, given that it involves human subjects. "It
is especially important to study virtual worlds now, because the current
period of transformation may not last much longer, and because it may be
impossible to reconstruct its key processes and phenomena entirely from
historical records that are naturally preserved," says Bainbridge."
Full article not available without subscription but here is a link to a podcast transcript of the same week with a short interview with Bainbridge. Relevant content starts on the top of page five and runs through page nine.
Click here for podcast transcript interview with William Sims Bainbridge
