Customization and virtual worlds
By sylvie | March 15, 2007
Following Dan Hunter’s snarky comments on Onder Skall’s description of what constitutes a virtual world, or rather some of the comments responding to Dan’s criticism, and an article I read (oops, forgot where) in which the author described the amount of time (he? she?) spent creating (his? her?) character in World of Warcraft, I had a small epiphany yesterday. Or maybe not an epiphany, but a thought anyway.
Where is the customization in work-based virtual worlds?
Those efforts at creating work-oriented virtual worlds that I have seen, and granted, they were all academic and beta level at the moment I saw them, seemed to offer very little in the way of customization. At best, you could stick your face on your avatar. Big whoop.
Now, I completely understand why the designers of these worlds (us included) would ignore this aspect of virtual worlds. There’s something a bit too game-like in customization, and we want our worlds to be taken seriously. This is a world where serious work is done, we proclaim, please take us seriously, we’re not making games, really! See? No game elements in OUR world.
Yet, there is a reason why people will actually spend money making their avatars unique in worlds like Second Life.
Look at your work desk: do you have photos of your family or pets or a recent voyage displayed? Maybe a plaque, a calendar, some witty saying displayed on the cubicle wall? A toy, a squeeze ball, even a plush animal or two on your monitor? Unless your work place is obsessive about a clean environment, you’ve most probably marked your space in some manner: “I am here, I live, I am different from the others around me”. Our own legal graffiti.
We need to mark our territory in some way, to distinguish ourselves from the others. Why should this be different in virtual worlds?
So the question becomes not if we should offer customization in a work-oriented virtual world, but what sort and how much. We want to let people create a unique environment for themselves, but we don’t want them to spend all their time redecorating the place. More importantly, we don’t want to give their bosses the impression that that’s all they’re doing. This is not The Sims Online.
This would make for an interesting research project. Something to chat about with the rest of the team.
Topics: virtual reality |
