Abstract
There is widespread interest in the development and use of decentralized systems and virtual world environments as possible new places for engaging in collaborative work activities. Similarly, there is widespread interest in stimulating new technological innovations that enable people to come together through social networking, file/media sharing, and networked multi-player computer game play. A decentralized virtual activity system (DVAS) is a networked computer supported work/play system whose elements and social activities can be both virtual and decentralized (Scacchi et al. 2008b). Massively multi-player online games (MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft and online virtual worlds such as Second Life are each popular examples of a DVAS. Furthermore, these systems are beginning to be used for research, deve-lopment, and education activities in different science, technology, and engineering domains (Bainbridge 2007, Bohannon et al. 2009; Rieber 2005; Scacchi and Adams 2007; Shaffer 2006), which are also of interest here. This chapter explores two case studies of DVASs developed at the University of California at Irvine that employ game-based virtual worlds to support collaborative work/play activities in different settings. The settings include those that model and simulate practical or imaginative physical worlds in different domains of science, technology, or engineering through alternative virtual worlds where players/workers engage in different kinds of quests or quest-like workflows (Jakobsson 2006).
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Acknowledgments
This research is supported through grants from the National Science Foundation #0534771 and #0808783; Discovery Science Center; and Intel Corporation. No endorsement implied. Special thanks to Robert Nideffer, Alex Szeto, and Craig Brown at the UCI GameLab; Joe Adams and Janet Yamaguchi at DSC; and Eduardo Gamez and Eleanor Wynn at Intel, for their participation, contributions, and encouragement.
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Scacchi, W. (2010). Game-Based Virtual Worlds as Decentralized Virtual Activity Systems. In: Bainbridge, W. (eds) Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-825-4_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-825-4_18
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