Swimming with mermaids: Communication and social density in the Second Life merfolk community
Introduction
The dramatic advances and democratization of the new technologies of information has made virtual spaces a ubiquitous feature of modern societies. Virtual spaces now represent major spaces of life, in which users can join various virtual communities. This is particularly true for 3D immersive virtual worlds, which can support the expression of individual and group behaviors highly comparable in terms of diversity and complexity to behaviors observed in the real world (Guitton, 2012a, Guitton, 2012b, Gilbert et al., 2014). For instance, the popular virtual world of Second Life (www.secondlife.com) supports vivid communities gathering large numbers of active members, as varied as the Gorean community (Bardzell and Odom, 2008, Guitton, 2011), the Star Wars Role-Play community (Guitton, 2012a, Guitton, 2012b), or the steampunk community (Cristofari & Guitton, 2014).
Although the Internet has certainly helped communication and information sharing across distances and cultures, the actual situation is in fact far more complex. While individuals are solicited by a growing number of online networks and virtual communities, human cognitive resources appear to still be limited in terms of the number of fruitful interactions a given individual can sustain (Dunbar, 2012). Thus, with a high degree of competition for attentional resources between communities, the problems of affiliation with the community and of communication between its members are central for the survival of virtual community. In order to maintain more social links at a lesser cognitive cost, one could expect that the optimal way to maintain important social bounds within virtual spaces would be to adopt a virtual identity compatible with the largest possible number of communities.
In this regard, a particular virtual community made of members with avatars whose physical characteristics strongly restrain their ability to join other communities could shed a new light on this question. Indeed, beside the conventional communities based on human-like land-dwelling avatars, the virtual seas of Second Life are also inhabited. While none of the Second Life beginning avatars are amphibious humanoids, a virtual community of merfolk (referring to themselves as “mer”) spontaneously emerged, taking advantage of almost unlimited possibilities offered by virtual worlds. Half-human, half-fish, mermaids and mermen are recurring inhabitants of both mythological and imaginary worlds. The rise of virtual spaces has offered a new medium to express this fascination, and the vivid merfolk community of Second Life is a testament to this interest.
Due to their very nature as sea-dwelling creatures, merfolks are ultra-specialized avatars, restraining their interactions to underwater or shore environments if staying in character. These particular conditions obviously impact the structuring of the virtual community. In order not to become isolated, the members have to develop strategies to keep strong bonds, which in turn reinforce the immersion process. The Second Life merfolk community therefore provides an ideal model to study how members of a virtual community can compensate for ultra-specialization by increasing the quality of the internal communication processes within the community. Furthermore, the observation of the merfolk virtual community demonstrates how optimizing communication, even in a community with a wide repartition and low actual density within the virtual world, can reinforce social density.
Section snippets
Virtual anthropological observations
Observational approaches were used in order to proceed to the formal evaluation of the merfolk community and of its environment. Qualitative data related to the interactions taking place in the different settings of the virtual world of Second Life were obtained using the methodologies of virtual anthropology (Bardzell and Odom, 2008, Guitton, 2011, Guitton, 2012a, Guitton, 2012b, Hine, 2000, Mann and Stewart, 2000). Data acquisition relied on a strategy combining ethnography of virtual spaces
Exploration of the virtual ecosystem
Not surprisingly, merfolks were observed only in aquatic environments, mostly located in the virtual seas of Second Life (Fig. 1A). With very few exceptions, most of the shops in the virtual world of Second Life selling merfolk items were also located underwater. In the case of shops selling merfolk items alongside other types of fantasy items, the merfolk items area was usually located underwater, even if the majority of the shop areas were located on standard ground level.
The highest
Ecological dimension: The community in its (virtual) ecosystem
Despite being made of ultra-specialized avatars (water-specific sea dwelling creatures), the merfolk community of Second Life appeared to be extremely rich, and its members displayed very complex sets of behavior both at the individual and community levels. Interestingly, all of the observed behaviors can be easily approached using the 3C (cohesion, coherence, and commitment) framework for immersive behavior (Guitton, 2011, Guitton, 2012a, Guitton, 2012b). Indeed, despite their apparent
Acknowledgements
MJG holds a Career Grant from the “Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Santé” (FRQS). This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC – grant number 371644).
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