Thar’s Research Gold in Them Virtual Hills

I found an interesting article examining the state of research surrounding virtual worlds whilst lurking over at Terra Nova. A recent issue of Science carried the article entitled, “The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds.” It took some effort to find a free copy of the article online, but I located a PDF of it here.

Author William Sims Bainbridge, over at the NSF, begins by lumping both Second Life and World of Warcraft into the same category of VWs. Comparisons between the two most popular, highest covered VWs seem appropriate enough. Bainbridge’s big contribution to the discussion, though, is to examine the different avenues for research each VW offers.

In terms of scientific research methodologies, one can do interviews and ethnographic research in both environments, but other methods would work better in one than the other. SL is especially well designed to mount formal experiments in social psychology or cognitive science, because the researcher can construct a facility comparable to a real-world laboratory and recruit research subjects. WoW may be better for nonintrusive statistical methodologies examining social networks and economic systems, because it naturally generates a vast trove of diverse but standardized data about social and economic interactions. Both allow users to create new software modules to extract data.

Bainbridge spends the remainder of the article discussing various research efforts in the two worlds, while touching on some other efforts in places like Whyville, Quest Atlantis, and River City. The main categories for the remainder of the paper include: establishing virtual laboratories in world; observational social and economic science; and computer and information science. Bainbridge’s conclusion discusses the multitude of opportunities for research and the varieties in approach that are possible in VWs.

Bainbridge concludes on a positive note, remarking on the large number of academic efforts within VWs.

Many virtual worlds may foster scientific habits of mind better than traditional schools can, because they constantly require inhabitants to experiment with unfamiliar alternatives, rationally calculate probable outcomes, and develop complex theoretical structures to understand their environment … The “graduates” of SL and WoW may include many future engineers, natural scientists, and social scientists ready to remake the real world in the image of the virtual worlds.

This is a nice article with a good approach at examining the research issues surrounding VWs. Be sure and check out the extensive citation list as well.

References
Bainbridge, W. S. (2007, July 27). Science, 317(5837), 472-476.