Virtual worlds — past, present, and future: New directions in social computing ☆ Paul R. Messinger a, ⁎, Eleni Stroulia b , Kelly Lyons c , Michael Bone a , Run Niu d , Kristen Smirnov a , Stephen Perelgut e a University of Alberta, School of Business, Canada b University of Alberta, Department of Computing Science, Canada c University of Toronto, Faculty of Information, Canada d Webster University, Business Department, United States e IBM Toronto Labs, Canada abstract article info Available online xxxx Keywords: Virtual worlds Social computing Gaming Avatars Virtual worlds, where thousands of people can interact simultaneously within the same three-dimensional environment, represent a frontier in social computing with critical implications for business, education, social sciences, and our society at large. In this paper, we first trace the history of virtual worlds back to its antecedents in electronic gaming and on-line social networking. We then provide an overview of extant virtual worlds, including education-focused, theme-based, community-specific, children-focused, and self- determined worlds – and we analyze the relationship among these worlds according to an initial taxonomy for the area. Recognizing the apparent leadership of Second Life among today's self-determined virtual worlds, we present a detailed case study of this environment, including surveys of 138 residents regarding how they perceive and utilize the environment. Lastly, we provide a literature review of existing virtual world research, with a focus on business research, and a condensed summary of research issues in education, social sciences, and humanities. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Virtual worlds, where thousands of people can interact simulta- neously within the same simulated three-dimensional space, repre- sent a frontier in social computing with critical implications for business, education, social sciences, technological sciences, and our society at large. Members participate in virtual worlds through their avatars which are graphical representations of themselves. In Sanskrit, “avatara” means “incarnation.” The use of the term was made popular by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash [100]. Avatars, in the novel, interact in a virtual-reality Internet that he refers to as a “metaverse,” which is equivalent to the more common current term, virtual world. Members of a virtual world (through their avatars) can engage in rich interactions with each other: they can exchange messages, objects, and money; they can communicate through voice over a headset and microphone; they can navigate through the world by walking, running, driving vehicles, flying, and teleporting; and they can “experience” the world through a rich variety of interactions with it, including dressing, changing their avatars' shapes, touching things, building and owning things, engaging in quests, doing sports, dancing, hugging, and kissing. Indeed, according to one source, “Virtual worlds are becoming increasingly sophisticated, enabling organizations and individuals to ‘step into the internet’.” [52]. Viewed solely as entertainment, virtual worlds lie at the frontier of the burgeoning video-game market, which, with $12.5 billion in U.S. revenues in 2007, surpassed motion-picture revenues and also cut into the television market share. Canadian sales of $1.5 billion were also more than four times what Canadian movie theatres took in at the box office [85]. Global sales in the computer and video game industry were $18.85 billion in 2007, $9.5B in game sales, and $9.35B in console sales [46]. This form of social computing, however, is moving far beyond its gaming origins, with unanticipated implications for how we work, learn, interact, use the Internet, shop, and, yes, play. Virtual worlds are also emerging as a novel form of social computing – an evolution of the Internet that may have been largely unanticipated by early analysts who touted this phenomenon as an “information superhighway.” We think that a much better metaphor for virtual worlds is a globally shared playground and workspace. We expect that virtual worlds will grow in societal importance in at least two ways. First, virtual worlds offer a window into the future of the Decision Support Systems xxx (2009) xxx–xxx ☆ The authors are indebted to Victor Zhang and David Chodos, for writing the Second Life scripts which navigate respondents to our Internet survey and pay subject fees (see Fig. 4.2), and to Andrew Hay and Shoshana Messinger, for assistance with descriptions of virtual worlds for teens and children. Research funding for this work comes from IBM, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Alberta Ministry of Advanced Education and Technology, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Initiative in the New Economy Research Alliance Program (SSHRC grant 538-02-1013), and the University of Alberta School of Retailing. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: paul.messinger@ualberta.ca (P.R. Messinger), stroulia@cs.ualberta.ca (E. Stroulia), kelly.lyons@utoronto.ca (K. Lyons), mbone@ualberta.ca (M. Bone), runniu68@webster.edu (R. Niu), ksmirnov@ualberta.ca (K. Smirnov), perelgut@ca.ibm.com (S. Perelgut). DECSUP-11593; No of Pages 25 0167-9236/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.dss.2009.02.014 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Decision Support Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dss ARTICLE IN PRESS Please cite this article as: P.R. Messinger, et al., Virtual worlds — past, present, and future: New directions in social computing, Decision Support Systems (2009), doi:10.1016/j.dss.2009.02.014