AVATARS AT WORK AND PLAY Computer Supported Cooperative Work Series Editor: Richard Harper Microsoft Research, Cambridge, United Kingdom Associate Editors: United Kingdom Colston Sanger, Middlesex University, Global Campus, United Kingdom Editorial Board Members: Frances Aldrich, University of Sussex, United Kingdom Liam Bannon, University of Limerick, Ireland Moses Boudourides, University of Patras, Greece Graham Button, University of Hallam, Sheffield, United Kingdom Prasun Dewan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington, USA Bo Helgeson, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden John Hughes, Lancaster University, United Kingdom Keiichi Nakata, International University in Germany, Bruchsal, Germany Leysia Palen, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA David Randall, Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom Kjeld Schmidt, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark Abigail Sellen, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, United Kingdom Yvonne Rogers, University of Sussex, United Kingdom Dan Diaper, School of Computing Science, Middlesex University, Volume 34 Avatars at Work and Play Collaboration and Interaction Edited by Ralph Schroeder Oxford University, Oxford, U.K. and Ann-Sofie Axelsson Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden in Shared Virtual Environments A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN-10 1-4020-3883-6 (HB) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3883-9 (HB) ISBN-10 1-4020-3898-4 (e-book) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3898-3 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed in the Netherlands. © 2006 Springer or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception www.springer.com List of Contributors Ann-Sofie Axelsson, Department of Technology Management and Eco- nomics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden annaxe@ chalmers.se Jeremy N. Bailenson, Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305-2050, USA bailenso@stanford.edu Andrew C. Beall, Department of Psychology, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA 93106-9660, USA beall@psych.ucsb.edu Marek Bell, Department of Computer Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK marek@dcs.gla.ac.uk Jim Blascovich, Department of Psychology, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, USA blascovi@psy.ucsb.edu Barry Brown, Department of Computer Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK Barry@dcs.gla.ac.uk Lars Br˚athe, Volvo Powertrain, SE-405 05 Gothenburg, Sweden Lars.Brathe@volvo.com Katy B¨orner, School of Library and Information Science, Indiana Univer- sity, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA katy@indiana.edu Mari Siˆan Davies, Childrens Media Center and Department of Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA marisian@ucla.edu Maia Garau, Department of Computer Science, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UKm.garau@cs.ucl.ac.uk Patricia M. Greenfield, Childrens Media Center and Department of Psy- chology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA greenfield@psych.ucla.edu Ilona Heldal, Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden ilohel@chalmers.se Mikael Jakobsson, Arts and Communication, Malm¨o University, SE-205 06 Malm¨o, Sweden mikael.jakobsson@k3.mah.se Oliver Otto, The Centre for Virtual Environments, University of Salford, Manchester M5 4WT, UK o.otto@salford.ac.uk v vi List of Contributors Susan Persky, Department of Psychology, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, USA persky@verizon.net Shashikant Penumarthy, School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA sprao@indiana.edu David Roberts, The Centre for Virtual Environments, University of Salford, Manchester M5 4WT, UK D.J.Roberts@salford.ac.uk Ralph Schroeder, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3JS, UK ralph.schroeder@oii.ox.ac.uk Diane H. Sonnenwald, The Swedish School of Information and Library Science, Gothenburg University & University College of Bor˚as, SE-501 90 Bor˚as, Sweden diane.sonnenwald@hb.se Maria Spante, Department of Technology Management and Eco- nomics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden marspa@chalmers.se Anthony Steed, Computer Science, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK A.Steed@cs.ucl.ac.uk Francis F. Steen, Childrens Media Center and Department of Communica- tion Studies, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA steen@commstds.ucla.edu Brendesha M. Tynes ∗ , Childrens Media Center and Department of Psy- chology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA btynesb@ucla.edu Nick Yee, Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2050, USA nyee@stanford.edu Robin Wolff, The Centre for Virtual Environments, University of Salford, Manchester M5 4WT, UK r.wolff@salford.ac.uk ∗ Currently African American Studies and Educational Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL 61820, USA Contents Work and Play in Shared Virtual Environments: Overlapping Themes and Intersecting Research Agendas Ralph Schroeder and Ann-Sofie Axelsson ix Chapter 1. Transformed Social Interaction: Exploring the Digital Plasticity of Avatars Jeremy N. Bailenson and Andrew C. Beall 1 Chapter 2. Selective Fidelity: Investigating Priorities for the Creation of Expressive Avatars Maia Garau 17 Chapter 3. Analysis and Visualization of Social Diffusion Patterns in Three-dimensional Virtual Worlds Shashikant Penumarthy and Katy B¨orner 39 Chapter 4. Collaborative Virtual Environments for Scientific Collaboration: Technical and Organizational Design Frameworks Diane H. Sonnenwald 63 Chapter 5. Analyzing Fragments of Collaboration in Distributed Immersive Virtual Environments Ilona Heldal, Lars Br ˚ athe, Anthony Steed and Ralph Schroeder 97 Chapter 6. The Impact of Display System and Embodiment on Closely Coupled Collaboration Between Remote Users David Roberts, Robin Wolff and Oliver Otto 131 Chapter 7. The Good Inequality: Supporting Group-Work in Shared Virtual Environments Maria Spante, Ann-Sofie Axelsson and Ralph Schroeder 151 vii viii Contents Chapter 8. Consequences of Playing Violent Video Games in Immersive Virtual Environments Susan Persky and Jim Blascovich 167 Chapter 9. The Psychology of Massively Multi-user Online Role-playing Games: Motivations, Emotional Investment, Relationships and Problematic Usage Nick Yee 187 Chapter 10. Questing for Knowledge—Virtual Worlds as Dynamic Processes of Social Interaction Mikael Jakobsson 209 Chapter 11. Play and Sociability in There: Some Lessons from Online Games for Collaborative Virtual Environments Barry Brown and Marek Bell 227 Chapter 12. Digital Dystopia: Player Control and Strategic Innovation in the Sims Online Francis F. Steen, Mari Siˆan Davies, Brendesha Tynes, and Patricia M. Greenfield 247 Index 275 WORK AND PLAY IN SHARED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS: OVERLAPPING THEMES AND INTERSECTING RESEARCH AGENDAS Ralph Schroeder and Ann-Sofie Axelsson This volume, like its predecessor The Social Life of Avatars: Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments [1], aims to provide a state-of-the- art overview of research about how people interact in shared virtual environ- ments (SVEs). Unlike the first volume, which covered a wide variety of topics, the essays collected here focus on two applications of SVEs; collaborative work and online gaming. These two areas are rapidly emerging as key drivers of SVE development. (Sometimes work applications are discussed under the label of collaborative virtual environments—or CVEs—but SVE is a broader term since it includes online gaming and socializing, so SVE is more suitable here.) One reason for examining the two areas or work and play jointly is that al- though they are often treated in different academic arenas, in fact many issues overlap. As argued in the introduction to The Social Life of Avatars, certain issues—presence and copresence, communication between people in the envi- ronment, the appearance of the avatar and the environment, differences in the size of groups interacting, and how technology and the offline world shape the interaction—apply to all SVEs. Yet despite common themes, several academic disciplines are represented in this volume to tackle them—including psychol- ogy, sociology, computer science, and information sciences. Clearly, the study of SVEs requires that a number of disciplines work together. This volume begins with two essays that investigate the important topic of avatar appearance, the appearance of the person inside the SVE. The essays by Bailenson and Beall and by Garau come at this from quite different perspectives. While Bailenson and Beall explore the plasticity of avatars, or the way in which the manipulation of appearance and behavior of avatars can be exploited for different purposes, Garau investigates the fidelity of avatar appearance with special reference to behavioral realism and eye gaze. x Schroeder and Axelsson Bailenson and Beall demonstrate that it is easy to manipulate people’s ap- pearance. Changing facial appearance, allowing people to appear to be looking at several other people at the same time (non-zero sum gaze), and giving avatars virtual trainers that others cannot see—these and many other possibilities exist in SVEs that are not possible in face-to-face interaction. Their research, which they call “transformative social interaction”, opens the way for investigating a host of social science questions in settings that can be controlled and manipu- lated. Their chapter makes a start in this direction (though there is some earlier related work by Blascovich [2] and by Slater and Steed [3]) by investigating, for example, how people respond when their own face is blended into that of the group they interact with, or when people are able to direct their gaze at two conversational partners simultaneously. Eye gaze may seem like a very specialized topic, but as anyone who has studied interaction between people will know, in many instances eye gaze is the single most important form of non-verbal communication (and non-verbal communication may, of course, be more important than verbal communication). It is also very difficult to reproduce accurately in SVEs, though as Garau’s chapter shows, it will be more important to focus on behavioral realism than on representational realism (or photorealism), which will have major implications for the design of SVE systems. Further, her findings suggest that, as there will always be trade-offs in implementing eye gaze and avatar fidelity, it may be that there are easier ways to provide more effective means for believable social interaction than is often thought. One advantage of SVEs is that the interaction between people in the envi- ronments can easily be captured and analyzed. The next chapter by Penumarthy and B¨orner gives an excellent demonstration of this. Their essay is also a good example of investigating larger groups of people interacting in SVEs rather than the small groups of two or three that are typically studied. Put differently, their chapter addresses the area beyond the micro of small group encounters. This level is often difficult to capture and analyze in social science about the real world. In virtual worlds, however, the analysis is easily scalable (for some other examples, see [4, 5])—although, as the authors point out, patterns of interactions in virtual worlds will be different from real world ones. We can also see in Penumarthy and B¨orner’s essay, as in the one that follows by Sonnenwald, the beginnings of the systematic investigation into some basic building blocks of social interaction in SVEs; such as cooperation and compe- tition, leadership (see also [6]) and status. As Sonnenwald shows, collaboration over the course of time with larger groups across a number of sites requires not only smoothly functioning technology, but even more importantly the social coordination of people and their adaptation to new roles in SVE settings. A key issue that emerges in this and several other papers in this volume—and one that has not been studied sufficiently since many SVE trials and experiences have [...]... Schroeder and A.S Axelsson (Eds.), Avatars at Work and Play, 1–16 C 2006 Springer Printed in the Netherlands 2 Bailenson and Beall Figure 1-1 Non-digital transformations of self currently used technology Before the dawn of avatars and computer-mediated communication, this process of self transformation was minor, incremental, and required vast amounts of resources However, given the advent of collaborative... (presence), and sometimes of being there with others (copresence) As mediators of users’ actions and R Schroeder and A.S Axelsson (Eds.), Avatars at Work and Play, 17–38 C 2006 Springer Printed in the Netherlands 18 Garau appearance, avatars are likely to play a significant role in social interaction in CVEs One of the central challenges in the development of CVEs is the creation of expressive avatars capable... networked, computer-generated environments capable of supporting human-to-human communication by allowing users to interact with the space and with each other via graphical embodiments called avatars CVEs can be used explicitly for work- related purposes, but also for social interaction and play; applications can range from conferencing, simulation and training, shared visualisation and collaborative... unfamiliar politician and 40% of the given participant is on the right candidate) In sum, very few participants noticed that their face was morphed into the political candidate, but implicitly the presence of themselves in the candidate gave the candidate a greater ability to influence those participants 2.2 Team Face A related study [24] examined the use of TSI for collaborative teams by creating a “Team Face”... such as nervous tics or inappropriate giggles can be wholly eliminated from the behaviors of one’s avatars On the other hand, behaviors that are often hard to generate in certain situations, such as a “genuine smile”, can be easily rendered on one’s avatar with the push of a button 4 Implications and Outlook The Orwellian themes behind this communication paradigm and research program are quite apparent.. .Work and Play in Shared Virtual Environments xi been for shorter periods—is that a different dynamic sets in with longer-term routine collaboration (see also [7, 8]) Sonnenwald also reports, in relation to another study of collaboration in which two participants used a haptic system for a science lab exercise and which compared pairs working side by side and pairs working across a network—that the... taken that measured cooperation, learning ability, task achievement, comfort, friendliness, and sympathy The avatar that mimicked 80% of the time scored highest in user ratings Just as with the studies reported above on head motions, these findings show that by isolating low-bandwidth dimensions of an interaction it is possible to create a sense of mimicry that does not require a top–down understanding... mediated 20 Garau Non-artificial VMC Face-to-face Im me rsi ve Spatial CVEs Figure 2-2 Comparison between VMC and IVEs along the dimensions of fidelity, spatiality, and immersion interaction by harnessing our natural ability to read meaning into the human form Short, Williams and Christie have argued that all attempts at producing visual communications media are “primarily directed at remedying what... Schroeder and Axelsson These are some problems that do not exist for physical world collaboration Roberts, Otto and Wolff also describe how implementing the technical aspects of simultaneously handling objects and using tools is by no means a trivial task in terms of handling network traffic and software design—since time and coordination are critical Still, the main point of their essay is that they... a related issue for people collaborating with others via different systems; namely, that it is important to let users know what the capabilities of each others’ systems are Unless this information is made explicit, users will often make assumptions about the other person’s avatar or system that are incorrect, and this can lead to misunderstandings Spante, Axelsson and Schroeder argue that greater transparency . demonstrates some of these self transformations that occur currently, without the use of digital R. Schroeder and A.S. Axelsson (Eds.), Avatars at Work and Play, . University, Volume 34 Avatars at Work and Play Collaboration and Interaction Edited by Ralph Schroeder Oxford University, Oxford, U.K. and Ann-Sofie Axelsson Chalmers