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Avatar Experimentation: Human Subjects Research In Virtual Worlds, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Avatar Experimentation: Human Subjects Research In Virtual Worlds, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Researchers love virtual worlds. They are drawn to virtual worlds because of the opportunity to study real populations and real behavior in shared simulated environments. The growing number of virtual worlds and population growth within such worlds has led to a sizeable increase in the number of human subjects experiments taking place in such worlds. Virtual world users care deeply about their avatars, their virtual property, their privacy, their relationships, their community, and their accounts. People within virtual worlds act much as they would in the physical world, because the experience of the virtual world is "real" to them. The …