Are Virtual Worlds Only for Multiplayer?- WRONG!
July 15th, 2009
It seems that there is a common misconception that the ONLY REAL use for virtual worlds is multiplayer. This is a BIG fallacy that most people just don’t seem to understand. So let’s devote some time to clear up this basic misunderstanding. Sure, some of the more popular virtual worlds are multiplayer, World of Warcraft for example which has over 11 million paying subscribers as of 2009. However, much can be said for a single-player/ single- role or single-player/multi-role virtual world, especially when it comes to training/learning on demand and a guaranteed quality of experience.
You might be asking, what is an MMORPG (MMORPGs for plural)? An MMORPG is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. A role playing game is a genre of computer games where you interact with a large number of people in an online virtual world. One might want to play MMORPGs for the social aspect, or the overall game play aspect. Perhaps the more famous here is the MMORPGs of the world (otherwise known as Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) while the standard fare of these games are fantasy in nature these worlds allow for an environment where a large number of players are able to interact.
Now if you bring the whole idea of MMORPG to a virtual world meant for training you will probably find more often than not a large band of resistance against this. And I agree that there should be a huge resistance against MMORPGs for training. Rather a virtual world that is meant for training should just be a single player environment where the user is able to interact with non-player characters (NPCs). Although some will argue that virtual environments are prime for collaboration, with which I do agree. However I think that virtual worlds have a variety of applications that they can cater to. If I want to attend a virtual conference or tradeshow than I agree the largest key component of that would be the collaboration aspect. However when I login to Second Life and am going to learn something I do not want to be bothered by an unknown avatar trying to befriend me. I am there to learn/ train not socialize and make friends.
So I won’t go into all the nitty gritty aspects of MMORPGs rather I merely want to clarify some key misconceptions of utilizing virtual worlds for training and multi-player vs. single-player aspects.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Interesting post! The military is a good example of a company using virtual worlds for training, with simulators and what-not. I’m sure they’ve been doing it for years now.
As time goes on and the workforce starts to get populated with younger people who are more adept at interacting with virtual worlds, it’s easy to see how adopting these kinds of tools will become more of an accepted norm.
Learning nowadays is gradually becoming focused more towards collaboration, self-initiated exploration (a.k.a. curiosity) and play. This makes utilizing a virtual world, be it populated by other people or NPC’s, seem like a natural progression.
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Margaret
http://racingonlinegames.net