In-game voice communication

Project Massive, a Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute study led by Dr. A. Fleming Seay, has spent the past three years tracking the behavioral and social impact of massively multiplayer gaming on the average citizen by polling over 4000 people in the online community. A. Fleming Seay, driven by a desire to participate in the creation of the future, believes that multi-person experiences are the future of interactive entertainment. His studies found that social interaction was one of the most common motivations for MMORPG participation.
In an paper analyzing the study’s results entitled Project Massive 1.0 : Organizational Commitment, Sociability and Extraversion in Massively Multiplayer Online Games, Seay found that the reason for 77% of in-game communication is for the exchange of support and advice. The primary tools used included email, instant messenger, web forums, and standard telephony. In-game voice communication was identified as a feature that many would be interested in using.
Educators on the Second Life Campus appear to be aware of this expressed interest because last week I noticed that a little red phone booth showed up on campus. Apparently Vivox, a leader in integrated online voice communications, is giving away one million free phone minutes to Second Life residents who sign up. The free promotional minutes are good from October 4 until November 1, 2006, allowing Second Life residents to talk in real-time to other Second Life residents as well as to make phone calls from any of the Vivox Phone Booths within Second Life to any phone in North America. Also, residents can engage in live group voice chat on specially located Vivox microphones, supporting up to 5 users at a time.

Moving from Exploring Outer Space to Inner Space Potentiality

With the penetration of Outer Space a reality, writers of the 1960s and 1970s turned to the possibilities of exploring Inner Space, focusing on psychological and spiritual scenarios to seduce us into other worlds. This brand of intellectual, metaphysical science fiction plotlines made all things seem possible.

It was an era of staving off aging with meditation, thinking thin with self-hypnosis and achieving prosperity by drawing pictures in your mind. Hypnotists made big money claiming they could change your habits and self-help book sales soared.

However, documented stories of achievements possible through the untapped powers of the human mind did little to alleviate the immediate constraints placed upon adolescents undergoing chemotherapy or war victims missing arms and legs. Visuals play such an important part in communication. It is difficult to get past the ravages of illness or the deformities resulting from violence. It is hard to transcend physical limitations of appearance to reveal the inherent beauty of the soul.

Today, I see the technological science fiction merging with the intellectual, metaphysical science fiction to create a world where we can indeed create our own reality. In massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), like the popular Second Life, I can "Explore an ever-changing 3D landscape. Meet new and exciting people. Create a masterpiece - or an empire," Linden Labs homepage promises me.

I choose my size, shape, sex and the color of my skin. There are sliders to adjust the length of my nose, the cleft of my chin, the spacing between my eyes and a myriad of other details. I can be young or old, thin or fat, or black or white. I can even be green or blue, a monster, an alien, a bunny rabbit or a cartoon character.

How will identity and personality be challenged by these new possibilities to leave the body? How will the relationship between the real and the virtual and between body and mind, be affected by immersion into Virtual Environments? Do some environments encourage escape from the physical world more than others?