Ages of avatar: community building for inhabited television

ABSTRACT

In this paper we describe and analyse the community building process for Ages of Avatar, a set of on-line Collaborative Virtual Environments created in MicrosoftVirtual Worlds, which form part of an ongoing experiment in Inhabited Television, aiming to merge CVEs and broadcast media. We describe the means by which the CVEs were launched, promoted and supported alongside a television broadcast channel, and how actions of viewers acting as inhabitants in the CVE can be used to provide broadcast material. We explain how the world content and their super-structure were managed to encourage the growth of a community over a short period of time. Using logs of activities in the worlds we deduce some of the characteristics of the community which was formed.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Collaborative computing

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.1 Multimedia Information Systems
          Subjects: Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities; Video (e.g., tape, disk, DVI)

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.7 Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism
          Subjects: Virtual reality

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Management, Measurement, Performance, Theory

Keywords:
collaborative virtual environments, inhabited television, virtual communities