Virtual Worlds, Collaboration, and Workplace Productivity

Introduction

Virtual worlds, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, are renowned as entertainment media. But these leisure technologies are also the sites of sophisticated long-term collaborations, distributed design and building projects, mixed reality events, and corporate marketing efforts. The use of virtual worlds for non-entertainment uses is not a new idea; the field of “serious games” has grown in the past few years. But since the late 2004 release of World of Warcraft and the meteoric rise of Second Life, which hit critical mass in 2006, virtual worlds seem to have risen to a new level—in popularity, technological sophistication, and public visibility. Simultaneously, an early wave of research has given the CSCW communities glimpses of virtual worlds’ potential for the field. Companies are embarking on major virtual world efforts, including IBM’s use of Second Life for service, and Bluegrass, Sun's Project Wonderland, ProtonMedia's ProtoSphere, Qwaq Forums, and Tixeo's WorkSpace3D. As these and similar enterprise-level endeavors ramp up, the time seems opportune to take stock of the use and potential use of virtual worlds in collaborative settings.

CSCW research has explored the relevance of gaming for different facets of the workplace, especially in organizational productivity (Larson, 2007), training applications (Ju & Wagner, 1997; Curtin et al, 2006; Richards & Szilas, 2006) and system administration (Chao, 2001). Virtual worlds and their predecessors MUDs and MOOs also have been the focal point for collaboration research for decades (Benford et al, 1995; Churchill & Snowdon, 1998; Churchill & Bly, 1999). As promising as these first steps are, this space needs reexamination in light of the blazing proliferation of virtual worlds and early research on them in past couple of years. Recent developments provide CSCW researchers with an opportunity to take stock and think about virtual worlds as reservoirs for new concepts and directions in interaction design.

This workshop accordingly explores virtual worlds in the workplace—in particular how they can be adopted for collaborative work, employee satisfaction and productivity, and enhanced customer service experiences—thus bringing business value to organizations. It addresses the problems and opportunities facing virtual world researchers, from the applicability of existing theories of grouping and collaboration to measures of effectiveness and engagement that go beyond traditional usability goals.