Real-Life Problems, Virtual Solutions

SAN FRANCISCO--Real-life problems, from personal relations to war and diplomacy, may find their answers in virtual online worlds that offer an immersive experience beyond any chat room or video game, according to researchers at the AAAS Annual Meeting.

The buzz about virtual world research has grown alongside the burgeoning popularity of Second Life, an online world built by its 3.7 million users. In Second Life, users create "avatars"--virtual representations of themselves--to meet, work, play, create, buy and live with other Second Life citizens that hail from all over the real world.

The three-dimensional realism of Second Life offers "a great deal of emotional bandwidth" compared to other online experiences, said John Lester, community and education manager at Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life. Lester is better known to many of his colleagues as his Second Life avatar, "Pathfinder Linden."

The realism has researchers like Joshua Fouts, director of the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy, thinking about possible connections between Second Life and real life. Fouts made his first foray into a virtual world with the online game Star Wars Galaxies, surprised to find so many different languages being spoken in the game.

"It was a wake-up call to me that these spaces are not solely the domain of the U.S.," he recalled, wondering if virtual worlds might be a place to explore new ideas in public diplomacy. He soon found many examples in Second Life, from a virtual gathering to remember the 2005 London subway terrorist attacks and fundraising for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

In 2005, Fouts and colleagues at the USC Annenberg School for Communication sponsored a contest to create a multiplayer online game that would promote global goodwill. The winner, a team of Carnegie-Mellon University engineers, developed a game called "PeaceMaker," a simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Virtual worlds can expand the idea of public diplomacy to individuals, "so that it's no longer defined by just what a government does," Fouts said, adding that the shared online space can "build bridges across dramatic culture gaps."

Skip Rizzo, a USC clinical psychologist, is using virtual world technology to help Iraq war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder confront and manage their fears. In his preliminary studies, veterans wear a special virtual reality helmet and goggles that place them in a simulated Iraqi desert. Rizzo and his colleagues can recreate the bounce of a Humvee on a desert road, the sound of gunshots and even the smell of burning rubber to help the soldiers re-live and gradually gain control of the types of memories provoked by the simulation. (To see an video clip of this virtual world, visit the National Public Radio site.)

The four soldiers who have completed the treatment say they have fewer nightmares, flashbacks and less hypervigilant behavior now. "This translates into being able to leave your house, go to work, have a relationship with your wife and your loved ones," Rizzo said.

Other researchers are teaching in virtual classrooms and attending virtual conferences with their far-flung colleagues, often inside Second Life. Terry Beaubois ("Tab Scott" in Second Life), an architect and director of the Creative Research Lab at Montana State University, has used Second Life to teach architecture classes and create sustainable community plans for a West Oakland revitalization project.

Jane McGonigal, an online game designer and researcher at the Institute for Future, thinks games spanning the virtual and real worlds could be a good way for scientists to collect data and tap into the enthusiasm of amateur researchers. She said efforts are already underway to create games where amateur scientists scan for important patterns in cancer research literature and online games that direct players to head out into their real-life neighborhoods to collect environmental data.

"My goal is that within the next 25 years we'll see a game designer or a game developer nominated for a Nobel Prize in one of the sciences, because they'll be creating games that actually do scientific research," McGonigal said.

18 February 2007