Quality of Virtual Life (QOVL)

1. Description

This paper provides a model of Quality of Virtual Life (QOVL). It uses the facts from the research on Quality of Life (QOF) and research on Subjective Well Being (SWB) and adapts it to virtual environments. Author states, that depth of user experience in virtual worlds is order of magnitudes beyond that found in traditional web. Looking at such a deep experience the paper looks at how close is real person and his avatar linked together. From empirical research it has been found found that both worlds (virtual and real) affect each other, mirroring the behavior of people. Virtual worlds also provide environment where individuals can express themselves better than in the real world.

Author cites interesting motivations of users using the virtual worlds consisting of three components: achievement (advancement, mechanics and competition), social issues (socializing, relationship and teamwork) and immersion (discovery, role-playing, customization and escapism).

Main part of the paper defines the model of Quality of Virtual Life and compares it with a QOL and SWB. Study done in Second Life showed that for expert users virtual and real life satisfaction is positively correlated with hours pent in Second Life. The model of QOVL is build using following components: Measurement, Choice Of Domains., Methodology and Framework Development. Model of QOVL contains three main parts linked from left to right. First, these are input variables consisting of either structural or performance criteria (persistence, shared space, interface, interactivity and social environments). The second part contains throughput variables which "describe the individual's response to environment" (they reflect choices people make using the virtual environment). The third column are five domains in which virtual world SWB can be assessed. These represent the five main motivations for using virtual worlds: social, achievement, immersion, control, and self-expression.

The last part of the paper raises significant amount of future research questions regarding the virtual worlds and quality of virtual life in following categories: adoption of virtual worlds, virtual consumption as a substitute for physical consumption, virtual presence as a substitute for physical presence, virtual worlds as intervention and a new digital divide. As more and more users are spending more and more time in virtual worlds, the significance of QOVL will be on raise in following decade.

Document: PDF

Key Words: Virtual Worlds, Evaluation

2. Quotes

Driven in part by “a whole generation of children...growing up on Club Penguin and Webkinz” (Anderson & Rainie, 2008, p. 88) over half of Internet industry experts interviewed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project agreed that by the year 2020, “most well-equipped Internet users will spend some part of their waking hours – at work and at play – at least partially linked to augmentations of the real world or alternate worlds” (Anderson & Rainie, 2008, p. 5).

The depth of user experience in virtual worlds is orders of magnitudes beyond that found in traditional Web sites. Hoffman and Novak (2009) argue that the social context, heightened interactivity, sense of place, manipulable environment, and dynamic learning process distinguish virtual worlds from conventional Web-based environments (Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Novak, Hoffman, & Yung, 2000).

There is recognition that participation in virtual worlds can impact quality of life for those with physical disabilities. Virtual Ability Island in Second Life was recently awarded a $10,000 annual prize by Linden Lab, given to the virtual world project that most improves real-world lives. The project, designed by Virtual Ability, offers resources to help people with real-world disabilities learn to use Second Life, where they can “skydive, fish, mountain climb, hike, and even fly.” As the project group’s president stated, “for many of us Second Life is not a game – it is a second chance at life” (AFP, 2009).

The number of virtual world platforms is steadily increasing. Spence (2008) surveys 112 distinct virtual worlds, and it is estimated that 900 virtual worlds will be in existence by 2012 (Kzero, 2009).

The extremely low cost of virtual life, in fact, is one characteristic not well understood by real world companies that did enter Second Life with the explicit objective of striking it rich.

Empirical research addresses this question from a variety of perspectives. Virtual world behavior of avatars has been found to mirror real world behavior, to influence real world behavior, and to be influenced by real world behavior. Further, within virtual worlds, characteristics of one’s avatar have been found to influence behavior in the virtual world.

In other social contexts the avatar as virtual representation of the self has been found to affect one’s subsequent real life behavior. In addition to finding that participants who were given taller avatars were more aggressive negotiators in a virtual environment than participants who were given shorter avatars, Yee and Bailenson (2007) found that those participants who had been given taller avatars were also more aggressive negotiators in subsequent real world face-to- face interactions than participants who had been given shorter avatars. Fox and Bailenson (in press) found real-world behavior can be influenced by observation of one’s own avatar’s behavior. They report that participants who watched their own avatar run on a virtual treadmill voluntarily exercised more themselves the next day, as compared to participants who watched their avatar standing still, or who watched a stranger’s avatar on a treadmill.

Due to anonymity and reduced cost for self-disclosure, individuals interacting through online chat are better able to express their true self (Rogers, 1951) than individuals in face-to-face interaction (Bargh, McKenna, & Fitzsimons, 2002).

Based upon a 40 item inventory administered to over 3,000 MMPORG players, Yee (2007) identified three higher order components specifying user motivations to play in massively multiplayer online games: achievement, social and immersion. Each of the three higher order components is, in turn, specified by a number of sub-components. Achievement consists of advancement (progress, power, status), mechanics (game related numbers, optimization, templating), and competition (challenging others, provocation, domination). Social includes socializing (chat, helping other, making friends), relationship (personal, self-disclosure, provide support) and teamwork (collaboration, groups). Immersion includes discovery (exploration, lore, finding hidden things), role-playing (story line, roles, fantasy), customization (appearances, accessories, style) and escapism (relax, avoid real-live problems).

People spend significant amounts of time in virtual worlds. Various research studies have found that users spend on average from 20 hours/week (Castronova, 2001) to 22 hours/week (Reperes, 2007) with the heaviest concentration of time occurring on weekends (Fetscherin & Lattemann, 2007).

We may conclude that for at least some people, virtual worlds play a significant enough role in their lives to warrant consideration of the quality of virtual life (QOVL). Within Second Life, users seem to be at least as satisfied with their virtual life as they are with their real life, and the level of satisfaction increases with time spent in the virtual world.

QOVL can diverge from real world QOL for two distinct reasons – because of differences between self and avatar, and because of differences between the real world and the virtual world.

As noted earlier, QOL is largely the domain of the social indicators literature, with an economic and public policy focus, while SWB is largely the domain of the psychology literature, with an emphasis on the processes underling SWB.

As mentioned previously, interest in virtual worlds can be objectively measured using time series data of search volume for specific search queries. The abandonment rate for a virtual world can be calculated as the percentage of new signups who enter the world for the first time at time one, but who never return to the virtual world after time two. There are multiple potential explanations for a high abandonment rate. Ease of use could be poor, people may be trying and discarding alternate avatars, or users may be dissatisfied with the experience.

Community choice represents a fundamental difference between real and virtual worlds. Unlike the real world, in a virtual world, if you are very dissatisfied you always have the option of abandoning the virtual world and finding another one which you believe will have a better QOVL. This is a choice generally unavailable in the real world and presents an outcome that has considerable business, as well as personal, significance.

While this remains an empirical question, it is possible that people who are happier in real life are also happier in virtual worlds, but also that those who experience happiness in virtual worlds can become happier in real life. There are also reciprocal causal links between virtual world and real world domains. For example, individuals who have a strong focus on family and friends in the real world may tend to social activities in virtual worlds. Conversely, people who have difficulty interacting with other people in the real world may be able to establish relationships with others in the virtual world, and those relationships may then extend into the real world.

Scott Smith, stated that “participation in general metaverses may decline in duration and variety after a short-term peak in usage as users seek to rebalance toward the ‘real’ and authentic and see fewer benefits in being active in metaverses.” (Anderson & Rainie, 2008, p. 94). Joe McCarthy, formerly a principle scientist at Nokia Research Center commented, “I fear that the time and attention consumed in such worlds will come at the expense of actions that might make the offline world a better place” (Anderson & Rainie, 2008, p. 97).

“Happy people are likely to acquire favorable life circumstances” (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005, p. 803). Thus, happiness leads to success.

Csikzentmihalyi (2000) notes that the level of material consumption, in addition to not correlating with people’s happiness and subjective well-being, is neither sustainable nor scalable to the world’s population and raises the question: “Is it impossible to develop an economy...where consumption involves the processing of ideas, symbols, and emotional experiences rather than the breakdown of matter?” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 271).

By calculating the power consumption required to support Second Life users’ personal computers, Linden Lab servers, and data-center cooling requirement, per capita power consumption to annually support a single Second Life avatar is 1,752 kWh/year, which is only slightly less than the electricity consumed by the average citizen of Brazil (1,884 kWh) and substantially more than the per-capita consumption in developing countries (1,015 kWh), so while avatars “don’t have bodies...they do leave footprints” (Carr, 2006).

Mixed reality offers prospects for enhancing SWB in conventional QOL domains. For example, virtual interactions with distant loved ones may impact the family and friends domain, and eventual holographic projections of virtual objects into the real world that enhance one’s physical surroundings may impact the material well-being domain. Research questions include the degree to which virtual enhancements or augmentations of the real world impact quality of life in different domains.

Virtual worlds are with us today, and are expected to become much more prominent in the coming decade either as alternatives to living in the real world, or as a means of enhancing real world conditions. In the coming decade, QOVL is expected to become an important consideration for a segment of society that will spend significant amounts of time in virtual worlds. Significant corporate and government investment in virtual worlds will justify collecting and reporting QOVL performance metrics, and a wealth of research issues discussed in this chapter present themselves regarding the measurement of QOVL and its impact on real world QOL.

3. BibTeX

@article{Novak09,
 author = {Thomas P. Novak},
 title = {Quality of Virtual Life},
 journal = {Transformative Consumer Research for Personal and Collective Well Being: Reviews and Frontiers},
 volume = {1},
 number = {1},
 year = {2009},
 editor = {David Glen Mick, Simone Pettigrew, Cornelia Pechmann, Julie Ozanne},
 publisher = {Taylor and Francis},
 address = {New York}
}