|
Virtual Worlds are 3D computer environments where each user is represented with a character - avatar. Traditionally, virtual worlds have been used for entertainment. However, starting from approximately 2004 both corporate world and academia started to recognize business value of virtual worlds for training and education, collaboration, and marketing. Development and maturity of most popular virtual world - Second Life - played a significant role in corporate movement towards virtual worlds for several reasons: * Second Life was the first public virtual world that did not offer any topic, or theme. Each user is free to create their own objects, personalized environment, and / or to hold any events of their choice. This immediately sparked the idea of creating meeting rooms and virtual classrooms, first within academia, quickly followed by corporate users. Later, meetings and events developed into more advanced uses, from training simulations and communication training using robotic avatars, to 3D visualization, prototyping and collaboration 〔Heiphetz, Alex and Woodill, Gary, 2010. Training and Collaboration with Virtual Worlds. New York: McGraw-Hill.〕 * From 2005 to 2007 Second Life experienced explosive growth of the userbase. Companies were eager to reach this potential customer base and started marketing programs in Second Life. Without a good plan, knowledge of the audience and without good understanding of the new medium many of the early corporate marketing efforts failed, producing a backlash against corporate adoption of virtual worlds. * Second Life provided a wide array of tools for building 3D objects, scripting language to apply required behavior to the objects and easy entry path (users can register and try everything free of charge, and can purchase their own land - to which they can control access - at a reasonable price). By early 2010 several corporate applications of virtual worlds were shown to be successful: ==Corporate training== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Corporate use of Second Life」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|