Welcome to The Virtual Whirl, a new weekly Massively column covering virtual environments generally. The term 'virtual world' is slowly seeing less use, being supplanted by the more general 'virtual environment', but the world term still has a fair bit of life left in it.

Virtual environments covers a whole lot of ground. From William Crowther's original efforts in 1976 that based a game in a virtual version of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, virtual environments have been a part of gaming, artificial intelligence and behavioral research, modeling, telemetry and process control and more.

Nowadays we're seeing Second Life, Blue Mars, There.com, IMVU and others trying to find places in non-game contexts, like content-development and prototyping, publishing and performance, entertainment and social, education and business; efforts that are met with varying amounts of success.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Community guide to Virtual Worlds

The Virtual Whirl: Community guide to Virtual Worlds originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Metaverse Journal's Feldspar Epstein has just finished an three part series exploring addiction, in the context of Virtual Worlds Addiction and Internet Addiction.

While many of us may refer to ourselves as addicts, the fact that these two categories even exist in the public consciousness at all is a testament to fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of both physical and psychological addiction, as Epstein explains.

What is addiction, how does it affect us, and is heavy, regular usage enough to qualify? Check out parts one, two and three, and sit back and consider the role of the Internet and virtual worlds in your life and in the lives of others.

Addiction, the Internet and virtual worlds originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

SLOz.info, a fine source of Australian metaverse news for Second Life has expanded their coverage and rebranded as The Metaverse Journal. The pool of non-game Virtual Worlds/MMOs is getting larger - and deeper. While there's more going on in Second Life than ever, there's increasing interest and activity in other online worlds as well - as you've probably noticed from Massively!

"The move to a wider focus came about from some reader feedback we sought. I'd be lying if said that Massively's launch didn't confirm for me the sense in that broader focus," said Cremorne

Continue reading SLOZ gets new look, expands beat

SLOZ gets new look, expands beat originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.