Reading Report #4

Reading Report #4
February 7th, 2009
Kevin Wang
Summary: According to Woodrow Barfield in the “On money, taxes, and property in virtual reality” in the journal “Virtual Reality” in 2009, in volume 13, issue 37 to 39, author summarized a few issues about money, taxes and property in virtual reality; furthermore, author also mentioned a few examples relating to virtual crime and how governments help virtual consumers to protect their benefits (Barfield, 2009). The author states that using and sale virtual world property could create someone’s real wealth, so the virtual worlds are becoming a new trading platform (Barfield, 2009). Moreover, he also talked about the three main points why the virtual property owner should interest to the virtual reality community (Barfield, 2009). The first thing Barfield had explained is that the virtual items which count millions of dollars of real money trade every year in virtual worlds (Barfield, 2009). Then, author said that the value of virtual items relate to real world will change sometimes, because it depends on how famous the virtual world is and how many people playing in this virtual world (Barfield, 2009). The last thing that the article had mentioned is that there are also some crimes in the virtual world such as fraud theft (Barfield, 2009). In the journal, author used two examples from Asia and North America to show that law also will help people to protect their virtual property (Barfield, 2009). In conclusion, Barfield said that virtual worlds are becoming a part of new business and governments are paying more attention in virtual reality (Barfield, 2009).

Critique: This time, I was choose a journal article to do my reading report because I think I will need some reference from expert to support my ideas. This journal is not too long, but the vocabulary is really hard for me. Even though I can translate every single word back to my own language, I still cannot totally understand what an author is talking about. However, after I have read it for over ten times, I finally got the main idea of this journal. In my opinion, the purpose of author in this journal is describing the fact of what the virtual reality value is for users. He used neutral tone to describe what was happened and what will happen; moreover, he explained both of active and passive way about virtual reality community. I have searched author’s background on internet; Woodrow Barfield is an associate professor in Industrial Engineering at the University of Washington, and he always work on virtual environments, augmented reality, and interface design. In addition, I also have more than 8 years experience for playing on the virtual worlds. Some of opinions that he had explained in his article are really happened around my virtual life. Moreover, he also has lot of examples from news to support his opinion. Therefore, I think I can trust what he had written in this journal.

Reading Report #3

Reading Report #3

According to Nick Yee in the chapter 9 “The psychology of massively multi-user online role-playing games” in the book “Avatars at Work and Play” in 2007, page 187 to 207, millions of players “interact, collaborate, and form relationships with each other” (Yee, 2006, p187) through acting in online virtual environments such as “Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)” (Yee, 2006, p187) every day (Yee, 2006, p187). Users must purchase or download the specific MMORPG software and pay a monthly playing time fee which is “around 10 to 15 USD” (Yee, 2006, p189) to access the servers (Yee, 2006, p189-190). The average time that users spend in their MMORPS is “22.72 hours each week” (Yee, 2006, p193). In the MMORPGs, users always need to make groups of “4 to 8 players” (Yee, 2006, p194) for hunting or to fighting in virtual gaming world (Yee, 2006, p194). For some world events in the virtual world, there might need hundreds of players interacting (Yee, 2006, p194). Moreover, players collaborate with each other also by trade; for example, some virtual business men sell virtual goods to earn virtual gold in the game (Yee, 2006, p194-196). On the other hand, the motivations of most players are that users can feel powerful, wealthy, and successful in the MMORPG which they have chosen and they might have never felt those feelings in real life (Yee, 2006, p196). According to the statistics in the study, almost “45% people felt that their MMORPG friends were better than their real friends” (Yee, 2006, p196-197). Final, problematic usage of MMORPGs is some players spend too much time in the virtual gaming world (Yee, 2006, p198).

Second Reading Report

According to Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace in the chapter 5 “Dollars and Cyberspace” in the book “The Second Life Herald” in 2007, page 59 to 79, the virtual world can made real money by several ways, and people who bought virtual money by real money use it to build something or to make something in the cyberspaces (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.59). The authors state that there are group of people who are working on the virtual world by selling virtual items to the real money (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.60-65). Moreover, game companies also earning money from that help people to feel more succeed in the virtual world which is unfair for other users (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.65). In the article, Ludlow say that people are paying money to” build, furnish, and decorate” (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.66-68) their virtual house, and this is only an example from one virtual gaming world. In fact, there are a lot of more factors to make people paying money on the cyberspace (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.69-77). The writers also claim that there are “at least ten million people” (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.78) play around in one or more virtual worlds, and this number is increasing every year (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.78).

First Reading Report

Reading Report #1

January 16th, 2010
Kevin Wang

According to Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace in the chapter 2 “Inside the Virtual World” in the book “The Second Life Herald” in 2007, people can live in the “3-D virtual environments” (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.30) as their second life (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.19). Take a popular “massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG)” (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.19) World of Warcraft for example, players can create their own character which is unique and special by themselves in the virtual world (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.19-20). Moreover, people can communicate with each other in the MMORPGs by hunting, trading, and fighting, and they also can talk with each other in the game to “socialize, seek help and make friends” (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.21). Nowadays, most MMORPGs are based on the “3-D graphics technology” (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.26) to make the virtual worlds as real as possible (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.27). Finally, the main reason why players join to the virtual reality gaming world is because of fun (Ludlow & Wallace, 2007, p.29).

KevinWang

Hi everyone:
My Chinese name is Wang Ziteng, and as you know, my English name is Kevin.
Nice to meet you all guys.
I am from Beijing, China. I was born in there and I had lived in there for over 17 years. I miss my hometown so much. When I finish my level 6 class, I will go back for at least two months. Blue, black and white are my favorite colors because i like the simple colors. I don't have any brother and sister. I believe that you will know more about me in following seven weeks, and hope we can be a good friend with each other.
Thank you. Have a good night.
Kevin Wang