Defying Reality Using Virtual Worlds to Break Physical Reality in Productive Ways

1. Defying RealityUsing Virtual Worlds to Break Physical Reality in Productive Ways

2. Instead of just replicating physical reality, we should identify and leverageunique leversavailable to us in virtual worlds to create new forms of work and social interactions.

4. Being in Nothingness (John Perry Barlow) Suddenly I don’t have a body anymore … the closest analog to Virtual Reality in my experience is psychedelic … the third oldest human urge, the desire to have visions.

8. Philip Rosedale (Founder of Second Life) Based on Second Life, the average of all dreams is Malibu.

10. The Issue of Virtual Chairs Why do we need virtual chairs if our virtual bodies never get tired?

11. 3D isn’t a magic ingredient Boring people are still boring when they are 3D

14. The Central Dogma of Games Games are made to slow you down. The inefficiency IS the game.

15. Can we use virtual worlds to break realityin productive ways?

16. Facial and Behavioral Mimicry

17. Face Morphing

18. Voting Results

19. Digital Chameleons

21. Personality Gold Mines Rich, longitudinal, behavioral profiles based on engaging activities.

22. Rich Inference Markers Is it possible to infer someone’s real world gender, age, and personality based on virtual behavioral markers alone?

23. Inference Rules Male Age: 18-25

24. Dynamic Mimicry Infers and leverages your gender, age, and personality to create high-influence agents in the virtual world

25. Tailored Realities Everyone sees their own version of reality. These versions need not be congruent.

26. Tailored Mimicry

28. Self Perception Theory

29. Attractiveness is correlated with: • Friendliness • Extraversion Can we make someone friendlier by giving them a more attractive avatar?

30. Attractiveness - Findings • Participants in more attractive avatars: • Walked closer to the virtual stranger • Shared more personal information with the virtual stranger

31. Height is correlated with: • Confidence • Personal Income • Leadership Can we make someone more confident by giving them a taller avatar?

32. Findings - Height • People in tall avatars more likely to make unfair splits. • Also, people in short avatars twice as likely to accept unfair splits.

33. Does seeing an older version of yourself help you better plan for retirement?

34. Age-morphed Digital Avatar Actual photo Digital Avatar Aging Your Avatar

35. Retirement Fund Hypothetical Retirement Fund Growth by Condition $2,000 Old $1,000 Young $0 2008 2018 2028 2038 2048 Year

36. Bobo Doll

38. Avatar Creation PhotographFeature Tracing RenderingAvatar

39. Exercising Watching your virtual self run Self Running Other Running Self Loiter

40. Findings Participants who saw themselves exercise demonstrated higher levels of exercise in the next 24 hours. Self Running

42. Helping Each Other There weren’t places on line you could go to get all the answers. You had to ask other players. There was a lot more give and take. [M, 29]

45. How does a massively-multiplayer game encourage people to become anti-social?

46. Social Architectures We’re used to thinking of altruism as an individual trait, but virtual worlds show that altruism can be part of the social architecture of games.

47. Breaking rules of physical reality inproductive ways.