The concept of a Virtual World has always been, on some level, commonly associated with the cyborg-like appendages of Virtual Reality. Indeed, we’ve come a long way from the cumbersome VR devices of Ivan Sutherland and his colleagues. The Virtual World of today is relatively more accessible; it requires little more than a computer with Internet access. Our modern Virtual Worlds are based on the same desire that drives VR: to create new and exotic environments and to replicate real-world scenarios. However, there is one particularly significant difference between Virtual Worlds and VR: the inherent sense of community and peer interaction in Virtual Worlds stands in stark contrast to the individualistic experience of VR.
Virtual Worlds are becoming vital spaces for learning, commerce, and entertainment. In these brave, new Virtual Worlds we can transmit our whole persons (or representations) through space. An increasing numbers of users are interacting in these virtual environments, particularly with commercial and educational goals in mind. Perhaps the commercial and entertainment values of Virtual Worlds are most vital to their success. The existence of any Virtual World owes a debt to the entertainment industry, particularly the gaming, and Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) industries. It’s these industries that have supplied much of the necessary technology and infrastructure to make new virtual spaces possible.
However it’s not simply a matter of technology. Highly successful MMORPG’s such as Everquest and World of Warcraft have enjoyed unprecedented popularity, each one boasting a player-base numbering in the millions. These games have become cornerstones of online and gamer culture. Their presence has slowly yet surely trickled into the mainstream media and impacted the collective psyche.

MMORPG’s are examples of limited virtual worlds; they’re limited in that their content is created by corporately-backed developers and programmers. There is very little content creation is in the hands of the user. That’s where MMORPG’s fall short in comparison to more open-source Virtual Worlds. They fail to recognize their users’ desires to share in the creative process and also to interact within user-created environments. MMORPG’s have, however, been an important ally for user-driven virtual worlds.
Virtual Worlds such as Active Worlds and Second Life allow users to create, modify, and interact with their virtual surroundings. In Second Life users can interact via typing or voice chat; they’re able to share pictures and video, link directly to websites, and make use of popular services such as Twitter. All of this occurs predominantly through the use of avatars, which can either be whimsical characters or more accurate representations of the user’s real appearance.

Second Life has many of the characteristics of the real world: communities, economy, education, and even warfare. As such, it has become a breeding ground for new ways to model real world occurrences, such as: teaching and learning, drawing parallels between a virtual economic microcosm and real-world economies, models for social organization and, military models for terrorism and war.
Virtual worlds were once relatively obscure gaming environments where players battled for fame and fortune. The battle rages on, except now it is focused on new ideas, revenue models, and virtual archetypes that directly translate into our daily social, economic and political environments.