Assignment #9- Jordan Meltzer

Collaboration in Second Life is influenced by its “sense of place”, as described by Professor McLeod, in which there exists a virtual world to create a 3-D environment for the user. The user feels as if they are inhabitants of this virtual world and are able to freely navigate around and interact with others. Boellstorff states that “a defining characteristic of a virtual world was that it was a place in which you could look around” and users could see the world through their own eyes (Boellstorff, 92). A group of users in close proximity inhabit a shared visual space and workspace awareness in the virtual world, which may be used to collaborate on various group tasks, such as building or managing a store. As a result of the shared visual space, there may be less grounding necessary in collaboration to reach mutual understanding. For example, a group collaborating in Second Life could create a store by allocating prims to a particular piece of land (Boellstorff, 98).

Collaboration in Second Life can be inefficient at times due to breaks in communication if users go afk, in which “a person leaves their computer without logging off, so that their avatar remains” (Boellstorff, 106). This could decrease group productivity and provide for inefficient collaboration, since group members may be unsure of how much information they need to repeat to other members who were afk. Also, grounding will be necessary to allow for group members who were afk to reach mutual understanding.

In addition to performing group tasks, users in Second Life interact with one another by creating avatars. Users create personal avatars, which represent their “sense of self” and identity in the virtual world, as described by Professor McLeod. With the creation of personal avatars, users can control their appearance. Also, since there are few assessment signals to a user’s identity in Second Life, they may create an avatar with certain desirable attributes. This may positively influence other’s perceptions of them in Second Life. By having the ability to freely control one’s appearance in the virtual world, Second Life may be less effective at maintaining relationships with others upon leaving virtuality. Users may be very different in the real world from how they appear in the virtual world, thus many expectations of the user may be proven incorrect. Also, trust formation may be more difficult and delayed in the virtual world when forming relationships with others. Bos et al (2004) states that trust formation may depend on the rate at which users can gather cues about a partner’s identity, and there are few assessment signals in Second Life to determine user’s true identity.