Doron Friedman, Anthony Steed and Mel Slater at University College London, UK, wanted to study whether people interacted differently in virtual worlds from real life. To do so, they created SL-bot, the first walking, talking, recording, wino robot in Second Life. "When it walks around it looks a little spooky" says Friedman. "It looks a bit drunk actually, but it is a great way to get data."
The actual details of the study are a little more scientific. The bot approaches another avatar that's standing alone, greets it, and then moves to the equivalent of 1.2 meters away. The study observed 28 avatars. 12 moved away to clear some space between themselves and the robot, and 20 responded by text.
Previously, SL-bot observed pairs of human-controlled avatars. The researchers found that users were six times as likely to shift their position when another avatar came within 1.2 meters, supporting the idea that people value their personal space in virtual worlds as much as in the real world.
Nick Yee, a researcher at Stanford University, conducted similar experiments to measure whether, as in the real world, male avatars guard their personal space more than female avatars--they do. However, Yee said that he wouldn't have gotten away with having his observing avatars interact with the other users, but the space is too new to predict exactly how ethics boards will react.
"Some review boards are probably too cautious and others too liberal," he says.
Massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds are getting to be a hot spot for real-world research. In 2005, a plague was accidentally introduced to World of Warcraft, which then gave researchers a chance to study its epidemiology without those pesky concerns like treating victims.
However, others have raised the point that virtual worlds and online games, while helpful, can't be the end all for research.
"This was a bit of a lark. All models and tabletop exercises and games of bioterrorism and pandemic planning are useful up to a point," Dr. Bill Scaffner, chair of the department of preventive medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical School, told TechNewsWorld about the World of Warcraft plague. "But it is not the general population that uses these games. It's a subset of the population that tends to be young and tends to be male. And in so far as you don't over-interpret the results, I think that's fine. It may indeed provide some additional information as we all go forward and try to protect ourselves as a complete society."
Likewise, in the SL-Bot study, it's not clear if the researchers had any way of determining where the anonymous users controlling the other avatars came from. Second Life has a pretty diverse pool of users, and personal space needs vary just as much.
And besides, there's always the chance that people didn't care about their personal space at all. They were just running from the drunken robot.
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