The Role of Standards for E-Commerce in Virtual Worlds

This chapter discusses the topic of standards for Virtual Worlds with emphasis on their usability as a stable and reliable basis for long-term investments into 3D-E-Commerce. The text explains why standards are important for the success of Virtual Worlds as well as the business in these shared online 3D environments, and what the relevant criteria are to decide for the right technology and/or provider. Although sometimes in the shadow of popular proprietary platforms there are already many different candidates for a Virtual World standard, currently in different states of development. By choosing a 3D platform, E-Commerce providers will decide about their business potential and at the same time strengthen one or another standard in the current technical competition phase. So it is important to get an overview about the current approaches, their advantages and disadvantages as well as the tendencies for the future developments. In this chapter the reader will be sensitized for the issues of standardization, compatibility and interoperability of Virtual Worlds for successful E-Commerce applications. An overview about the current approaches supports the orientation and decision for the different technologies. Some concrete XML-based code examples realized in the international ISO standard for interactive 3D-Graphics X3D demonstrates the practical deployment of highly compatible concepts. An outlook to the further integration of interactive 3D graphics into the Next Generation Web respectively the 3D Internet completes the overview.

Security and Privacy Concerns of Virtual Worlds

This chapter looks at security and privacy concerns of virtual worlds by investigating the use and capabilities of current and emerging technologies such as gaming, blogging, podcasting, virtual meetings, and virtual worlds. Security and privacy concerns will be investigated in the context of exploits and IT-related security risks, access management and confidentiality, reputation and product risk management, resource management, financial considerations and accountability, and safety. Several technologies and personal practices are reviewed, as well as ways to mitigate or eliminate their associated risks. The core principles of information security -confidentiality, integrity, and availability - provide an overall framework for the chapter.

Achieving Realism in 3D Interactive Systems

Web 2.0 has demonstrated how new technologies can change the structure of the customer-provider relationship. This is evident in the many new business opportunities that have arisen including the growth of 3D environments and virtual worlds. The development of more specialized services and consumer integration creates new marketplaces with new rules of the game. As these new opportunities come to the scene, they will change the face of the world into 3D environments and a multi-agent collaboration. The adoption of virtual worlds depends a great deal on the user experience. The challenges of providing the user with virtual realism is a challenge as many supporting technologies are still in the early development phase. This chapter will discuss several of the issues and tradeoffs involved in developing Real Virtual Worlds.

Legal Issues in the Virtual World and E-Commerce

Cyberspace is such an enormous concept that trying to briefly explain the “rules” for E-Commerce or “cyberlaw” is next to impossible. For an E-Commerce, it is important to understand that there are business-to-business transactions and those involving consumers. In addition to requiring a mastery of many legal specialties, E-Commerce presents legal issues in a virtual environment. Many business practices in a cyberspace are untested in the courts. New and innovative methods of competition, as well as the effects of an international playing field change the playfield constantly. The legalities of this great new frontier pose an impressive and intellectually stimulating challenge. This chapter is a survey and summary of the legal environment in the E-Commerce and the virtual world.

From E-Commerce to V-Commerce

This introductory chapter provides an overview of e-commerce marketing focused on history, trends and future predictions for the field – leading into the development and application of virtual worlds and v-commerce. It begins with a discussion of the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Next is a survey of developments in marketing convergence, as businesses integrate their customer-centric online/offline marketing efforts and databases. The chapter continues with an overview of business-to-business Internet marketing, including the profit strategies businesses employ in the online world. A commentary on the evolution of browsers, portals and search engines is followed by a discussion of social networking’s movement toward a money-making model. To set the stage for the chapters to come, the piece concludes with a preview of what is on the horizon for “v-commerce” – with opportunities and applications that are capturing the imagination of consumers and marketers alike.

3D3C Real Virtual Worlds Defined

The goal of this chapter is to two fold: first to define and expose the domain of “Real Virtual Worlds” and secondly to define the critically of Commerce within this domain. It is the assumption of this chapter that this new field of virtual worlds is destined to become a major force in 5-10 years. Much like the internet, Real Virtual Worlds, will change, enhance, and sometimes hamper how we learn, have fun, work, and perform human action. Virtual worlds are defined as an integration of 3D, Community, Creation and Commerce (3D3C). Building on this definition, we develop the “commerce” factor. My goal is to establish commerce in a critical integral part of virtual worlds. Even more, without commerce, we will probably miss the larger potential of real virtual worlds.

Virtual Worlds

Christensen (2002) describes that new technologies and solutions replace established goods and services as a result of being “good enough” replacements. That is, the value of functions provided by a new solution outweighs any further incremental improvements to the entrenched product. The new value could be in terms of size, convenience, cost or other dimensions pertinent to many consumers. These attributes might be traded off for capacity or performance or other factors which are deemed less important than the new benefits. Virtual worlds are providing new value in many areas of commerce, business, health and recreation. They are not a fad. They are part of an ongoing change. Virtual worlds are in an opportunistic position to supplant many existing solutions and may be only one or two breakthroughs away from displacing more.

Learning Space in Virtual Environments

Learning the spatial layout of an environment is essential in application domains including military and emergency personnel training. Traditionally, whilst learning space from a Virtual Environment (VE), identical training time was used for all users - a one size fits all approach to exposure / training time. This chapter, however, identifies both environmental and individual user differences that influence the training time required to ensure effective virtual environment spatial knowledge acquisition (SKA). We introduce the problem of contradicting literature in the area of SKA, and discuss how the amount of exposure time given to a person during VE training is responsible for the feasibility of SKA. We then show how certain individual user differences, as well as environmental factors, impact on the required exposure time that a particular person needs within a specific VE. Individual factors discussed include: the importance of knowledge and experience; the importance of gender; the importance of aptitude and spatial orientation skills; and the importance of cognitive styles. Environmental factors discussed include: Size, Spatial layout complexity and landmark distribution. Since people are different, a one-size fits all approach to training time does not seem logical. The impact of this research domain is important to VE training in general, however within service and military domains ensuring appropriate spatial training is critical in order to ensure that disorientation does not occur in a life / death scenario.

Virtual Education

Virtual education is a multi-billion dollar business and maintains a firm place in the world of E-Commerce. It is a mode used by educational institutions, the military, professional organizations, commercial companies, and others to inform, educate and interact with students, consumers, and participants. Second Life® is the most well-known forum for virtual education for many colleges and universities, but it is not the only virtual environment used for educational purposes. Many organizations such as the military have developed their own virtual training and education frameworks (See Ciaramitaro and Jones, Chapter 7). Conferences and seminars offered by professional organizations and business consortiums are increasingly using the virtual environment to attract its participants. Even virtual worlds embraced by children provide many educational aspects such as the “working” experience in the Webkinz world. This chapter will discuss the varying ways that virtual worlds have been incorporated into education. The authors will examine several virtual worlds to see what they offer in terms of content and user experience. They will also examine virtual education from the faculty and student perspective, and investigate how it compares with traditional forms of teaching and learning. As is true in all virtual worlds, within the education domain there are issues and challenges that must be addressed before full-scale adoption is achieved and we will discuss several of these. The authors will conclude with an examination of what the future holds for virtual education.

Company Specific Virtual Worlds

The rapid rise of Virtual World technology poses exciting opportunities and complex challenges for businesses. Virtual World technology, for the purpose of business usage, can be defined as any 3D immersive and persistent environment that can be accessed concurrently by multiple people for the purposes of conducting E-Commerce. The purpose of this chapter will be to examine how Virtual Worlds are being used in business today. The authors will reflect on the first wave of companies entering Virtual Worlds, which has yielded some key lessons learned, as well as, evidence to its next phase. By defining the spectrum of different uses of Virtual Worlds, this chapter will cover key lessons learned and guidelines, current barriers to adoption, and the business value of using Virtual Worlds for business purposes. Lastly, the authors will examine future trends in Virtual World technology that relate to future Virtual World E-Commerce growth.