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Bot-avatar Pesters Second Life Users (For Science!)
holy_calamity writes "A bot-controlled avatar that tracks down lone avatars in Second Life and purposely invades their personal space has been created by UK researchers. The idea was to see if users value their virtual personal space. Bots avatars are not encouraged by Linden Labs — although this one is being deployed by academics, presumably spam-avatars (spavatars?) won't be far behind."
Sounds more like 'Second Wife' than Second Life...
They observed that female avatars were less guarding about their personal space then males, a behaviour apparently the same as in real life.
The flaw? Female avatars do NOT have to be controlled by a female user.
Would a male playing a female mimick this behaviour? IF that is the case, that would make a far more intresting study. If it isn't then their measurements are flawed since they cannot tell what sex a user really is.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The article mentions fleetingly at the end that the ethical issue is still up for grabs. I wonder if they actually got IRB approval for use of human subjects. Even though it is a bot that interacts with the other avatars, it is still an investigator-designed intervention into this space, they are collecting data in a deliberate and systematic way, and looking to generalize the results. The fact that they are collecting data without consent and using it in this manner strikes me as a violation of user privacy. Yes, I serve on an institutional IRB, and no, this would never pass in my institution. It is frightening that these researches imply that there is somehow a lower standard for virtual environments (it is not the avatar that is being studied, but the human on the other end) for the conduct of psychological experimentation.