The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments using ...avatars and holograms. Virtual environments and immersive games (such as, Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the metaverse and offer some insight to the potential socio-economic impact of a fully functional persistent cross platform metaverse. Separating the hype and “meta…” rebranding from current reality is difficult, as “big tech” paints a picture of the transformative nature of the metaverse and how it will positively impact people in their work, leisure, and social interaction. The potential impact on the way we conduct business, interact with brands and others, and develop shared experiences is likely to be transformational as the distinct lines between physical and digital are likely to be somewhat blurred from current perceptions. However, although the technology and infrastructure does not yet exist to allow the development of new immersive virtual worlds at scale - one that our avatars could transcend across platforms, researchers are increasingly examining the transformative impact of the metaverse. Impacted sectors include marketing, education, healthcare as well as societal effects relating to social interaction factors from widespread adoption, and issues relating to trust, privacy, bias, disinformation, application of law as well as psychological aspects linked to addiction and impact on vulnerable people. This study examines these topics in detail by combining the informed narrative and multi-perspective approach from experts with varied disciplinary backgrounds on many aspects of the metaverse and its transformational impact. The paper concludes by proposing a future research agenda that is valuable for researchers, professionals and policy makers alike.
•The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using extended, augmented, and virtual reality technologies.•Interactive virtual environments and immersive games are considered as antecedents of the metaverse.•The transformative impact of the metaverse as well as societal effects relating to social interaction factors from widespread adoption.•Sectors potentially impacted by the metaverse include marketing, education, tourism, and healthcare.
The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta Platforms view of how the metaverse could be brought to life has evolved into an ongoing discussion of not only the metaverse's impact on users and ...organizations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered significant debate within the marketing‐focused discourse on the key challenges and transformative opportunities for marketers. Drawing on insights from expert contributors, this study examines the marketing implications of the hypothetical widespread adoption of the metaverse. We identify new research directions and propose a new framework offering valuable contributions for academia, practice, and policy makers. Our future research agenda culminates in a checklist for researchers which clarifies how the metaverse can be beneficial to digital marketing and advertising, branding, services, value creation, and consumer wellbeing.
In this study, an in-depth literature review method was applied. Period; It examines academic studies and current information on the internet and its interpretation of entrepreneurship in the ...metaverse world. For those who want to be entrepreneurs in the world of Metaverse, business opportunities, conveniences and difficulties of Metaverse are evaluated. The concepts of virtual reality and virtual world, which are the leading steps of the rapidly developing digital age, are gaining importance. The metaverse world, which leads them and breaks new ground in the virtual world, is a universe in which it is predicted that investors will make large investments in terms of technology and economy. For this purpose, the researcher examined studies in the metaverse literature, and as a result of these studies, the subject of entrepreneurship in the metaverse world was discussed. In the metaverse world, the study results on entrepreneurship are seen as an opportunity to be seized economically. Those who will participate in the upcoming metaverse shift will seize this great opportunity. Another finding is that taking place in the metaverse world is not suitable for the time being in terms of costs. To avoid being affected by increasing costs, it is recommended that entrepreneurial individuals first determine a good idea and make a good feasibility study on how to realise this idea in the virtual world. This article is an original study that addresses the benefits, conveniences and challenges of being an entrepreneur in the Metaverse world. The literature review found no investigation on entrepreneurship in the Metaverse world. The fact that the Metaverse has the potential to have great effects on the business world and social life standards in the future makes this research more interesting. In addition, by specifying the impact of Metaverse on the business world, it has been tried to shed light on the problems and opportunities that large or small-scale enterprises and entrepreneurs will face in the future.
The metaverse was first introduced in 1992. Many people saw Metaverse as a new word but the concept of Metaverse is not a new term. However, Zuckerberg’s press release drew all the attention to the ...Metaverse. This study presents a bibliometric evaluation of metaverse technology, which has been discussed in the literature since the nineties. A field study is carried out especially for the metaverse, which is a new and trendy subject. In this way, descriptive information is presented on journals, institutions, prominent researchers, and countries in the field, as well as extra evaluation on the prominent topics in the field and researchers with heavy citations. In our study, which was carried out by extracting the data of all documents between the years 1990-2021 from the Web of Science database, it was seen that there were few studies in the literature in the historical process for the metaverse, whose popularity has reached its peak in recent months. In addition, it is seen that the subject is handled intensively with virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, and the education sector and digital marketing fields show interest in the field. Metaverse will probably have entered many areas of our lives in the next 15-20 years, shape our lives by taking advantage of the opportunities of developing technology.
Far from merely being a tool to navigate a virtual world, individuals can often develop strong and complex relationships with their videogame characters. The present study examined the bond that can ...develop between a user and their avatar, as well as factors that can influence this relationship dynamic through the use of thematic analysis. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 12 videogame players from the UK and US aged between 18 and 27 years. The results identified five major themes, comprising: (i) 'heterogeneity of game worlds'; (ii) 'avatar attachment'; (iii) 'game experiences affecting physical world behaviour and attitudes'; (iv) 'types of self in a virtual world' (with the sub-themes of 'actual self', 'idealised self', and 'utopian self'); and (v) 'game difficulty affecting user-avatar relationship'. The results showed gamers use their avatars as a means to insert a virtual version of themselves into the videogame or to attain a desired version of the self, sometimes including elements of fantasy. In addition, participants indicated that games with an advanced difficulty and avatar customisation appeared to facilitate stronger bonds to a character. Finally, several avenues of future research are discussed, in particular pertaining to the advancement of research relating to the Proteus effect.
•Gamers can develop strong and complex relationships with their virtual world avatar.•Avatars are used to create a different virtual versions of the user's self.•Game difficulty and customisation options can affect the user-avatar relationship.•Experiences in virtual worlds influence and impact a user in the physical world.
The essential issue currently challenging marketing managers in the virtual world is: How can a virtual world feature be designed to elevate consumers' purchase of virtual items and usage in the ...virtual world? Previous scholars have investigated the issue and have published their predictions on the individual level. Yet, they have done so without specifically addressing endogeneity or carryover effect among users and their activities. To alleviate this omission and potential methodological bias, we probe the impact of virtual world technological features on two performance criteria at the platform level. In addition, we differentiate two types of users (new vs returning users) and probe their distinct impact on purchase of virtual items and usage patterns in the virtual world. When using data from one virtual world and applying the vector auto regression model, results show that virtual world managers can elevate performance through promotion of both types of users' activities. The effects of these activities, however, are varied. Specifically, for returning users, interactivity leads to a more significant impact on consumers' purchase of virtual goods than sociability, while the opposite effect is applicable to usage in the virtual world. For new users, interactivity is more efficient for promotion of users' purchase of virtual goods than sociability, while the results are the opposite for usage in the virtual world.
•Both sociability and interactivity increase consumers' purchase of virtual items and usage in the virtual world.•For returning users, interactivity increases user purchase more than sociability does while the opposite effect is applicable to users' usage.•For new users, sociability is more efficient for elevating purchase than sociability, while the opposite effect is applicable to users' usage.
Within education, concepts such as distance learning, and open universities, are now becoming more widely used for teaching and learning. However, due to the nature of the subject domain, the ...teaching of Science, Technology, and Engineering are still relatively behind when using new technological approaches (particularly for online distance learning). The reason for this discrepancy lies in the fact that these fields often require laboratory exercises to provide effective skill acquisition and hands-on experience. Often it is difficult to make these laboratories accessible for online access. Either the real lab needs to be enabled for remote access or it needs to be replicated as a fully software-based virtual lab. We argue for the latter concept since it offers some advantages over remotely controlled real labs, which will be elaborated further in this paper.
We are now seeing new emerging technologies that can overcome some of the potential difficulties in this area. These include: computer graphics, augmented reality, computational dynamics, and virtual worlds. This paper summarizes the state of the art in virtual laboratories and virtual worlds in the fields of science, technology, and engineering. The main research activity in these fields is discussed but special emphasis is put on the field of robotics due to the maturity of this area within the virtual-education community. This is not a coincidence; starting from its widely multidisciplinary character, robotics is a perfect example where all the other fields of engineering and physics can contribute. Thus, the use of virtual labs for other scientific and non-robotic engineering uses can be seen to share many of the same learning processes. This can include supporting the introduction of new concepts as part of learning about science and technology, and introducing more general engineering knowledge, through to supporting more constructive (and collaborative) education and training activities in a more complex engineering topic such as robotics. The objective of this paper is to outline this problem space in more detail and to create a valuable source of information that can help to define the starting position for future research.
•State of the art in dynamics-based virtual laboratories.•Defining the criteria for critical evaluation of existing technologies.•State of the art in virtual worlds.•Future advances in the field of virtual-world based laboratories.
Objectives. In this article, Michel Foucault’s (1967) theoretical insights regarding heterotopias are reconsidered, in order to determine whether his ‘heterotopology’ can be mirrored in several ...virtual worlds that are constantly redefined and reimagined by game producers and gamers alike. The places represented and juxtaposed in MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft epitomize countless virtual worlds full of contradictions, paradoxes and representations of the ‘Other’. Material and methods: Towards a ‘heterotopology’ of virtual worlds. Drawing upon in-game participant observation, the main argument is that the plethora of emplacements and cultural references from virtual worlds like Azeroth and Sanctuary underline their paradoxical character. These worlds appear to simultaneously connect and differentiate between various spaces and times. Furthermore, they connect and contextualize multiple meanings, which can be interpreted from an anthropological standpoint. Results. The juxtapositions between the various meanings entailed by these worlds are relevant only through the ways in which they encompass and exemplify the contradictions that exist in reality, without including solutions for them. Conclusions. Accordingly, the ways in which virtual worlds such as Azeroth are reimagined highlight the need of redefining the conceptual relevance of heterotopia.
Living conditions in an information society make their own adjustments to such a process characteristic of "real life" as socialization. Conditions for the emergence of "hybrid socialization" have ...formed in social networks. It differs from the process of socialization in ordinary conditions of human life and brings its own characteristics to this process and to socialization itself. If we talk about adolescents, their socialization is formed rather in the virtual world than in the real one. The influence of the virtual world can be defined as multifaceted, and the virtual world itself (internet space and social networks) creates conditions for implementation of various forms of socialization. Hybrid socialization brought many inevitable problems with it: the popularity of the internet weakens traditional socializing authorities; the release and dissemination of networked information is controlled by several developed countries; universal values are being "revised". In the virtual world, the phenomenon of ressentiment has become a widespread phenomenon and is actively manifested in the form of envy, an outright desire to offend interlocutors, offend completely unfamiliar network users in the form of frequent manifestations of aggression, resentment, inappropriate behavior, etc. These processes undermine traditional morality and at the same time contribute to the formation of socialization in the online environment. Such mechanisms of socialization as imitation, trying on roles, etc., began to "break" and "deviate" from their classical standards. The network breaks boundary between ages: the younger generation begins to contact the adult world in new conditions and at new rates, becoming an "adult child" much earlier than their real age. Video information widely disseminated on the internet is full of such phenomena as “flaunting oneself”, constant human comparison with “internet stars”, “worship of money”, which seriously influenced traditional moral concepts and values and threatened traditional human standards of life.
The metaverse is expected to be a game changer that starts a new epoch for digital commons and content creation in all aspects of tourism. Both opportunities and challenges will ensue. Current ...tourism research remains minimal with regard to this “next generation of the Internet,” and the logic of its applications in tourism is still unknown. The metaverse does not only enhance customer experiences; it also, as reality and virtuality converge, changes the paradigms, norms, rules, and the way we define experiences. To fill this gap, in this conceptual paper we scrutinize the past, present, and future of the metaverse, with a focus on the tourism domain. In particular, this research sorts out the key technologies of metaverse applications and pioneers the exploration of virtuality–reality amalgamation by theorizing a “4Is” taxonomy of metaverse tourism: imitation, intensification, interaction, and integration. An agenda is set for future research.
PDF
