Growing virtual communities in 3D meeting spaces

Abstract

Most existing 3D virtual worlds are based on a ”meeting-space” model, conceived as an extension of textual chat systems. An at-tractive 3D interface is assumed to be sucient to encourage the emer-gence of a community. We look at some alternative models of virtual communities, and explore the issue of promoting community formation in a 3D meeting space. We identify some essential or desirable features needed for community formation – Identity, Expression, Building, Per-sistence and Focus of Interest. For each, we discuss how the requirements are met in existing text-based and 3D environments, and then show how they might be met in future 3D virtual world systems.