Photo Blog post 5

Virtual worlds offer a multitude of opportunities for companies to do marketing for retail or advertising purpose. As we all know, Second Life has a large amount of participants in role playing modes, however, these large numbers of target game players could also be the main target for advertising avatars or customers for different products.

As previous readings have mentioned avatars are divided into two types: human spoke avatar, and non- human spoke avatar. On a trip to Apple`s store, maybe because the time is not appropriate, no-one communicated with me, however, the store looks so real and everything is quite organized.

Entrance of the apple store.

Inside of the store, plenty of apple computers are lined up in the lounge, Job’s photo is also hanging on the wall, and a huge screen hangs on the wall (blank currently).

Photo Blog post 4 some of adventure of different plaza and communicate with other avatar

After my last adventure I was planning to build a classic building - a vacation village. For this purpose, I decided to visit a few quite strong, inspirational, successful, cultural based classical buildings, such as a Japanese Tea House, the Japanese Yamato market plaza, a few Japanese scenic spots, some gothic architecture and Roman buildings. Classical culture has been brought into Second Life in an altered and imaginative view of the past integrated into the present.

Japanese Yamato market plaza snapshot

Also, I chatted with a girl named Misu Tanaka - the only person I could meet at this time in the place.

She showed me how to detach my shopping bag. Unfortunately, she went offline too fast.

Apart from classical buildings, there are also attractive modern cultures within Second Life, such as, a Southern Pacific relaxation island, named Jezebel’s jazz club, with an environment in a Pacific style, as the houses are all built of wood, the island surround by ocean, and people in grass skirts - quite symbolic for specific vacation villages. Also, I have been to the place called Twilight blue Jazz Club and had a look around places like a jazz collection lounge, where Suzy Saxophone is also hanging on the wall, which gave quite a fantasy atmosphere to visitors. 

Also, as my own topic is to advertise a vacation village with a strong and profound cultural background, I have visited a hotel named Seijugumi hotel. The hotel has a classical oriental style, decorated quite beautifully and luxuriously in green and gold.

Above all, from my point of view, Second life`s colorful visual images, avatars’ varieties of appearance, the vivid background music, the facilities, such as building bars, gesture coding, drawing programmes, such as ‘Sketch up’, are all main attractions for new users.

Photo blogging post 3.

In my previous reading I discovered a range of well-known companies advertising in Second life. There are food companies, media companies and digital companies, such as, Coca-Cola, Sony, IBM and Samsung. I decided to have a look at their grounds and store (there are a few snapshots below).

The first snapshot is the free advertising ground named ‘Effective GridWide Advertising’, the website address is FreebiesRezAds.com.

After visiting, I realized this advertising ground is for people who are already dedicated to the software or project, and want to attract new users or visitors to have a try of a new programme.

This builds up a general idea of how my poster board looks like in AUT language ground, as this is as a door opener for me. Afterwards, I received a clipboard ad, which introduced me to an official website http://www.rezads.com/. This site gave users steps to build up a clipboard, showing a few businesses/projects/programs they wish to advertise to visitors. This makes the process of the advertising quite clear and easy for creators/producers, giving the producer more desire to advertise their project.

Brainstorming - autoethnography and relevance to SL

Ellis et al'. (2011) article that I had reviewed prompted me to consider autoethnography as a method and a way to approach the final project.

But first, I'd like to refer to what I've been doing for the first 6 weeks. The task to upload weekly photoblogs reporting about my experience and exploration of SL is an example of an auto ethnographic activity. It involved writing about personal experiences that I encountered whilst exploring this platform and then reflecting on and analysing them with relation to theory/ies. For those who visited various sites (replicas of the places in RL), this experience could also be seen as a simulation of field work or a possibility to do it in SL.

Apart from that, it was a great learning curve for most students. The majority had not used or heard of SL before, so to be able to complete the task we had to learn how to use it, navigate, build objects, change our appearances, etc. I think the usefulness of this experience can contribute to our expectations. For example, having explored SL myself I now know what I could expect from the students that I'd be teaching and the kind of feedback that I can anticipate.

That's what I'm going to do for this project

Obviously, the time is limited and I expect my machinima to be around 2-3 mins. Having watched other students' works, it seems to me that to have a clear outline at the beginning is a good idea. So that's what I'm going to cover in my project.

I'm still in the process of finalising sub-themes (what I'll be talking about in each section) and how I will communicate and present those ideas. I quite like creative approach, so might be spending some time on choosing the right font, some background music or sounds, etc. 

Sunya Week 9

I have worked on the project creating machinima involves the theory of language learning in Second Life.
It will be learning english experience section in comparision to the theories, conclusion and references.

Here is the progression of my project

Sunya: Sunya: Sunya:

Sunya: Sunya: Sunya:: Sunya: Sunya: : Sunya: I visited Virlantis Island last week. Classroom Chating area I went in after class finished. I would like to experien...

Autoethnography

Ellis, Adams and Bochner’s (2011) article provides an extensive overview of autoethnography as one of the qualitative methods in social research. It outlines the history of development of this method, process, end product or an output, potential, issues and criticisms. I thought the article was well written and could be a very useful reference for those who are not familiar with this method.

I can see that autoethnography could be one of few methods that I would be able to apply in L2 acquisition and ESL teaching research. For example, being a language learner and writing about this experience. Or in the case of ESL teaching, this experience would be complemented with teaching and communication with other teachers, their experiences and thoughts, and possibly students’ perspectives as well.

Having read this article, I kept on pondering whether I would utilise this method in my research that tends to address a wide range of issues, such as crises of identity among ethnic minorities and marginalised groups of society, consequential effects of public and social policies, including language policy, etc. If I wanted to do field work somewhere, for example, in northern Iraq and carry out a research on Kurds’ national identity and the way people feel about it being suppressed by the former government of Saddam Hussein, how would I be able to experience what those people had faced? My assumption is that being an ethnic Korean and a Russian citizen, I would be treated in a different way, which will affect (again, my assumption) the findings. Furthermore, the level of education, cultural and religious beliefs, gender, sexual orientation and social class might also affect this experience and treatment. This is just one of many examples of the research that I could be carrying out, but how will it be different to ethnography? And another reason why I would probably not use it is because I simply lack confidence in my writing and ability to write the way other authors do – in a very engaging and artistic way. I might be too self-critical. And perhaps, to be a good writer, one needs to have at least some sort of training, which I never had. All this makes any writing task quite challenging especially if things have to be written in L2 or L3.

However, what I found interesting about autoethnography (and I must acknowledge that I didn’t have a prior knowledge of this method and hadn’t done any reading on it) is that it challenges canonical ways of what research is, the way it should be conducted and how the findings should be reported (Ellis et al., 2011). I remember when I did the Language Learner paper, both assignments were supposed to have a conventional structure that had been prescribed by both lecturers: introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion and conclusion. And I clearly remember how I felt about those prescriptive instructions – quite negative I must say – because it was limiting and I felt I could approach this task in a different way.

Another interesting finding from this article is that unlike other methods, autoethnography acknowledges and accommodates subjectivity, emotionality and the researcher’s influence. It does not hide these matters like other methods tend to do and neither does it try to assume that they do not exist (Ellis et al., 2011). The notions of objectivity, absence of bias, validity and others are often considered as benchmarks of a good research, especially in quantitative and some qualitative works. Autoethnography, as implied by Ellis et al., 2011, challenges what social research is and what to expect from both researchers (how it can be done) and the audience (it can be much wider and also it can be urged to change their attitudes and civic activity).

Although autoethnography may not be suitable in all types of social research (in terms of the topics and issues that one wishes to examine), looking at various methods and assessing their suitability is a positive thing. It allows the researchers and academics look outside the square, which is constituted by scientific paradigms, established views, attitudes and whatnot. It can also help us approach issues in an alternative way and who knows, maybe that’s where the answers are hidden.

Reference:

Ellis, C., Adams, T.E. & Bochner, A.P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum: Qualitative social research. 12(1)

week 9 - wendy

In order to analyse players' identity in the virtual world deeply, I try to have some interactions with them. There is no doubt that a good look will make these things easy. After dressing up, I don't need to find sb to talk, they come to chat up with me. I meet a man in  Atlantis. He is a new resident in SL, so he asks me to help him get familiar with this world. We communicate through texts. From his words, I'm sure he is definitely not a native speaker, which is proved later. I make this speculation based on three points: first he uses complete sentences and the written English, I think second language speakers tend to do that in case making mistakes; second no slangs or  abbreviation; third the speed he types is a little bit slow. After talking for a while, he asks me where I come from, I let him guess. Perhaps because of the English environment in SL, he guesses some English speaking countries, but I all say "no". Then the interesting thing happens, he asks "are you from Philippines?" I think I know where he comes from at that moment, because after the possible answers, people will list the names they are most familiar with when guessing. I'm right again, he is Philippinese. Through this experience, I think speculating one's real identity through his words is very interesting. There must have sth that can't be hidden, even though we are in the virtual world. I plan to invite one of my friends to join SL, and then I will go to talk with him/her, but as a stranger. In this way, I can analyse the differences and connections he/she acts online and offline.

Danny's photo blog - week 8

Today I tried five translators other than Ferd’s Free which I already used before. In today’s exploration, “AF Translator Basic” is the ONLY ONE that worked. It is a paid translator which has better functions than Ferd’s Free. On the other hand, the links to “X-Lang” and “Q-translator”, retrieved from the blog I reviewed, are not working any more. Next time I may try to search Google for some new links to the two translators. Besides, I tried “MH translator” and “Imprudence 1.4.2 viewer” translator (different from 1.3 viewer given by Darryl), but they did not work for some unknown reasons. I suppose one possible reason is incompatibility of different HUDs.

Anyway, next week I will either try to figure out and solve these problems, or try some other translators available. If anyone of you, including Darryl, is interested, please try some of these translators. Your experience may help me out of the dilemma.

Moreover, I changed my male avatar into a female avatar named “Jennifer Wong”. I did this to attract more SL residents, mostly male, to talk to me so that I would have a better chance to test my translators on different linguistic groups. Sarraline helped me to set up my avatar and gave my avatar a gesture to make it walk in a feminine manner. Also, she gave a necklace to protect my avatar from being bitten by vampires. It is said that my avatar will die and all stuff will be gone once it is bitten by one of these vampires haunting in SL. How odd it is!

MH translator costs about 370 Lindens.

Before buying MH translator, you can have a try on MH translator DEMO, which costs 1 Linden and can be only used in MH shop.

Finally, AF translator, 180 Lindens, was the only one that worked today. And it worked well!

I changed my male avatar into a female avatar whose name is “Jennifer Wong”. It sounds like a name of a cute oriental beauty in real world, right? Hope more guys will chat up with me. Ha ha!

Six Article review and summaries -xin(Eve) zheng

Six article review and summary. From Eve Zheng

The attractiveness of advertising in Second Life

Article review (Eve)xin zheng

The article Avatar-based advertising in second life: The role of presence and attractiveness of virtual spokespersons by Seung-A Annie Jin and Justin Bolebruch (2010) from the Journal of Interactive Advertising demonstrates some ideas about advertising in Second Life. At the beginning of the article the author highlights the fact that Second Life has had some economic impact through in-world currency (the Linden dollar), advergaming and marketing communication, and is a growing area for interactive advertising. The article not only describes the impact of spokes-avatars providing valuable information to researchers, advertisers and marketers, but also uses descriptive statistics and t- test results to identify consumer`s evaluation of avatar physical attractiveness and the value of any advertisement message, revealing a mediating role of spokes-avatars level of attractiveness (Jin & Bolebruch, 2010).

The article discusses three forms of advertising in Second Life (No avatar, Human avatar, and Non-Human avatar). The researcher carefully provides descriptive statistics, t-test explanations and clear tables within the text. A Path Diagram of Mediation Analysis, figure 1, shows the impacts of attractiveness to consumers` valuation of the information value of the advertising message (Jin, Bolebruch, 2010).

The discussion section identifies the key finding of the whole research, that “avatar based advertising in Second Life can contribute to increase product involvement and positive attitudes towards a product” (Jin & Bolebruch, 2010, p.56). From this discussion section the reader will have a general understanding of different potentials for avatar-based advertising. Finally, the limitations and further research part listed a shortage of current research.

Above all, this article is full of inspiration on the attractiveness of avatar use for advertising and this could be very influential to people who have the desire to be involved in this research or to use Second Life for advertising purposes. Personally I do want to see advertising in Second Life because it is a media building a bridge between the virtual and real world, and people not very socially active in the real world might find it hard to be exposed to new products in the real world, so the virtual world can help them negotiate the real world. However, previous readings have taught me that it is not a very successful place to advertise, so this article is a bit more positive.

Reference:

Jin, S., & Bolebruch, J. (2009). Avatar – Based advertising in Second Life: The Role of presence and attractiveness of virtual spokespersons. Journal of interactive advertising, Vol. 10(1), pp51-60.

New Media`s Influential Power in our World

Article review (Eve)xin zheng

The article Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media by Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein (2010) from Business Horizons is a very brief, simplified, clear summary of recent popular internet technology based on Web 2.0 and tries to define what ‘Social Media’ means. Six different types of social media are classified: blogs, collaborative projects, social networking sites, content communities, virtual social worlds and virtual game worlds. The article aims to advise companies on how they can use social media to their benefit.

For me, I have no real trouble with defining social media and thinking about what that is. So this article was not so useful to me in its description of the different categories of social media, but was very interesting towards the end of the article when it discusses how different businesses could use different social media categories to advertise for commercial benefit. So it is interesting that different categories of social media have their own potential, such as those that target the right market in terms of participants, that use businesses’ time well, are wide reaching if necessary, easily accessible, easy to use, interactive and interesting. It is interesting for my research topic of advertising in virtual worlds as it says this type of advertising is full or opportunities and potential. Participants in virtual worlds live quite similarly there to how they live in the real world (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010) so this makes them easy to observe and see whether they are part of the target market for advertisers. Some challenges to using social media for commercial gain include really being very familiar with social media and interacting in appropriate ways on social media sites. The right type of social media must be chosen for successful outcomes, and it must be used correctly.

Reference:

Kaplan, AM., & Haenlein, M.(2010).Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53, 59—68, doi: 0.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003

How to make Advertising Succeed in Second Life

Article review (Eve)xin zheng

The article Advertising Age, How to succeed in Second Life, Coke, Others Plunge in, but If they `re not careful, Their Virtual plays Will Result in Real-World Headaches identifies varieties of products and companies, such as electrical products by Sony BMG, clothes by Adidas and Reebok, and soft drinks by Coca-cola, using virtual world marketing in Second Life. This article covers Coca-cola`s whole advertising process in Second Life: the way they prepared before starting to advertise, advertising costs and the challenges the marketers face. Also, through the article, Second Life advertising has been compared to advertising in reality, especially regarding costs. The article shows the two forms of advertising benefitting the company.  

At the end of this article, varieties of experienced people have made thoughtful, direct, and also quite recent ‘DOs and DON`Ts’ comments or recommendation for people who still want to advertise successfully in Second life. 

Reference:

Capps, B. (2009) How to Succeed in Second Life. Advertising age. Online available. http://adage.com/print?article_id=116913

Advertising in Virtual Worlds

Article review (Eve)xin zheng

The article Virtual Worlds as a Medium for Advertising describes the virtual worlds as a potential media for marketers and advertisers, especially Second Life, as this particular game orientated virtual world, among hundreds of virtual worlds, has the largest amount of users. Many different advertisers are shown to have made contributions on v-commerce or e-commerce through virtual e-worlds. The populations of v-users or e-users still grow rapidly. This article summarizes the art of advertising in virtual worlds, and also made some suggestions for further research in the field. To gain more researchers interested in and involved in this particular field is one of the purposes of the article.

In the article, growing relevant literatures are shown to have examined the way marketers use online avatars in marketing to have a positive potential to influence gamer `s trust and buyer`s shopping intentions. There are hundreds of different brands of products already having virtual world marketing experience.

 Reference:

Barnes, S. (2007)Virtual Worlds as a Medium for Advertising. The Data base for Advances in Information Systems, 38(4).

Rule Regulation issue in the Virtual world

Article review (Eve)xin zheng

This article is about Rule regulation issues in the virtual world. It is generally argued that the activities I the virtual world also need to be regulated and certain activities will even have to be restricted in a similar way in the real world. The basic principles behind this argument is that people in the virtual world can do things to effect the people in the real world, such as the psychological aspects of the people in the real world. This is applicable to my proposed Chinese restaurant advertisement in the virtual world. If someone wants to destroy my business in the virtual world with illegitimate manner, the business in the real world might also be impacted as well. The author of this article proposed several means to establish a virtual world regulation system: 1) to regulate virtual world provider; 2) to constrain regulatory dynamics; 3) to use defensive posture to restrict permeability; 4) to seek real world assistant to help the virtual world self governance. As for the item #1, the virtual provider should be the front line to ensure a properly regulated virtual culture since they are the creators of the virtual world and regulatory rules will be much easier for them to implement and execute. As for the item #2, it is important to ensure that most virtual world communities will share the common ground in terms of regulatory issues, such as ethical standard, etc. This is very similar to that in the real world that it is important to avoid culture conflicts when different cultures encounters. The item #3 actually means it is important to ensure that the real world regulation is dominating the virtual world regulation. The item #4 emphasized that it is still up to each individual to carry an appropriate ethic standard in the virtual world.

Reference:

HeinOnline (2006) Napster's Second Life. Real World or Virtual World, (1818-1825) available online: https://www.copyright.com/ccc/basicSearch.do? &operation=go&searchType=0 &lastSearch=simple&all=on&titleOrStdNo=0029-3571

Avatar based marketing exploration

Article review (Eve)xin zheng

This article (Hemp, 2012) introduces one of the most important aspects of virtual world: business development. One major form of advertising, avatar based advertising is heavily discussed. It is a general truth that even in the real world, market advertising can take different forms and avatar based marketing can also be found quite often as well, such as having the experience tour of a new model of automobile or sitting in a tightly sealed cage to tour a wild place full of dangerous animals. In the virtual world, avatar based experience can be much easier than the real world, and thus it can give business a new option to promote their products and services. This article categorizes avatar based marketing into two different types: combat focused and social interaction focused. The combat focused avatar based marketing is actually focused in virtual world whose sole purpose is gaming such as World of Warcraft. In these types of virtual world people are actually looking for simulated experience of combat. In the social interaction focused virtual world, the people are generally looking forward to experience a versatile and different life than in the real world. As for my proposed Chinese restaurant advertisement, I should be able to find opportunities to make advertisements in both type of virtual world. In the combat focused virtual world, maybe I can put my advertisement in a supply store to remind the customer that if they really need food at that moment, they will know our number and to make orders. For the customers in the virtual world, I can put interesting signs to let them know what is going on the real world about my Chinese restaurant, so that they can have obtain a sense of connection with the real world while wondering in the virtual world.

Reference

Hemp, P. 2012. Avatar-Based Marketing. Harvard Business Review. Accessed from http://hbr.org/2006/06/avatar-based-marketing/ar/1

Sunya: Week 8

Dear Darryl

This may answer your question last week about how to get speech gesture?

Sunya: Week 8

Need comment about this

Sunya: Sunya: Sunya:

I found second life video basic demonstrating about how to zoom and pan

photoblog week 5 - wendy

In the virtual world, there are four types of nonverbal cues: User-Defined, Predefined, Blended and Missing cues. This time I explore only one 

gesture defined by the computer--sitting, at different places and scenario. First, I walk into a two-floor house and try every place that allows people to sit. 

From the picture we can see, this is a lounge. You have eight choices to sit down. The sitting gestures do not have gendered difference and all of them 

are set in relaxed states, such as curling the knees and half lying on the couch.

The next one is like a reception room. I believe sitting in a softly lit room and 

looking at a cluster of glowing candles makes us feel peaceful and cozy. There is 

only one sitting gesture here, which is elegant and suits for both male and female 

avatars.

Then I go up to the second floor and find a bedroom. Beside the bed, there is a 

sling chair. Once inside, I think sitting there will have a great view of the 

beautiful scenery out of the window. After I click the button, my avatar sits down 

and really turns to watch the outside. The designers do well in the details!

In front of the house, there is a wide area placing two beds. Three choices for 

women and three choices for men. The women's sitting gestures look lovely and sexy, 

while the men's are casual and handsome.

The second place, I move back to our AUT place. Only two chairs here and then I ask

Sunya to do me a favor. Therefore, I find there is no difference between male and 

female sitting here. The gesture is very normal and stiff.

At last, let's have a funny comparison. In the first picture, I can't believe a 

girl can sit like that on the ground, especially wearing a skirt, so rude~ the 

second pic is the right posture in life. Actually, we shouldn't expect too much 

in a place for studying, lol~ 

By the way, I find another function for SL during the process of screenshot. 

It's a perfect game to practise the techniques for photography. We need to select 

backgrounds and adjust the angle to take beautiful snapshots.