Get Healthy! (In Second Life…)

Promoting health, wellness, and beneficial dieting habits, the University of Houston has hit the ground running with a new project. The only problem? It will take place exclusively over the famously immersive Internet game, Second Life.

Researchers will be striving to shower subjects in healthy eating and exercising practices, hopefully rubbing off useful methods for preventing obesity and other illness in the process. The plan is to grant Second Life currency to those participants who spend their time on the virtual treadmill or bike, or to those eating healthy within the game world. Volunteers will also be able to commune with one another in a friendly environment, sharing experiences and helpful advice in the process. From the sound of it, the project will set up a virtual property within the game world for anyone who wishes to join in the fun as well. A worldwide contest will be established between countries as well, with members of each nation competing against each other with regard to health-consciousness and fitness in the Second Life world. Will the Canadians take Norway? Only time will tell.

Essentially, the University wants to promote healthy decision making all over the world. There’s only one problem as far as I’m concerned: it’s a game.

Their efforts have only the best interests at heart I know, but I feel like the promotion may have a greater chance of diminishing international wellness rather than increase it. Sure, plenty of the participants will gather boatloads of useful, beneficial information, but couldn’t they also get suckered into one of the most addictive online games of all time? Learning about carrots, peas, and bikes is a great thing in and of itself, but when that knowledge comes hand in hand with an unhealthy, time consuming habit, is it still so wonderful? I’m worried about little Davy, the average 19-year old fellow who just so happens to participate in a big University’s wellness promotion, then struggles for weeks on end with a Second Life addiction. After all, subjects and volunteers are rewarded with in-game currency, which encourages continued time spent within the game, buying new furniture, homes, or otherwise attractive items. The participants may become so distracted with their “second life,” that they go all but comatose in their first one. To me, it just seems like a bad idea. Perhaps the University of Houston should requite partakers with real-life spoils instead?

With reality’s hourglass quaffing down the sand, the project’s sought-afters could find themselves tossing away their time in a virtual world. We can only hope the diligence and drive of the participants stands this test.

Could Today’s MMOG Addicts be the CEOs of Tomorrow?

A study conducted by Byron Reeves, Thomas W. Malone, and Tony O’Driscoll, published in Harvard Review, explains that they very well might be.

It almost sounds ridiculous. The business forerunners of tomorrow could potentially be hiding within the withdrawn online gaming populace. According to the authors, these Massively Multiplayer Online Games often craft perfect environments for leadership of a team. Players in many of these games must ban together under ‘guildmasters’ to slay dragons, climb mountains, and conquer planets much as business employees pool their skills under managers to overcome challenges and draw in mounds of moolah. The article explains that similarities are surprisingly very common between the office and fantasy-littered environments. To name a few: partakers are rewarded for their overcoming of obstacles and must learn to deal with failure in spades; leaders delegate jobs to others; and the trial of new strategies plays a vital role. All in all, these two very separated worlds do seem to share many likenesses. Looks like using World of Warcraft or any other online game to train managers may not be so farfetched after all.

Of course, differences exist, and the text acknowledges that. For one, the infrastructures of multi-national conglomerates tend to be a smidge more intricate than those of virtual, 40-man raiding groups. Failure and loss also amount to a lot more when dealt in reality. Obviously, no one ever grasped the gravity of losing millions of dollars by dying a few times within the walls of a virtual world. Still, the advantages of having lived in one are almost undeniable.

Though I’ve only read abstracts of the actual study itself I feel like I’ve grasped a sufficient amount of what the authors were looking at and who they sampled to gather their information. And being a former World of Warcraft-er myself, I can at least vouch for most of what the authors found on the virtual end. The similarities are definitely there. In fact, I pondered this very possibility on occassion while playing the game. I was placed in leadership positions once or twice in my hardcore ‘guild’ and found the position as stressful as all get-out. It’s not exactly a fun place to be in and struck me as more of a job than a means for leisure. But if stress levels can indicate the similarities between real and virtual leadership, then I can most definitely attest to this article’s value. Hopefully, I and those who played with me got as much out of the endeavor as this study anticipates.