Virtual Worlds

http://www.moove.com/
It was all Chinese when the teacher mentioned something about second life and avatars the other day in class. I looked to the student next to me with the most confused look on my face. If thought to myself, "I'm really going to have to get to the bottom of these foreign topics!" During my research, I found many virtual worlds and also their reviews through a specific website, www.virtualworldsreview.com. It had a list of the most popular virtual worlds, their annual fee, and a brief summary of what users would find when entering. I stumbled across an interesting one called moove.com. What was so interesting about it was that it was more like a dating website. Avatars, user-designed virtual characters can meet special friends. Users can register with limited access for free or gold membership for $59 a month. I decided to register to see how this whole thing worked. When I registered, I had to download software so that I could design a virtual house and also my virtual persona. On the homepage, there is just tons of hyperlinks which can be so confusing. It took me about ten minutes to find how to pick a character for myself before I gave up. While browsing through the website, I found many stores with different character outfits, hairstyles, and even furniture for your house. All these items cost money but it is in a currency call "community money." Users are automatically given $1100 in community money when joining. I looked through a couple of profiles which appeared to be a mix between a facebook page and a my space page. Some of the information that I found, which was all animated, were pictures of fairies, sorcerers, mystical looking flowers, their friends, and all types of virtual gifts they have received from their friends. It happened to be that two of the profiles that I found were from a husband and wife. What I wondered was if they were married in this virtual world or if it was in real life. A concern that I have is that how can the age of the users be monitored because I could have faked my age very easily when registering. This is not a very cute website for minors. Although they look animated, some of the themes are quite adult.