Sonja Bergsträsser

Virtual Context Based Services - Definition, Description and Utilization of Context in Virtual Worlds

The importance of virtual worlds is steadily growing both in general as well as from an economical perspective and they register increasing member counts. The virtual worlds observed in research most often nowadays are the very popular gaming worlds of Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs). They are among the most popular collaborative applications and are often referred to as cutting edge in cooperative online worlds. In virtual worlds of Multiplayer Online Games, millions of gamers from all over the world meet and establish social networks. Multiplayer Online Games are the core of a complex, networked, technical and social structure with interaction being a fundamental aspect. This includes cooperation, community, exchange and learning with specifically informal learning being of great importance. Mixed collaborative spaces, as they are provided by Multiplayer Online Games, are also suited to provide a common platform for other areas like interdisciplinary research.
The interaction of gamers is central in Multiplayer Online Games. Cooperation between gamers evolves and gamers create groups. Gamers and especially groups of gamers interact not only inside the virtual game worlds, but also outside of the game, in the community formed around a game.
This thesis is based on the observation that different information and functions are used in addition to the game. This happens because corresponding information and functions are not available inside the game and thus gamers need additional services. Around the game, a game environment is formed which is maintained by the community of the game, including different applications and artefacts. For example, the organization of groups partly takes place outside of the game, because most games do not support this sufficiently.
Services in the game environment are provided by different independent internet applications. In order to use such a service, switching from the game to the respective application is required, causing an interruption of the game experience. A comprehensive support of gamers inside virtual worlds contributes to an improvement of the game experience. Thus the goal of this thesis is to make a comprehensive user support in virtual worlds possible. This support will be enabled by the integration of external services into virtual worlds.
To achieve this goal, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of virtual worlds. Based on the findings of this analysis we transfer the concept of context, as it is known in the area of context aware services, to virtual worlds and introduce and define the concept of virtual context. Other results of our analysis include the development of a generic interaction model for virtual worlds and the definition of virtual context information based on virtual parameters. In order to capture virtual context and make it technically usable, we develop a description language for virtual context. Based on the findings of the analysis we introduce and define the concept of virtual context based services that allows for a situation-dependent user support in virtual worlds.
The connection and integration of the external services into virtual worlds is enabled through the realisation of an information exchange between virtual worlds and other internet applications. This information exchange is based on the concept of virtual context based services and enables the controlled forwarding of information from the virtual world to applications in the game environment. This information exchange includes the acquisition of virtual context information, its distribution to external services in use, as well as the integration of the resulting service data into the virtual world.
We conceptually develop, implement and evaluate a middleware-architecture for the provision of context based services and the realisation of the information exchange. The middleware comprises of components for the capturing of context information in virtual worlds, for processing and dissemination of context and for the provision of external services in virtual worlds.
The evaluation of the implemented middleware shows that the developed concept of virtual context based services is valid and that the developed middleware is a successful implementation of an architecture for the realisation of an information exchange based on context based services. With the definition of virtual context, its description and its utilization, based on the concept of virtual context based services, this thesis lays the foundations for situation-dependent user support in virtual worlds and the integration of external services into virtual worlds.