I'm a bit wary about virtual worlds. Over the festive season, I spent a few hours playing online poker and it reminded me that: (a) I'm not a very good poker player & (b) You don't necessarily want a faithful reproduction of the real world in cyberspace.
Lets focus on issue (b) for now. When you play online, you get a little avatar (in my case, a hillbilly with a plaid shirt and a trucker's cap). However my avatar did not exhibit any shaking, sweating or indeed any behaviour to find him in Mike Caro's book of poker tells. And that suited me just fine. The basic transfer of information in poker is through betting - the amount bet and the speed with which that bet is placed..
Would I want an avatar that gave too much away?
The other point to make is that while online poker is conceptually the same as playing in room full of sweating card sharks, they are different experiences. Not least in the "tells" department.
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Matt, I watched an Eric Bana film last night that was all about Poker tournaments (called "Lucky You").
It's not worth watching so I can spoil the ending - the guy who wins the world championship in Vegas was an internet champion making his face-to-face debut. Before that he'd only played online.
OK so that was a Hollywood tale, but I wonder what the stats are like on such players.
With virtual worlds there's a lot made about the ability (or not) to pick up on the subconscious actions people make. Does a lack of actions make for a less rich, less valuable experience, or should that not be the aim of software developers (because it's going to be pretty difficult to make it really realistic)?
Also, a related story today on SMH.com about e-learning through sites such as Second Life.
Hello Alex,
Internet champions do make it into the face-to-face world - Chris Moneymaker is a notable example. However most tournament players will have some face-to-face poker experience before they become successful.
Experienced poker players make the point that the internet allows you to experience playing many more hands at a lower risk than in real life. You get a feel for the skills of betting - and the betting behaviours of others. This is probably the single biggest skill to develop in poker.
What you don't get is all the other stuff involved with live poker. If you were to put a player with internet-only experience in a real-life tournament with opponents with real-world experience then the internet-only guy is at a disadvantage. What made Moneymaker's success so iconic was its unusual nature and his appeal to this new, growing audience of internet poker players ("You there on the end of your modem could be Chris Moneymaker too")
So the lessons for designers of online experiences are:
- Virtual worlds cannot recreate all of the real world but they can allow people to play with simulations of parts of it - e.g. betting in poker. This is a good thing.
- Do not fall into the trap of thinking your virtual world is equivalent to the real world experience. Understand where the experiential gaps are.
- Use the virtual world as part of a blended learning solution involving other pedagogic techniques (i.e. play poker online AND read some books AND go along to some low-cost real-world tournaments AND get coaching from a skilled player).
Or: See the opportunity but don't believe the hype.
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