Mahay’s charges spend their in-world time on the small island known as Brigadoon, a place created for sufferers of autism and Asperger’s syndrome to try out the social interactions that are so hard for them in the real world.

As a massively multiplayer online game, many people think of Second Life as little more than a virtual playground. But an increasing number of people and organizations are employing the game in applications that are useful for far more than entertainment.

Second Life was crafted as an open-ended environment that would allow players to fly, drive fantastical vehicles, dress up in outlandish outfits and build just about anything they could imagine. The game’s developers at San Francisco’s Linden Lab, however, didn’t expect it to be used as a way for business school students to test entrepreneurial talents or for abused children to rediscover social skills.

According to a woman who goes by the in-world name of Gwyneth Llewelyn, a British organization called ARCI is using Second Life to help abused children in Portuguese safe houses by bringing them into the game and then working on socialization, collaboration, team building, computer skills and more.

“They easily get in touch with people that they don’t personally know,” said Llewelyn, explaining how the children, who are forced into hiding to get away from abusive parents, benefit from the game. “This means we seem to break a barrier of socializing.”

Another project, called Second Future, was undertaken by nine adults with cerebral palsy, and seeks to provide a forum in which they can share in the everyday personal interactions that most people take for granted. The group of nine, who share a single Second Life avatar known as Wilde Cunningham, get to experience being around other people without being judged.

“Many of the real-world challenges are bypassed in Second Life,” said Jean-Marie Mahay, who works with the nine at an adult day-care center in Mattapan, Massachusetts. “Fewer folks have a problem hanging out with them, which is quite the opposite in real life. Also, due to their speech challenges, many would need help understanding them in real life, but in Second Life, I just type what they say and do what they want.”

Added Mahay, “They felt stigmatized by their disabilities, (which) kept them from the normal social integration we take for granted. Second Life removes both of these things.”

Mahay’s charges spend their in-world time on the small island known as Brigadoon, a place created for sufferers of autism and Asperger’s syndrome to try out the social interactions that are so hard for them in the real world.

To the game’s founder, Philip Rosedale, such uses are validation of his desire to create a virtual world in which people of all kinds can find something meaningful to do.

“The generalized uses of the system are really quite powerful,” said Rosedale. “The high degree of emotional and personal presence you get in Second Life enables things like you get in Brigadoon, a simulation of what it’s like to be in the presence of another human being.”

Kevin Werbach, an assistant professor of legal studies at the Wharton School, said he was fascinated by the approach Second Life‘s developers took “in terms of creating a world that has no objective in the sense of most games, other than interacting with people.”

Werbach is coordinating a program for the forthcoming Supernova conference on emerging technologies and business implications that will immerse Wharton students and conference attendees in Second Life. There, they will start businesses, advise some already in existence and compete to see who is most successful.

Along with many other massively multiplayer online games, known as MMOs, Second Life offers players the ability to start in-world businesses selling things like custom clothing, vehicles, housing and more. But where Second Life separates itself from other MMOs is in the freedom to create and have open-ended socialization that it gives its members, who pay a one-time fee of $10.

In Second Life, there are no defined limits to the ways players can interact. They can communicate and socialize through normal chatting or instant messaging, or in clubs or associations.

Other MMOs, such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest and Ultima Online, to name a few, dwarf Second Life‘s 25,000 users. Still, many industry observers feel Second Life offers the best platform for mixing social interaction, play and the opportunity to tackle serious issues.

“There isn’t really another platform that is so free of gaming lore,” said Ed Castronova, a professor at the University of Indiana and an expert on MMOs. “In Second Life you can make anything.”

Castronova cited Second Life‘s flexibility as the main reason people are using the game for serious purposes.

Werbach isn’t the only business school professor employing Second Life. Elon University in North Carolina also plans to take students into the game as a way of building and testing entrepreneurial skills. This comes on the heels of Linden Lab’s efforts to make the game attractive to all kinds of schools as a learning environment.

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The island is called “Brigadoon,” but unlike its literary namesake, this place is real — or real enough in a 21st century way. “Brigadoon” belongs to a public virtual world called “Second Life,” a popular online 3-D environment frequented by tens of thousands of users.

Game helps people with Asperger’s practice socializing,

By Tom Loftus
Columnist
MSNBC
Updated: 6:59 a.m. ET Feb. 25, 2005

If home is where the heart is, then home for a dozen people with Asperger Syndrome could be a 16-acre island blessed with lush gardens and rolling green hills.

The island is called “Brigadoon,” but unlike its literary namesake, this place is real — or real enough in a 21st century way. “Brigadoon” belongs to a public virtual world called “Second Life,” a popular online 3-D environment frequented by tens of thousands of users.

“Brigadoon” is a real-world experiment in social skills made virtual, a private enclave limited to a select mixture of caregivers and individuals with Asperger Syndrome, a higher functioning form of autism. The inhabitants, or “Dooners” as they call themselves, enjoy the same privileges as those in the more public arenas of “Second Life.” They are free to create their own digital representations of themselves, called “avatars,” build virtual houses and seek out friends. And, most importantly, they are free to create a “second life” with a level of social interaction that, for reasons of their condition, has been hard to come by in their real lives.

Is gaming a good thing?
Talk of video gaming can set off feelings of unease among parents — no one wants a kid to be glued to a screen for hours on end. But the stakes for children with Asperger’s and other autism spectrum disorders — who have difficulties with social interaction — tend to be higher.

At issue is the importance of developing enriching personal relationships and becoming a part of society. While video games can be educational and entertaining, their reputation as a solitary activity can present an impediment to progress for people with autistic disorders by limiting their exposure to social situations.

Researchers are also concerned that playing video games could simply become one of the many repetitive activities that an affected child engages in.

“One feature that highlights the risk of video games is that the behavior of children with autism can be repetitive. They like sameness and routine,” says Sally Ozonoff, an associate professor of psychiatry at the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis. This preference for repetition and familiarity often limits their experiences and prevents them from learning how to adapt to new situations.

But if used correctly, video game technology could be beneficial. “Children with autism have a natural inclination to video games and television,” Ozonoff adds. “The goal is to try to exploit that inclination therapeutically.”

New technology in the works
Researchers around the world are now attempting to do just that. At the University of Victoria in British Columbia, cognitive psychologist James Tanaka is using a custom-built game called “Let’s Face It!” to teach facial recognition. Actually a suite of mini-games, the program uses photos, sounds and positive feedback as part of a scoring system to encourage kids with autism to learn.

“You can have kids do an exercise, but they usually don’t have the richness or the continuity [of the video game],” says Tanaka.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Edinburgh and Glasgow Caledonian University are creating video games to study cognitive skills in children with autism using a revolutionary interface: gesture recognition software that registers the players’ movements and transfers them to the screen.

“From my work, I know that a lot of children [with autism] have production skills we never would expect,” says Maggie McGonigle, leader of the project and an expert on non-verbal communication. “So I’m hoping that language-like skills are locked up in their brain even if they can’t speak.”

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