Enhancing trustability in MMOGs environments

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs; e.g., World of Warcraft), virtual worlds (VW; e.g., Second Life), social networks (e.g., Facebook) strongly demand for more autonomic, security, and trust mechanisms in a way similar to humans do in the real life world. As known, this is a difficult matter because trusting in humans and organizations depends on the perception and experience of each individual, which is difficult to quantify or measure. In fact, these societal environments lack trust mechanisms similar to those involved in humans-to-human interactions. Besides, interactions mediated by compute devices are constantly evolving, requiring trust mechanisms that keep the pace with the developments and assess risk situations. In VW/MMOGs, it is widely recognized that users develop trust relationships from their in-world interactions with others. However, these trust relationships end up not being represented in the data structures (or databases) of such virtual worlds, though they sometimes appear associated to reputation and recommendation systems. In addition, as far as we know, the user is not provided with a personal trust tool to sustain his/her decision making while he/she interacts with other users in the virtual or game world. In order to solve this problem, as well as those mentioned above, we propose herein a formal representation of these personal trust relationships, which are based on avataravatar interactions. The leading idea is to provide each avatar-impersonated player with a personal trust tool that follows a distributed trust model, i.e., the trust data is distributed over the societal network of a given VW/MMOG. Representing, manipulating, and inferring trust from the user/player point of view certainly is a grand challenge. When someone meets an unknown individual, the question is “Can I trust him/her or not?”. It is clear that this requires the user to have access to a representation of trust about others, but, unless we are using an open source VW/MMOG, it is difficult —not to say unfeasible— to get access to such data. Even, in an open source system, a number of users may refuse to pass information about its friends, acquaintances, or others. Putting together its own data and gathered data obtained from others, the avatar-impersonated player should be able to come across a trust result about its current trustee. For the trust assessment method used in this thesis, we use subjective logic operators and graph search algorithms to undertake such trust inference about the trustee. The proposed trust inference system has been validated using a number of OpenSimulator (opensimulator.org) scenarios, which showed an accuracy increase in evaluating trustability of avatars. Summing up, our proposal aims thus to introduce a trust theory for virtual worlds, its trust assessment metrics (e.g., subjective logic) and trust discovery methods (e.g., graph search methods), on an individual basis, rather than based on usual centralized reputation systems. In particular, and unlike other trust discovery methods, our methods run at interactive rates.MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games, como por exemplo, World of Warcraft), mundos virtuais (VW, como por exemplo, o Second Life) e redes sociais (como por exemplo, Facebook) necessitam de mecanismos de confiança mais autónomos, capazes de assegurar a segurança e a confiança de uma forma semelhante à que os seres humanos utilizam na vida real. Como se sabe, esta não é uma questão fácil. Porque confiar em seres humanos e ou organizações depende da percepção e da experiência de cada indivíduo, o que é difícil de quantificar ou medir à partida. Na verdade, esses ambientes sociais carecem dos mecanismos de confiança presentes em interacções humanas presenciais. Além disso, as interacções mediadas por dispositivos computacionais estão em constante evolução, necessitando de mecanismos de confiança adequados ao ritmo da evolução para avaliar situações de risco. Em VW/MMOGs, é amplamente reconhecido que os utilizadores desenvolvem relações de confiança a partir das suas interacções no mundo com outros. No entanto, essas relações de confiança acabam por não ser representadas nas estruturas de dados (ou bases de dados) do VW/MMOG específico, embora às vezes apareçam associados à reputação e a sistemas de reputação. Além disso, tanto quanto sabemos, ao utilizador não lhe é facultado nenhum mecanismo que suporte uma ferramenta de confiança individual para sustentar o seu processo de tomada de decisão, enquanto ele interage com outros utilizadores no mundo virtual ou jogo. A fim de resolver este problema, bem como os mencionados acima, propomos nesta tese uma representação formal para essas relações de confiança pessoal, baseada em interacções avatar-avatar. A ideia principal é fornecer a cada jogador representado por um avatar uma ferramenta de confiança pessoal que segue um modelo de confiança distribuída, ou seja, os dados de confiança são distribuídos através da rede social de um determinado VW/MMOG. Representar, manipular e inferir a confiança do ponto de utilizador/jogador, é certamente um grande desafio. Quando alguém encontra um indivíduo desconhecido, a pergunta é “Posso confiar ou não nele?”. É claro que isto requer que o utilizador tenha acesso a uma representação de confiança sobre os outros, mas, a menos que possamos usar uma plataforma VW/MMOG de código aberto, é difícil — para não dizer impossível — obter acesso aos dados gerados pelos utilizadores. Mesmo em sistemas de código aberto, um número de utilizadores pode recusar partilhar informações sobre seus amigos, conhecidos, ou sobre outros. Ao juntar seus próprios dados com os dados obtidos de outros, o utilizador/jogador representado por um avatar deve ser capaz de produzir uma avaliação de confiança sobre o utilizador/jogador com o qual se encontra a interagir. Relativamente ao método de avaliação de confiança empregue nesta tese, utilizamos lógica subjectiva para a representação da confiança, e também operadores lógicos da lógica subjectiva juntamente com algoritmos de procura em grafos para empreender o processo de inferência da confiança relativamente a outro utilizador. O sistema de inferência de confiança proposto foi validado através de um número de cenários Open-Simulator (opensimulator.org), que mostrou um aumento na precisão na avaliação da confiança de avatares. Resumindo, a nossa proposta visa, assim, introduzir uma teoria de confiança para mundos virtuais, conjuntamente com métricas de avaliação de confiança (por exemplo, a lógica subjectiva) e em métodos de procura de caminhos de confiança (com por exemplo, através de métodos de pesquisa em grafos), partindo de uma base individual, em vez de se basear em sistemas habituais de reputação centralizados. Em particular, e ao contrário de outros métodos de determinação do grau de confiança, os nossos métodos são executados em tempo real

ROLE OF COGNITIVE ABSORPTION AND TRUST FOR COLLABORATION IN VIRTUAL WORLD

Virtual worlds (VWs) have paved a new and important channel for user collaboration and information sharing. Businesses are now considering using VWs as innovative means for collaboration and information sharing among its organizational members. Despite the huge potential of VWs for harnessing and increasing the flow of ideas among organizations, research on the subject is rather sparse. Drawing on the social cognitive theory, we re-specify the concept of cognitive absorption (CA) in the context of VWs by theorizing environmental factors in addition to the individual factors as antecedents of CA. Further, by integrating CA with ‘trust’ we develop a VW usage model. We test the specified model with data collected from 197 VW users in Singapore. Results display the important roles that both CA and ‘trust’ play in the usage of VW. Further, through a post-hoc analysis we demonstrate the imperative need for considering both CA and ‘trust’, together in the proposed VW usage model. The study also delineates a set of implications for research and practice

EXPÉRIMENTATIONS VIRTUELLES: VIE ARTIFICIELLE POUR LA GÉNÉRATION DE FORMES ET DE COMPORTEMENT

National audienceCet article présente une sélection de travaux réalisés par l'équipe VORTEX de l'IRIT depuis 1993 dans les domaines de la génération automatique de formes et de comportements. Nous montrons ici la spécificité de ces travaux utilisant des techniques originales issues de la vie artificielle afin de proposer un nouveau type d'interaction entre l'utilisateur et l'environnement de simulation

Content Management for the Live Music Industry in Virtual Worlds: Challenges and Opportunities

International audienceThe real-world music industry is undergoing a transition away from the retailing and distribution of fixed objects (records, files) to the consumption of live,interactive events (concerts, happenings). This development is paralleled with the recent flourishing of live music in virtual worlds, which in many ways could become the epitome of its real-world counterpart: for the artists, virtual concerts are cheap and easy to organize, and can therefore be a viable alternative to performing in the real world; for the music promoter and marketer, virtual concert attendance can be traced and analyzed more easily than in the real world; for the virtual concertgoer, attending concerts that are happening a (virtual) world away is possible with a single click. Taking insights from both a survey among the Second-Life music practitioners and from our own prototype of a live music recommendation system built on top of Second-Life, this article shows that the technical infrastructure of current virtual worlds is not well-suited to the development of the content management tools needed to support this opportunity. We propose several new ways to address these problems, and advocate for their recognition both by the artistic and the technical community

A Serious Games Development Environment

Un ambiente per lo sviluppo di Serious Game

Exploring mixed reality in distributed collaborative learning environments

Society is moving rapidly towards a world, where technology enables people to exist in a blend of physical and virtual realities. In education, this vision involves technologies ranging from smart classrooms to e-learning, creating greater opportunities for distance learners, bringing the potential to change the fundamental nature of universities. However, to date, most online educational platforms have focused on conveying information rather than supporting collaborative physical activities which are common in university science and engineering laboratories. Moreover, even when online laboratory support is considered, such systems tend to be confined to the use of simulations or pre-recorded videos. The lack of support for online collaborative physical laboratory activities, is a serious shortcoming for distance learners and a significant challenge to educators and researchers. In working towards a solution to this challenge, this thesis presents an innovative mixed-reality framework (computational model, conceptual architecture and proof-of-concept implementation) that enables geographically dispersed learners to perform co-creative teamwork using a computer-based prototype comprising hardware and software components. Contributions from this work include a novel distributed computational model for synchronising physical objects and their 3D virtual representations, expanding the dual-reality paradigm from single linked pairs to complex groupings, addressing the challenge of interconnecting geographically dispersed environments; and the creation of a computational paradigm that blends a model of distributed learning objects with a constructionist pedagogical model, to produce a solution for distributed mixed-reality laboratories. By way of evidence to support the research findings, this thesis reports on evaluations performed with students from eight different universities in six countries, namely China, Malaysia, Mexico, UAE, USA and UK; providing an important insight to the role of social interactions in distance learning, and demonstrating that the inclusion of a physical component made a positive difference to students’ learning experience, supporting the use of cross-reality objects in educational activities

Imposing Regulation on Advanced Algorithms

This book discusses the necessity and perhaps urgency for the regulation of algorithms on which new technologies rely; technologies that have the potential to re-shape human societies. From commerce and farming to medical care and education, it is difficult to find any aspect of our lives that will not be affected by these emerging technologies. At the same time, artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, cognitive computing, blockchain, virtual reality and augmented reality, belong to the fields most likely to affect law and, in particular, administrative law. The book examines universally applicable patterns in administrative decisions and judicial rulings. First, similarities and divergence in behavior among the different cases are identified by analyzing parameters ranging from geographical location and administrative decisions to judicial reasoning and legal basis. As it turns out, in several of the cases presented, sources of general law, such as competition or labor law, are invoked as a legal basis, due to the lack of current specialized legislation. This book also investigates the role and significance of national and indeed supranational regulatory bodies for advanced algorithms and considers ENISA, an EU agency that focuses on network and information security, as an interesting candidate for a European regulator of advanced algorithms. Lastly, it discusses the involvement of representative institutions in algorithmic regulation.Comment: XXI, 82 pages, 5 figures. Cham: Springe

Using 3D virtual worlds in new educational contexts: IT College in OpenSim

Mestrado em Comunicação MultimédiaAs instituições europeias de Ensino Superior, bem como cada agente envolvido nos processos formais de aprendizagem do Ensino Superior, estão actualmente a experimentar profundas mudanças sob as directivas do Processo de Bolonha. Ao mesmo tempo, as instituições recebem uma nova geração de estudantes, com fortes competências tecnológicas, sendo necessário a estas a compreensão de quais as ferramentas a integrar no currículo educacional, de forma a corresponder às necessidades e expectativas dos seus estudantes. Esta reforma educativa toma lugar enquanto a World Wide Web evolui para a “Web 2.0”: um conjunto de ferramentas tecnológicas e serviços impregnados de princípios como a colaboração, a faceta social e a centralização no utilizador. E novas tendências na Web começam a aparecer, através de paradigmas como os Mundos Virtuais 3D. Esta investigação procura primeiramente compreender como desenhar e construir espaços e ferramentas dentro do Mundo Virtual 3D OpenSim que sejam adequadas às novas realidades educativas e sociais; e adicionalmente, procura que este conhecimento seja usado na criação de uma presença no OpenSim para o Eesti Infotehnoloogia Kolledž, uma instituição de Ensino Superior estoniana. As características do IT Kolledž serão obviamente consideradas durante o processo de investigação. ABSTRACT: European Higher Education institutions, as well as every individual involved in higher education formal learning processes, are currently undergoing profound changes under the guidelines of the Bologna Process. Simultaneously, institutions face a new wave of technological-savvy students and are demanded to understand which tools to integrate in educational curricula in order to adapt to their expectations and needs. This whole educational reform takes place while the World Wide Web evolves into "Web 2.0": a set of technological tools and services impregnated with collaborative, social and user-centered attitudes. And new Web tendencies start to unfold, comprising paradigms such as Virtual 3D Worlds. This research aims firstly to understand how to design and build spaces and tools inside 3D virtual world OpenSim that will be adequate in new educational and social realities; and secondly, to use this knowledge to create an OpenSim presence for Eesti Infotehnoloogia Kolledž, an Estonian higher education institution. IT Kolledž's characteristics will be obviously considered during the research process