Second Life: game, simulator, or serious game?

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of Second Life as a platform for physical simulations and microworlds, analyzing its features and categorizing it within simulation and gaming frameworks.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of Second Life's capabilities as a flexible environment for simulations and microworlds, comparing it to traditional simulators and categorizing it accordingly.

Findings

Second Life functions as a large, sophisticated Earthlike world for simulations.

It is a viable and flexible platform for microworlds and simulations.

SL fits best into the category of a simulation platform with gaming elements.

Abstract

This article reports on an exploratory case study conducted to examine the viability of Second Life (SL) as an environment for physical simulations and microworlds. It begins by discussing specific features of the SL environment relevant to its use as a support for microworlds and simulations as well as a few differences found between SL and traditional simulators such as Modellus, along with their implications to simulations, as a support for subsequent analysis. Afterwards, we will use Narayanasamy et al. and Johnston and Whitehead criteria to analyze the SL environment and determine into which of training simulators, games, simulation games, or serious games categories SL fits best. We conclude that SL shows itself as a huge and sophisticated simulator of an entire Earthlike world used by thousands of users to simulate real life in some sense and a viable and flexible platform for microworlds and simulations.