Multiple Perspective Analysis On Virtual Worlds’ Integration

The Internet started from connecting regional universities since1969and has left its footprint in every corner of the world. It changes people’s way of production and way of living.With the development of information technology, virtual world has become important part of people’s life.This research explores virtual world’s development from different perspectives and points out this study of virtual world’s convergence.After the observation and classification of virtual world’s convergence, the research analysis the characteristic and general rule for it, which is not only every two types of the virtual worlds are embarking on a road of "social+3D","social+electronic business" or "3D+electronic business", but also the three types are evolving into one featured by " social+3D+electronic business".Although Virtual world’s convergence is still on its junior stage, it will extend in terms of scope and depth on its senior stage. On that certain stage virtual space will connect with reality more and more in different ways and serve the reality better. Because virtual world’s convergence has only ten years’history, it is a relatively new concept and has much to probe into. Relevant researches are either from business perspective, or from the technological perspective. These existing researches fails to address the issue under a mature theoretical framework.Virtual world’s convergence is a systemic project, it involves many aspects. Not only technology environment, resource environment, industry environment, policy environment are its related issues, product development, maintenance, operation are also the issues wee need to considerate. As a result, the study and analysis requires different perspectives and levels.There are some problems that need to be addressed in virtual world’s convergence. For example, the integration path, the adjustment of virtual world’s industry chain, the evaluation of a new kind of virtual world product, distribution of interest. Solving these problems will not only move virtual space up to a better direction but also promote the economic development of our real world. The mechanism of virtual space will enrich the theoretical framework that may provide guidance to its practice.This paper discusses the integration path, the restructure of the industry chain, evaluation of the integrated products and the supervision of senior integration phase from the perspective of Internet integration, industry integration, product integration and integration of virtual space and reality. As for the path interaction, the Actor Network Theory is introduced to discuss the assimilation and the compromise of all participants in the interaction. As for the restructure of the industry chain, the Game Theory is introduced to discuss the symbiosis and the competition in upstream and downstream. Here also discusses how traditional economic groups can evolve into new integrated economic groups, how encouragement and restriction policies play their roles as well as the coupling mechanism between enterprises in upstream and downstream of the value chain. As for evaluation of the integrated products, Presence of virtual space is introduced to discuss the construction of the user experience evaluation system. As for the supervision of senior integration phase, the focus is on new environment and new challenges framing the senior integration phase. It also proposes supervision advises to the government.This paper is innovative in the following ways:First, it discusses three types of virtual space and the concept of virtual space integration. It proposes a standard to divide the junior and senior phase of integration. It relies on statistics to reveal the junior integration and constructs a research framework of integration from the perspective of Internet integration, industry integration, product integration and integration of virtual space and reality.Second, it probes into the integration path based on Internet integration and thinks that the integration path falls into four categories, namely,"integration path started by social virtual space operators","integration path started by3D virtual space operators","integration path started by electronic business virtual space operators" and "integration path started by3D providers". Actor Network is used to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the four integration paths. This paper concludes that the third category is the best for integration and the fourth category, the worst.Third, it addresses the restructure of the industry chain based on industry integration. It reveals that enterprises in the upstream and downstream are interacted with each other as well as in competition. This paper constructs a Game model and works out the development of the enterprise group in the upstream, that is, when the economic group reaches a certain scale, many more traditional enterprise will join in the convergence. Based on the Game model, positive policy and negative restriction policy may do good to the symbiosis of enterprises, which will accelerate the integration.Fourth, it focuses on the evaluation of the integrated products based on products integration. Following the Presence of virtual space, it constructs an integrated user experience evaluation system that takes the media into consideration. There are4first-grade indexes and12second-grade indexes. It calculates the index weight by AHP, puts it into a real situation and points out the problems of the virtual space products.Fifth, it studies the supervision of senior integration phase based on the integration between the virtual space and the reality. The new senior integration phase is discussed from three aspects:service, currency and marketing. It concludes that virtual space will pose challenges to the Internet safety, economic environment, political environment, legal environment as well as social environment. It proposes three coordinated supervision modes that should be conducted by government, virtual space operators and users. It suggests the government to serve as the guidance and introduces operators and users to the governance of the virtual space. This sheds some light on future supervision.