"The Distributed Cognition Model of Collective Storytelling Embedded in Empathetic Interactions on VR Game Platforms: A Case Study on “The City State of New Babbage” on Second Life" <conference> 2016 Annual Conference of the Korean Society of Cognitive Science Session : OP 04 Psychology II Time : 9:00 am ~ 10:00 am, Saturday 28th May 2016 Room : #304 Doosan Humanities Hall, Seoul National University Time table download : https://goo.gl/DqyQvf

1. The Distributed Cognition Model of Collective Storytelling
Embedded in Empathetic Interactions on VR Game Platforms
: A Case Study on “The City State of New Babbage” on Second Life
Heejung Kwon, Ph.D., Creative Innovation Research Center, Yonsei Business Research Institute
2016 Annual Conference of the Korean Society of Cognitive Science
Session OP 4 : Phycology II
Time : 9:00 am ~ 10:00 am, Saturday 28th May
Room : 304
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2Samsung S7 Edge Demo via Gear VR @ Mobile World Congress 2016
The New Spectators

3. Understand the Problem Space in 2016 Technologies
and Further
 What do you want to create?
 What are your assumptions?
 Will it achieve what you hope it will?
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4. Second Life Game Engine
 Technical Barriers
− High PC performance requirements
− Stiff learning curve
 The Unique Technological Contribution to VR Developments for
Creative Individuals and Communities
 Real Time Collaboration Environment
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5. Collective Storytelling on Second Life
Tales of New Babbage,
By Citizens of New Babbage
“ Welcome to New Babbage, a consensual hallucination of a Victorian-era
steampunk city in a time that never was.
Unlike most cities of the imagination, New Babbage exists within the virtual world
of Second Life. People “go” there on a daily basis to live out parallel lives as evil
geniuses, swashbuckling airship pilots, clever street urchins and builders of
wondrous machines.
The citizens of New Babbage also tell stories. In fact, storytelling amounts to a
national past time in our sooty cobbled streets. With this volume, the effort to
bring together the ever-changing swirl of tales that is New Babbage continues.”
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6. Collective Storytelling on Second Life
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7. New Babbage Map
 One of the biggest role playing
game communities in Second
Life, currently constructed a
habitat in 11 connected sims in
May 2016.
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8. Media Diffusion
 The New Babbage storytelling is not
limited in the inworld space.
 The role playing participants have
extended their communication
channels to various forms of CMC,
such as blogs, Facebooks, Twitters,
Youtube, and Flickrs.
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9. Virtual Living Lab
Theories and Investigations
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10. Previous Studies
 30 Days in Active Worlds –
Community, Design and Terrorism
in a Virtual World.
− How to reveal the emergent
interactions between participants, and
system dynamics as a whole.
− “Just unfolded by itself” approach
− Unobtrusive research technique to
investigate user behaviors and
technology mediated interaction in an
emerging technological environment.
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Figure 1. Group of avatars at Ground Zero of ‘30 Days in AW’
[Ref] Hudson-Smith, A. (2002). 30 Days in Active Worlds –
Community, Design and Terrorism in a Virtual World. In R.
Schroeder (Ed.), The Social Life of Avatars (pp. 77-89).
Springer.

11. Human Cognition
in and between the Two Worlds
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Figure 2. Map of the final days building in ’30 Days in AW’
The representation system hosted
the distributed cognition and co-
creation process among spatially
distant participants.

12. Living Lab
 A technical research methodology
for real-life complexities (Feurstein
and Schumacher, 2008)
 Living labs aim also to involve
citizens in innovation development
as a new element of the decision-
making process by connecting
research with the actual living
environment.
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Terms Practices
Spatial characteristics Real-life environment
Experimental environment
Main actors Producer
User
Process design Co-creation and co-production
Table 1. Living Lab Terminology

13. Research Questions
 What cognitive factors influence to user participation, and
enhancement of creativity?
− The role of a meta story : Steampunk culture as design fiction
− VR representation system
− Formation of a cognitive ecosystem
− Computer mediated creativity
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14. Theoretical Background
 Distributed Cognition Model (Zhang & Norman, 1994)
− 3 key components of DCM
− Embodiment of information that is embedded in representations of
interaction
− Coordination of enaction among embodied agents
− Ecological contributions to a cognitive ecosystem
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15. Research Model
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Embodiment of
Representation
Normative
Coordination
User
Participation
Steampunk as
Design Fiction
Cognitive
Ecosystem
H1
H2
H3
H4
H5

16. Single Holistic Case Study
 Unit of Analysis
− The New Babbage Second Life Role Playing Community
 Sample sizes
− Inworld Group : 1527
− Facebook Group : 156
− Flickr Group : 115
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17. Single Holistic Case Study
 Steampunk as Design Fiction (Tanenbaum, CHI 2012)
− A subgenre of science fiction literature that traces its roots back to the
early science fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells (Gross, 2007).
− The most common expression of Steampunk involves imagining a
world in which steam power rather than the internal combustion engine
became the dominant form of energy.
− Typically, Steampunk fiction and design evokes an alternate history
that weds aspects of the modern day, such as computation, to
elements of Victorian aesthetics, materials and culture.
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18. Triangulation
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Inworld
Community
Flickr
Community
Facebook
Community
Object Inspection
Frequency DataVisual Data

19. Results
 The New Babbage inworld interactions
− VR mediated Multi-agent system
− Avatars
− Virtual Artifacts
− Locations
− The mediation of Steampunk culture
− Mundane SL interaction vs. Core creator group interaction
− Engagement of art creators
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20. Conclusions
 The study conducted a single holistic case study on “the city state of New
Babbage” to investigate the empathetic interactions among collective
storytellers in VR environments. The research focused on the cultural framework
encompassing social scenarios of system use (Mantovani, 1996)
 The Steampunk culture that defines the identity of role playing contexts, and
visual systems, is proved to be a successful moderator to the direct effects of
artifact representation, and coordination rules of social interaction to a cognitive
ecosystem, the central mechanism of collective storytelling.
 The cognitive ecosystem gives rise to dedicated user participations that lead
them to visit and join online activities on daily basis.
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At the Time of Computers as Theatre
by Spectators Themselves

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