Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA), a UK-based management consulting firm, plans to run what it terms a "Virtual Working trial in Cyberspace involving leaders from some of the leading companies in the world" this coming February. The experiment will be lead by two faculty members from the University of Portsmouth with backgrounds in in-game learning and collaborative traditions. Andrew Mawson, managing director of AWA, explained how it will work:

AWA?s psychologists will record and analyse the behaviours exhibited by participants and their avatars during the trial and its conclusion we will establish participants? perceptions of the experience, their views on the usefulness of the virtual environments and their ideas on applications where the technology could be used within their organisations.

Along with Microsoft the announcement of the project names financial companies Merrill Lynch, Ernst and Young, and others with "large white collar worker populations" as participants.

While the study says a lot about the versatility of virtual worlds such as Home, it could be argued that it only helps reinforce the argument that the service stands more as supplemental than essential to the core gaming experience on the PS3. Microsoft being a part of this study draws into focus some of the differences between Home and Live. While Live's structure wouldn't be conducive to this sort of business application, it excels at getting gamers together to play online. Not that the study is something Sony is doing to promote Home, but it would be welcome to report on more gaming applications of the service instead of another story that emphasizes the "Second Life on a console" tag.

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