This volume, like its predecessor The Social Life of Avatars: Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments [1], aims to provide a state-of-theart overview of research about how people interact in shared virtual environments (SVEs). Unlike the first volume, which covered a wide variety of topics, the essays collected here focus on two applications of SVEs; collaborativework and online gaming. These two areas are rapidly emerging as key drivers of SVE development. (Sometimes work applications are discussed under the label of collaborative virtual environments—or CVEs—butSVEis a broader termsince it includes online gaming and socializing, so SVE is more suitable here.).
