The authors perspective must be stated for in the context of this work, in order to be transparent and stimulate a balanced debate around the development of Virtual Worlds.

I used to work for a publisher of a Virtual World called Sulake, which produces Habbo Hotel (www.habbo.co.uk) a Virtual World for teenagers. This is used as the main example throughout. Within this context I also take a Marketing perspective as the Marketing Manager for the company. This is reflected in the Revenue section, which looks at how Virtual Worlds can generate revenue for the producer. However the overall focus of this site is to investigate how people consume Virtual Worlds and what the implications of their continued integration with our society might be.