A Scoping Review of Empirical Studies in Gather.town

Abstract

There is an increasing interest for people to meet and interact in virtual online environments, including Gather.Town, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-pandemic world. We present a scoping review of 11 empirical studies in Gather.town—a 2D Metaverse using a game-like interface with video-chat in which people can create their own virtual spaces and act as avatars to interact with each other for various purposes. To identify knowledge gaps, we summarized the included articles in terms of their application contexts, research issues, research methods, and key findings. We found that most of them were conducted in educational settings with a focus on students’ learning experiences and perceptions. The findings of the reviewed studies generally suggested that the use of Gather.town benefited users’ engagement. However, the available evidence was mostly based on short interventions (e.g., one session) and self-reported measures (e.g., surveys and interviews). This review concluded by presenting several research gaps for future research (e.g., studies with a longer duration and using more objective measurements of learning achievement and work results).