The fictional virtual world OASIS, much like the real-life virtual world Second Life, doesn’t have many limitations as far as what can be created and used within the world, or how that world can be used (e.g. for educational purposes). Aside from not being allowed to monetize from using copyrighted materials and IPs, there is no limit to what a user can create and host within the virtual world as long as they know what they’re doing.
In the fictional and predictive, sci-fi novel Ready Player One, the main character, Wade Watts, uses OASIS to attend classes in his virtual high school, which has instructors who also use avatars to teach their students. The schools within OASIS are copy-pasted to look almost identical to each other in the way that they are structured and how they function, but labeled by number to differentiate them from all the others. All schools also have a strict code on what a student’s avatar can look like, and each student’s name is displayed above their avatar rather than their username. While it makes things easy to use and keeps things from being too different from each other (not that being different is bad, but sometimes it’s easier to learn to navigate different buildings if most of them look the same), I think it lacks creativity and doesn’t fully allow the users to utilize the things that they can use to their advantage.
Of course, in a school setting, you would want to try and keep things as school-appropriate as possible without the total limitation on someone’s creativity. I’d like to think that, for a virtual college I would like to go to, I would want there to be an area that simulates not a building, but a forestry landscape for people to escape to and relax or even study. I know, in the novel, there are ways of simulating an area like that in the classroom, but it would be nice to also have a dedicated space where it’s reminiscent of nature, and not just a temporary image that people can close out of once the lesson is over.
If I were to add anything to redesign a college building inside of our version of the OASIS, I think it would be nice to take inspiration from Arcane and the way they designed Piltover, which is the industrial city home to the invention of Hextech. Their buildings are very much inspired by art deco, but have an industrial twist to their designs. I like to imagine, in a world that is not as desolate and sad as the one in Ready Player One, and in a world where things like this were easily more accessible and safe for people to use, it would be nice to have a nice form of escapism for people, or a place reminiscent of an artistic area in the real-world that might be too expensive for people to travel to. Something that isn’t entirely standard in the virtual schooling world, and also something that is unique enough that makes people want to take inspiration as well.
“Melbourne Art Deco House” by colros is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
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