Sustainable Social Development and User Experience in EU Framework: Metaverse Gaming as ‘Third Space’ of Communication and Interaction

Authors

  • Vasileios Bokolas Scientific director, XENIOS POLIS, Greece, Neapolis University, Pafos-Cyprus
  • Stavros Kaperonis University of Social and Political Sciences, Department of Communication, Media and Culture, Greece
  • Efstathia (Efi) Ntrouva Department of International Relations and European Union, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Greece

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13052/spee1048-5236.4448

Keywords:

Social development, digital transformation, EU, user, space

Abstract

Based on the principles of sustainable social development, this study examines the dynamic relationship that develops between the multiple dimensions of the evolving interplatform digital space and (the experience of) citizens and online users. The current, ‘big technology’ set of the – so called – metaverse is transforming all areas of human activity by creating ‘third spaces’ of communication, entertainment and wider connection between people and services/products provided. These digital spaces in turn are gradually forming ‘virtual cities’, which have (or plan to have) their own formative practices, spheres of action, rights, obligations and governance structures. Digital, online games are the harbingers of this new emerging situation. Literary data – with references from the context of the American and especially the European paradigm – outline the reality of so-called metaverse gaming and the development of dynamic virtual networks, highlighting their potential and noting obstacles and relevant concerns. The present study searches for the sustainable development dynamics of the field through a content analysis of the European Union databases concerning the funding of relevant programmes, with a focus on Southern European countries (Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Portugal).

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Vasileios Bokolas, Scientific director, XENIOS POLIS, Greece, Neapolis University, Pafos-Cyprus

Vassilis Bokolas research interests are concentrated in cultural and educational research with a special emphasis on the dimension of digital media and especially digital games (PhD 2007, University of Crete, EU scholarship/ Post-doc 2019, AUTH/ PhD 2025, Panteion University). Currently, he is the director of research institution, “XENIOS POLIS”. He is responsible for the application, undertaking and implementation of several European funded research projects. Alongside the above, in recent years he has been teaching at Neapolis University of Paphos (Cyprus) and at the Athens College. He has taught at AUTH, the University of Crete and the A.S.PAI.T.E. Furthermore, has collaborated with the Cyprus University of Technology, the Harokopeio University of Athens and the University of Tuscia. His scientific experience concerns – among others – projects for the functional integration of digital media in education (scientific responsibility, coordination, etc.). His writing activity includes scientific monographs, educational material, publications from European projects/research, digital material/platforms, original teaching scenarios and many research publications. In addition, he has made a very large number of presentations in international and national scientific conferences and workshops, and has organized and coordinated major scientific events (international conferences, kick-off meetings, etc.).

Stavros Kaperonis, University of Social and Political Sciences, Department of Communication, Media and Culture, Greece

Stavros Kaperonis is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, Media and Culture of Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, Greece. He has also worked as an Adjunct Professor at Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB). Dr. Kaperonis holds a BSc (Hons) from the School of Science and Technology, Department of Natural Sciences (HOU), an MSc in Services Management from the Department of Business Administration of the Athens University of Economics and Business, and a Ph.D. in Web Aesthetics and Usability from the Department of Public Administration of the Panteion University of Athens, Greece. He has been involved in numerous research projects. Since 2015, he has been teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the fields of media, communication and design in Greece. In addition, he has also been invited to give guest lectures in Italy and in China. His main research interests are UX, CX, UI, HCI, AI/AR/VR/XR/MR environments, e-aesthetics, e-atmospheres, communication management, design and communication strategy, web design, brand design, visual identity, social media, video storytelling, new media tools, data visualisation, strategic information systems planning, service customisation and business process modelling and management. He has published research papers at conferences and in journals and has edited a book. Expertise: S.K. expertise is in UX, CX, UI, and HCI environments. His academic expertise and research contributions include communications design, program design, and innovative technologies.

Efstathia (Efi) Ntrouva, Department of International Relations and European Union, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Greece

Stavros Kaperonis is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, Media and Culture of Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, Greece. He has also worked as an Adjunct Professor at Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB). Dr. Kaperonis holds a BSc (Hons) from the School of Science and Technology, Department of Natural Sciences (HOU), an MSc in Services Management from the Department of Business Administration of the Athens University of Economics and Business, and a Ph.D. in Web Aesthetics and Usability from the Department of Public Administration of the Panteion University of Athens, Greece. He has been involved in numerous research projects. Since 2015, he has been teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the fields of media, communication and design in Greece. In addition, he has also been invited to give guest lectures in Italy and in China. His main research interests are UX, CX, UI, HCI, AI/AR/VR/XR/MR environments, e-aesthetics, e-atmospheres, communication management, design and communication strategy, web design, brand design, visual identity, social media, video storytelling, new media tools, data visualisation, strategic information systems planning, service customisation and business process modelling and management. He has published research papers at conferences and in journals and has edited a book. Expertise: S.K. expertise is in UX, CX, UI, and HCI environments. His academic expertise and research contributions include communications design, program design, and innovative technologies.

References

United Nations, Commission for Social Development. (2015). Chair’s Summary: Panel Discussion on Emerging Issues: Contributions of social development to the transition from the Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals, 6 February 2015.

Mitoula, R. (2023). Sustainable Development. Individual actions for the implementation of the 17 Global Goals of Sustainable Development. Special Volume SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, Sustainable Development, Culture, Traditions Journal (SDCT-Journal). doi: 10.26341/issn.2241-4010-2023-1c.

Stefanou, J., and Mitoula, R. (2024). Global Goal 11 for Sustainable City Development. Sustainable Development. Culture, Traditions Journal (4), 58–68. https://doi.org/10.26341/issn.2241-4002-2024-4c-5-T02188.

UNEP (n.d.). Sustainable Digitalization. https://www.unep.org/topics/digital-transformations/sustainable-digitalization.

CODES (Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability) (2022). Action Plan for a Sustainable Planet in the Digital Age. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6573509.

Nosratabadi, S., Atobishi, T., and Hegedűs, S. (2023). Social sustainability of digital transformation: Empirical evidence from EU-27 countries. Administrative Sciences, 13(5), 126. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci13050126.

European Commission (2023a). 2030 Digital Decade – Report on the state of the Digital Decade 2023. DOI 10.2759/318547.

Vuorikari, R., Kluzer, S. and Punie, Y. (2022). DigComp 2.2: The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens – With new examples of knowledge, skills and attitudes, EUR 31006 EN. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, ISBN 978-92-76-48882-8. doi: 10.2760/115376, JRC128415.

European Commission (2025). The Union of Skills. Brussels, March 5, 2025, https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d9d9adad-c71b-11ee95d9-01aa75ed71a1/language-en.

Kamols, N., Foth, M., and Hearn, G. (2025). The Citizen’s Right to the Virtual City: Urban Governance in the Metaverse Through an Exploration of Decentraland. Journal of Urban Technology, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2025.2464525.

Bokolas, V. (2024). Metaverse gaming⋅ a new era of entertainment, communication and education. WAKEUP – Raising Youth Awareness on the Metaverse. https://xeniospolis.gr/el/metaverse-gaming%e2%88%99-a-new-era-of-entertainment-communication-and-education-2/.

Dwivedi, Y. K. et al. (2022). Metaverse beyond the hype: Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy. International journal of information management, 66. doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2022.102542.

Clement, J. (2024a). Video gaming and the metaverse – Statistics & Facts. Statista. https://www.statista.com/topics/9490/metaverse-and-video-gaming/#topFacts.

Mohammed, S. Y., Aljanabi, M., Gadekallu, T. R. (2024). Navigating the Nexus: A systematic review of the symbiotic relationship between the metaverse and gaming, International Journal of Cognitive Computing in Engineering, 5, 88–103, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcce.2024.02.001.

ESA (Entertainment Software association) (2024). Video Games in the 21st century: the 2024 economic impact report. https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/EIR_ESA_2024.pdf.

European Commission (2023b). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Understanding the value of a European video games society – Final report. Publications Office of the European Union https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2759/332575.

ESA (Entertainment Software association) (2023a). Essential Facts About the U.S. Video Game Industry. ESA_2023_Essential_Facts_FINAL_07092023.pdf (theesa.com).

Video Games Europe (2021). Key facts from 2021 about the european video games sector – VIDEOGAMES EUROPE. https://www.videogameseurope.eu/data-key-facts/key-facts-from-2021-europe-video-games-sector/.

Santos, F. (2021). The “so-called” UGC: an updated definition of user-generated content in the age of social media. Online Information Review, 45(5), 789–805. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-06-2020-0258.

Johnson, K. (2020). User engagement strategies. Journal of Digital Marketing, 5(1), 12–20.

Brown, J. (2020). Engaging users in digital spaces. Journal of User Experience, 10(2), 1–10.

Kaperonis, S. (2019). Virtual networks: Why do students use Instagram? Homo Virtualis, 2(1), 43–49. https://doi.org/10.12681/homvir.20193.

Dimopoulos, K. (2020). Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities. Unbound Publishing.

Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., and Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining “gamification”. In Proceedings of the 15th international academic MindTrek conference: Envisioning future media environments, 9–15.

Abadi, M. F., B., Khalili Samani, N., Akhlaghi, A., Najibi, S., and Bolourian, M. (2022). Pros and Cons of Tomorrow’s Learning: A Review of Literature of Gamification in Education Context. Medical Education Bulletin, 3(4), 543–554.

Sailer, M., Homner, L. (2020). The Gamification of Learning: A Meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 32, (1), 77–112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09498-w.

Thomas, N. J., Baral, R., Crocco, O. S., and Mohanan, S. (2023). A framework for gamification in the metaverse era: How designers envision gameful experience. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 193, 122544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122544.

Medvedev, M., García-Gavilanes, R., and Yasseri, T. (2023). Patterns of online user participation: A data-driven analysis of comments and posts across digital communities. Journal of Computational Social Science, 6(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-022-00162-4.

Liu, X., Wan Abas, W. A., and Wan Mohtar, W. I. (2024). The influence of social media usage motivations on psychological well-being. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 14(11). https://doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v14-i11/23501.

Xu, W., Fan, W., Lu, S., Li, T., and Wang, B. (2025). Polarized patterns of language toxicity and sentiment of debunking posts on social media. arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.06274. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06274.

Chen, T., Huang, J., Wu, X., and Shao, C. (2024). Predicting social media popularity with large language models: Transforming metadata into semantic-enriched and contextualized text. IEEE Access, 12, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3484762.

Trujillo, M. Z., Hébert-Dufresne, L., and Bagrow, J. (2023). Measuring centralization of online platforms through size and interconnection of communities. arXiv preprint. arXiv:2307.15027. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.15027.

Jeong, U., Sheth, P., Tahir, A., Alatawi, F., Bernard, H. R., and Liu, H. (2024). Exploring platform migration patterns between Twitter and Mastodon: A user behavior study. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 18, 738–750. https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09196.

Bartle, R. A. (2016). MMOs from the Outside In: The Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games of Psychology, Law, Government, and Real Life. Apress: Springer.

Dalgarno, B., and Lee, M. J. W. (2010). What are the learning affordances of 3-D virtual environments?. British journal of educational technology, 41(1), 10–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.01038.x.

Steinkuehler, C. A., Williams, D. (2006). Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘Third Places’. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11, 885–909. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00300.x.

Kolo, C., Baur, T. (2004). Living a Virtual Life: Social Dynamics of Online Gaming. Game Studies 4, 1–31. http://gamestudies.org/0401/kolo/.

Clement, J. (2024b). Video gaming and the metaverse – Statistics & Facts. Statista. https://www.statista.com/topics/9490/metaverse-and-video-gaming/#topicOverview.

Jo, H., Park, S., Jeong, J., Yeon, J., and Lee, J. K. (2023). Metaverse gaming: analyzing the impact of self-expression, achievement, social interaction, violence, and difficulty. Behaviour & Information Technology, 44(4), 749–763. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2024.2341059.

Tukur, M., Schneider, J., Househ, M., Dokoro, A. H., Ismail, U. I., Dawaki, M., and Agus, M. (2024). The Metaverse digital environments: A scoping review of the techniques, technologies, and applications. Journal of King Saud University-Computer and Information Sciences, 36(2). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2024.101967.

Zhang, X., Chen, Y., Hu, L., and Wang, Y. (2022). The metaverse in education: Definition, framework, features, potential applications, challenges, and future research topics. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1016300. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1016300.

Buckingham, D., and Scanlon, M. (2000). That is edutainment: Media, pedagogy and the marketplace. In International forum of researchers on young people and the media, Sydney.

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S. (2005). Beyond edutainment: Exploring the educational potential of computer games. (Unpublished dissertation). Copenhagen, Denmark: IT University of Copenhagen. http://www.itu.dk/people/sen/egenfeldt.pdf.

Jarvin, L. (2015). Edutainment, Games, and the Future of Education in a Digital World. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 147, 33–40. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cad.20082/full.

European Schoolnet (2024). Video Games in European Schools: Results from the Games in Schools 2023–2024. Research Project, Brussels, Belgium, European Schoolnet EUN Partnership AISBL. https://www.videogameseurope.eu/games-in-society/education/about-games-in-schools/.

Stafford, T., Vaci, N. (2022). Maximizing the Potential of Digital Games for Understanding Skill Acquisition. Current Directions in Psychological Science 31(1), 49–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214211057841.

Bokolas, V. (2019). History and video games: development of pedagogical criteria for the evaluation and construction of digital games. (Postdoctoral thesis). Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

ESA (Entertainment Software association) (2023b). Power of Play. https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/PowerOfPlay2023_Final-esa.pdf.

Pasqualotto, A., Altarelli, I., De Angeli, A. et al. (2022). Enhancing reading skills through a video game mixing action mechanics and cognitive training. Nature Human Behaviour, 6, 545–554. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01254-x.

Chaarani, B., Ortigara, J., Yuan, D., Loso, H., Potter, A., and Garavan, H. P. (2022). Association of video gaming with cognitive performance among children. JAMA network open, 5(10). doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.35721.

European Parliament (2023a). Protecting gamers and encouraging growth in the video games sector. Press Release (18-01-2023) https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230113IPR66646/protecting-gamers-and-encouraging-growth-in-the-video-games-sector.

European Parliament (2023b). Five ways the European Parliament wants to protect online gamers(18/01/2023). https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20230112STO66402/five-ways-the-european-parliament-wants-to-protect-online-gamers.

Council of the European Union (2023). Council conclusions on enhancing the cultural and creative dimension of the European video games sector, Brussels (24/11/2023). https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-15901-2023-INIT/en/pdf.

European Commission (2023b). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Understanding the value of a European video games society – Final report. Publications Office of the European Union https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2759/332575.

Gazi, M. A. I., Rahaman, M. A., Rabbi, M. F., et al. (2024). The Role of Social Media in Enhancing Communication among Individuals: Prospects and Problems. Environment and Social Psychology, 9(11), 2979. https://doi.org/10.59429/esp.v9i11.2979.

Tariq, S., Abuadbba, A., and Moore, K. (2023). Deepfake in the metaverse: Security implications for virtual gaming, meetings, and offices. In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Security Implications of Deepfakes and Cheapfakes, 16–19.

Alotaibi, O. (2023). New Metaverse Games Based on Artificial Intelligence: A Review. International Journal of Metaverse, 2, 20–32. https://doi.org/10.54536/ijm.v2i1.3230.

Gil, R. M., Gutiérrez-Ujaque, D., and Teixidó, M. (2024). Analyzing the metaverse: Computer Games, Blockchain, and 21st-century Challenge. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 40(21), 6758–6775. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2023.2290380.

Video Games Europe (2025). Video Games Europe welcomes the Union of Skills. https://www.videogameseurope.eu/news/video-games-europe-welcomes-the-union-of-skills/.

Downloads

Published

2025-10-31

How to Cite

Bokolas, V., Kaperonis, S., & Ntrouva, E. (Efi). (2025). Sustainable Social Development and User Experience in EU Framework: Metaverse Gaming as ‘Third Space’ of Communication and Interaction. Strategic Planning for Energy and the Environment, 44(04), 819–844. https://doi.org/10.13052/spee1048-5236.4448

Issue

2025: Vol 44 Iss 4

Section

Urban and Regional Sustainable Development in Southern Europe