Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds can do many things - entertainment, training simulations, experiments...
Games often take place in such virtual worlds.  These kinds of games are great escapes from reality, but as good as it sounds, it also can be a problem when used without moderation.  There are a plethora of news articles of violence and children being neglected due to these games.
What's so addictive about these virtual worlds is that it replicates the real world... except you can be a completely different person and it does not have the restrictions and negative aspects of real life.  Thus, it is an escape from reality.  But living still eventually boils down to prioritizing real life over virtual life, and some people really prefer virtual life over real life.

Personally, back in high school, I knew a friend that pretended to be a girl over the Internet in a virtual world.  I don't get how people never found out - the things he would say and do were pretty much "dude" traits.  He even developed a "girl voice" and "befriended" a bunch of strangers in the virtual world (of Warcraft).

Virtual worlds foster creativity by removing the limitations of real world, thus allowing more freedom.  Portal, for example, is a product of creativity (originally Narbacular Drop, a student project) in which... well... see for yourself.  Additionally, areas can be duplicated for uses such as preservation like Hotel Chelsea in Saki Knafo's article, or simply, just for fun.  In Houston, Texas, a student from Clements High School recreated his school as a map in a shooting game.  Unsurprisingly, he got expelled from the school for generic ignorant "video-games-cause-violence" reasons.

In the future, virtual worlds can be convenient alternatives to real life events.  The first time I have heard of such was actually in this article by Dave Itzkoff.  Instead of going to an actual concert because there were too many factors that was a turn off, he just logged onto Virtual Lower East Side (VLES) and viewed the concert streamed from there.  Maybe, as technology improves, virtual worlds at one point will be difficult to differentiate from actual reality, besides the limitless aspect.