Insights into Virtual & Immersive Entertainment

Lead Presenter: Pooky Amsterdam / Pooky Amsterdam

Venue: Lecture A – The Hearth

Grounded in lived experience as a producer of film- and television-style entertainment, this presentation explores the evolution of virtual and immersive worlds—from Second Life and early shared digital spaces to today’s rapidly expanding landscape of real-time engines, virtual worlds, and AI-assisted creation.

Through a first-hand, creator-driven lens, the talk traces how each new generation of tools has expanded not only what we can build, but how we think, collaborate, and learn within virtual environments. As creative technologies evolve, they increasingly blur the boundaries between entertainment, education, and experimentation—turning virtual worlds into living laboratories for storytelling, pedagogy, and human connection.

A focus of this session is the role of artificial intelligence as a thought-muse and creative collaborator—a partner in ideation, iteration, and discovery rather than a replacement for human imagination.

Objectives:

• Participants will be able to examine how virtual worlds evolved into immersive entertainment labs.
• Show how AI acts as a thought-muse, supporting ideation and human-centered creation.

Insights Connection:>
This proposal aligns with the Insights conference theme by focusing on understanding “gained through lived” creative practice in virtual worlds. By exploring the evolution in Second Life to immersive and AI-enhanced environments, the session shows how insight emerges through experimentation, reflection, and collaboration. It highlights AI as a thought-muse and creative partner, revealing how new tools deepen learning while keeping human intention at the center.

Accessibility: Provide a written script during the presentation