Accepted with revisions to a digital humanities conference but I seem to have ruffled feathers, what say you to the premises?

A Challenge to the Designers of Virtual Places, Virtual Worlds: Where are the Humanities?
Virtual worlds are arguably under-represented in Digital Humanities conferences, even
though many MMORPGs are both types of virtual worlds and also visited by hundreds of
thousands if not millions.
Virtual worlds can stream in live data from real locations, link to local, national and
international archives, and now offer personalization, tracking, and links to social media.
I suggest the problem is the lack of interest in the humanities research community in virtual presence and an assumption that VR is technically beyond the grasp or income or interest of humanities classes and related research areas. Presence is typically measured in terms of realism, naturalism, spatial immersivity, or social presence. This is not enough, especially for presence.
For example, in 2003 and 2004 I programmed interaction for a Japanese-English Language Learning class run by Ms. Sachiyo Sekiguchi, (now at Meiji Gakuin University), at the University of Melbourne using Adobe Atmosphere, an Internet Explorer-based 3D virtual world with a built-in chat window. The Virtual Babel was a 3D Virtual Environment designed for “enhancing second language (L2) learning in the modern classroom.” I scripted methods for tracking conversations and key words between Japanese English-learning students and Australian Japanese-learning students.
My PhD project had also been developed in Adobe Atmosphere and months before my PhD was submitted, Adobe Atmosphere had closed down, 2 years in beta, toughly 6 months in the wild as a commercial product. It was certainly not the only 3D world building and browsing tool to bite the bullet, but it included features for learning and teaching which software which have only been sporadically improved on.
In 2010-2011 I supervised a masters project on Chinese Taoism, using a finger touch-screen interface to teach participants about the four great arts of Chinese Taoism through drawing, writing, painting and playing Go, empathetically. I believe that now, with masterpiece VR and Tilt brush, we have more advanced and immersively creative ways to spatially develop appreciation for different cultures. So, the interface is not the issue, I suspect the issue is marrying the potential of technology with the critical communication skills of the humanities, but not only in a writing medium, but also in a visual and aural medium.
I suggest that architecture and archaeology and GIS have become such estranged disciplines from the humanities, that the research questions and research potential of spatial environments are no longer clearly seen as humanities endeavors, and that development in Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality is so technical and equipmental, that it is too difficult for many humanities scholars to explore these immersive visualisation fields for themselves.
Perhaps some humanities scholars do not see many interesting questions that relate to
humanities in virtual reality, in cultural heritage visualisation.
I propose to demonstrate, in 10 or 20 minutes, a focused range of case studies, in game
engines and 360 panoramic software, humanities datasets and research questions that can be approached and studied (with interest) by humanities scholars. I propose, in particular, that the terms game, virtual reality, and virtual world are concepts of direct interest to the humanities, and that indeed humanities researchers have much to add to the exploration of these terms. I would especially point out that place is not the same as world, and world is not the same as game. In more clearly defining these terms, we may also see ways to help support local interaction and more global-scaled interaction (in other words, culturally and spatially immersive localization without completely severing connections to global data and networks).
But what is particularly needed is more research on culturally sensitive and spatially
intelligent writing interfaces, postural and body language tracking, culturally syntactical
space, environmental affordances supporting the perception of culturally bounded space, insufficient 3D model infrastructure, a lack of research on shared collaboration in mixed reality and how context and content changes with group interaction, and new ways of evaluating and developing the student experience of humanities research in digitally immersive spatial environments.