What is your ideal avatar, would it replicate a virtual you? Or not resemble any of your physical traits? I recently attended a Metanomics event that discussed ways in which avatars are perceived. Among the key takeaways from the event is that it is hard to look older in Second Life (something I never really thought of before).
Avatars are able to offer a sense of anonymity to the user; you can replicate yourself to a tee or completely transform the way you want to appear in a virtual world. Are my real name and my own identity over rated? Do others really believe that this is the way I look in real life? We come across this issue quite often when pitching virtual worlds for business use to potential clients. Most organizations have done limited research (if any) on virtual worlds and the perception is that all training products that have avatars will look much like Second Life avatars (whether they are risqué or not I will leave it up to your imagination). Now consider this scenario: When developing a virtual world simulation for a client we placed in a younger “30-something” character in as a lawyer. When we previewed the virtual world (complete with lawyer avatar) to the client- they said that lawyers wouldn’t take the training seriously because most of them are older. (Not to offend the older or younger generations of lawyers- we went in and added some gray hair onto the avatar). So perception can be everything. I’m sure that you have heard the idiom “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” well the same holds true for avatar characters within virtual world environments.
The Virtual Worlds Roadmap Group recently posted a survey on ‘Future Evolution of Virtual World Tech’. One question asked in the survey was: How much money is your organization likely to spend on Virtual Worlds?
<$50k
$50k to $250k
$250 to $1M
>$1M
These can be daunting figures for most organizations experiencing cuts in training budgets. I mean come on- realistically how much can a virtual world really cost? This is why when companies are surveyed about the potential use of a virtual world platform for learning and training they state one of the biggest barriers as the cost of entry. Let me just clarify a few points with regard to the real cost of a virtual world. A virtual world can be built in a variety of ways- as with Visual Purple virtual worlds they are often built from the ground up and customized for each organization. The actual cost varies based upon content, seat time, number of users, etc. Just remember you can start out small and always expand (kind of like remodeling a house). So let’s be realistic here and say that establishing a virtual world beachhead with a shiny, generic and pretty ‘private’ virtual world for training can cost an organization less than 6 figures.
Ok- we will blow our own horn here. We just were awarded as a finalist for the first annual Government Security News (GSN) Homeland Security Awards. To see the full list of award finalists, click here.
Best Training/Higher Education Services Finalists:
Allied Barton
Visual Purple
Bellevue University
Henley-Putnam University
By Ed Heinbockel, President and CEO, Visual Purple, LLC
Nothing will drive an enterprise IT employee to reach for the Pepto-Bismol faster than the mention of virtual worlds! Why is that?
-Security issues and concerns
-Over-worked as it is
-Demands on “ancient” hardware
-Large client downloads (that must run through firewalls)-download limitations
-Bandwidth limitations
My point with this post is to illustrate that IT Departments need not endure heartburn over new virtual world technologies. While IT departments tend to be cautious, and understandably so, many viable options are coming on-line today that will calm and not upset the IT Gods. Stay tuned for specifics!
