A weekly wrap-up on what’s going on within the Virtual World sphere and beyond! Click on any of the below titles to read the full story.
Second Life 2009 Recap: Numbers, Money, Policy, and Company Announcement Highlights
Companies turn to virtual trade shows to save money
Second Life to Allow First Life Identities in 2010 (Thus Revising a Fundamental Premise of Second Life Itself)
So what exactly does make a virtual world immersive? Well aside from the real-world representation that they offer, many VW’s are 3-D. Does it have to be 3-D to be immersive, not necessarily but 3-D is always better in my book. I virtually attended a Metanomics event featuring Chris Abraham- he stated that the problem with Second Life is that it may be “too immersive.” Hmmm, could SL really be seen as too immersive? I wouldn’t exactly call it that, although it can be an overwhelming experience for a newbie to the world, I would not define it as being too immersive by any means. The learning curve can be immense to someone with little computer (and do I dare say gaming) knowledge.
Although a variety of different types of immersion exist, from sensory to tactile. Immersive environments are unique in that they offer a high level of realism to what is found in the real world. Some of the enticing factors of virtual worlds are the ability to explore, create and interact all of which bring in multiple layers of immersion. By engrossing the player in the environment virtual world environments are gaining prominence as immersive training spaces for all types of learners and organizations. These ‘immersive environments’ are especially helpful when replicating dangerous real life situations such as combat zones and medical training.
Happy Holidays to one and all from Visual Purple!
A weekly wrap-up on what’s going on within the Virtual World sphere and beyond! Click on any of the below titles to read the full story.
Why Smart Brands are Jumping Into Virtual World Marketing
Second Life Looking Back: 2009 Uncovered
Habbo, Facebook Link Up
It seems like most of the buzz around virtual worlds lately has been that virtual world economies are thriving…hmmm…so, why is that? I don’t think it is simply because our economy is struggling, rather I see a positive trend in virtual world adoption and with that the economies within virtual worlds budding as well.
According to New Scientist: “With its users swapping virtual goods and services worth around $600 million per year, Second Life has the largest economy of any virtual world – which exceeds the GDP of 19 countries, including Samoa”.
Second Life Residents spend an average of about 100 minutes in-world per visit. So what are residents doing over this hour and forty minutes? Conducting business in a virtual world is becoming more and more commonplace. Although there is a differentiation between virtual goods vs. physical tangible goods (assets), virtual goods are being taken more and more seriously. Take a recent example from The New York Times of a real-life will reflecting virtual goods. Obviously due to the user agreement in a virtual world, you can’t take your avatar with you when you die nor does your ‘virtual’ property remain unless someone is paying the fee to maintain it.
Let’s narrow down the term ‘virtual worlds’ to refer more specifically to the popular virtual world of Second Life from Linden Lab, here are a few more relevant stats from Multiplayer Games:“Over 1050 users spent 1 million Linden Dollars or more, which translates to about $4,000 USD and up. Just under 60 per cent of the 475,000 Second Life players spent at least $2 in September, and the total supply of Linden Dollars is equal to over $26 million USD.”
Brian Solis posted on his blog that: “Residents create more than 250,000 new virtual goods every day – from clothing to vehicles to buildings to automatic language translators, and more.”
Virtual economies with make-believe products and goods are booming, albeit the real-world economy may not be. The United States is slowly climbing the virtual goods ladder if you will as Europe and Asia have always led the pack in virtual world spending. So here’s to the future of virtual world economic growth.
Virtual worlds for enterprise and corporate use, or as 3DTLC terms it “virtual corporate.” Is widespread enterprise adoption right around the corner for enterprise adoption of virtual worlds? My belief is that with continued tight budgets training managers will look more and more to cost effective and innovative solutions to solve training department needs. This is where 3-D virtual world based applications will continue to shine. They are cost effective (especially when compared to traditional training method offerings) and also offer a low build time from concept to implementation. And moreover, the new generation audience demands new and better training via advanced learning methodologies and technologies. CBT just doesn’t cut it anymore!
Some say to just login to Second Life and go explore the possibilities for corporate use. I disagree- it’s kind of like sending a SWAT team into a crisis situation with armed bad guys and not provisioning the SWAT team with weapons. For virtual world ‘newbie’s’ the answer is not to blindly send them into Second Life so they may aimlessly wander around for an hour, exit the application, and thus never to return nor give training in virtual worlds a second thought. I would rather place a virtual world ‘newbie,’ if you will, into a intelligently controlled virtual world environment rich in decisions and interaction with non-player characters (NPCs). This will wow the newcomer- to witness firsthand real life applications and context in a virtual world. Once experienced, a believer is made.
Many enterprise/corporate based virtual world solution providers are entering the market today, although some do have some innovative offerings- not all are created equal. There is a recent buzz around Linden Lab’s Nebraska introduction (oh I mean Second Life Enterprise)…the platform is said to support the enterprise customer. What this will actually mean… who knows as Second Life content as it stands now is all user-created. So while a company may be able to enter ‘Second Life Enterprise’ and utilize it as a virtual world for work I doubt it will be a one-size fits all 3-D training and learning environment that will satisfy all enterprise and corporation needs. One must realize that each organization’s training needs are diverse and unique, by simply creating a behind-the-firewall solution and allowing work to be done in a virtual world I cannot say that is enough to sway enterprise perspectives of what they have seen in the past from Second Life- but maybe Second Life Enterprise will prove the naysayers wrong. With the increasing success of virtual events why not virtual worlds for training as the next logical step?
The translation for avatar is ‘a form of self’- does your avatar really resemble you down to a “tee?” When entering virtual worlds I have seen customized avatars from robots to pandas and just about everything in between, each one a very unique representation of oneself. Avatar Customization (clothing, body proportions, hair and eye color, etc.) seems to be more and more prevalent nowadays and all too often virtual worlds are largely judged by the robustness of avatar customization options and features.
Should the ‘virtual you’ mimic ‘the real life you?’ Will the upcoming ‘Avatar’ movie change the perception of how people view avatars? What kind of name does the movie, Avatar, give the real avatar in context to a virtual world? Obviously, if someone is not familiar with an avatar character in relation to use within a virtual world one will get the wrong perception. So many questions around an avatar: Can humans really relate to an avatar? A digital rendering- is it realistic enough? Customization- is it really that important? Seriously, how important is it to be able to customize your avatar?
Virtual worlds, social networking sites and video customization are allowing some form of customization to your own and unique profile. As an example some of the faces on the Evolver website reminded me of watching America’s Most Wanted (except for the ranking of most dangerous to society). One thing is for sure, I don’t see myself as wandering around a virtual world clad in an itsy, bitsy, teeny, weenie polka dot bikini anytime soon as pictured on the Evolver home page. The program allows you to share your customized avatar with friends on social networks such as: Facebook, MySpace, Blogger and Friendster.
In recent news was an article describing how many businesses will begin adopting dress codes for avatars that are utilized by company employees. According to Gartner:
“The company predicts that by year-end 2013, 70 percent of businesses will have behavior guidelines and dress codes established for all employees who have avatars associated with the organization.” Understandably, companies don’t want their established name and reputation to be associated with a trashy avatar.
The future of avatars for virtual worlds is promising; I see many more customizing options becoming available soon with wicked realism to actual individuals. As for the term ‘Avatar,’ time will tell as to whether or not the Hollywood movie will change the general public’s perception of what an avatar is.
Related posts on Avatars:
Calling all Avatars
Avatar: A New Addition to Mankind
3D Virtual Worlds Becoming ‘Killer App’ for Supercomputers
Over 300 grids running OpenSim
Second Life Bows Out of Korea
Part two of the two-part series- this post will focus exclusively on the peril of virtual worlds. When I pulled out my handy-dandy Webster’s New World Dictionary to further define my term of peril- other words that stood out were: danger, jeopardy, and exposure to harm. So I thought to myself- could virtual worlds really be so ominous? Forrester Research recently reported that “only 11% of enterprises have adopted virtual worlds to augment their work.” With all of the press on virtual worlds- is this number really accurate… it seems like such a stark contrast to the numbers previously posted in The Promise of Virtual Worlds (link to blog article here) where we stated the following numbers from K Zero:
“By the end of this year we’ll be at the 150 mark for total worlds. We forecast this number to double by the end of 2010.”
“Combine all of this and we get to our 2012 forecast of 900 virtual worlds.”
“We forecast 2012 revenues to reach $6bn and 2013 to hit $9bn.”
We’ve seen Google Lively and Weblin enter the virtual world scene and then quickly fold- will more follow suit? So does the infamous tagline from Field of Dreams- “If we build it, they will come” really stand true for all virtual worlds (well it might if they don’t go bankrupt first). First of all virtual worlds are not created equal- although most all of them hold promise in different respects, will that be enough to sustain and prosper? The primary reason for some virtual worlds closing is the lack of funds generated- if a virtual world is free to users- there must be a valid business model underpinning the endeavor. Without such a model- will virtual worlds be able to continue. Sure lots of users are in-world and building communities but that ultimately doesn’t bring home the bacon. Whereas if a virtual world company branches out- such as Second Life with branding opportunities or Blue Mars with the Smithsonian maybe success will ensue. What could possibly lead to the peril of virtual worlds as we know them? Although mainstream adoption may be a little ways out I wouldn’t say that the perils outweigh the potential of virtual worlds. If a company makes a name or carves a niche then the opportunity for high-level success is there. But in today’s economic times there are a lot more companies that go bankrupt before success is reaped. So I am sure that we will see more virtual world companies enter and then exit the scene for lack of funding.
A weekly wrap-up on what’s going on within the Virtual World sphere and beyond! Click on any of the below titles to read the full story.
Players May Soon Use One Avatar for Multiple Worlds
Making the virtual world learning experience better
KZero VW registered accounts increase by 92m to 671m in Q3 2009
I was excited to finally receive the much anticipated Blue Mars beta registration notification in my email inbox. Not only had I heard a lot about it, I had watched the YouTube teasers, and anxiously awaited my call to test it out. So I began by completing my registration- It was like opening a Christmas present- you have been staring at the beautifully wrapped box under the Christmas tree for weeks and now you finally get to rip the bow and peel the paper off to find the present inside. Well, that was until I began downloading the app. and saw the projected 3 hour, 41 minute download time which had me a little concerned….and yes, it did nearly eat up all of that time.
Finally downloaded, my avatar and I enter Blue Mars for the first time- I spend a little time trying to customize my avatar. Finally settling for the generic tall, slender, younger looking female (Hey I can even put on cosmetics or add a beard… not sure how the whole beard thing would look). Although the avatars seem a little limited- they are in fact very realistic. My avatar enters Blue Mars and I immediately feel like I am modeling on a catwalk and I just saw another avatar that has the same exact look as I do (except for different hair color). Somehow my avatar does a little pose and has a seductive model walk- my computer then becomes bogged down enough that I can’t even open a small Word document. I am standing on top of water, other avatars are running into me, and the navigation doesn’t come to me as intuitively as expected.
Ok- so where is the instruction manual? Come to find out W, A, S, and D are the keys to move around or you can click with the mouse and your avatar will move- oh so many options!
So once getting the navigation pinned down a little bit better (I finally resorted to reviewing the tutorial something I probably should have done in the first place); I proceed to the Royal Aloha Golf Club- once there I decide to play 1 hole (which probably took longer than it takes most people to play 3 holes real life). Ok enough golf- let’s go explore some more.
I then opt to enter ‘Beach City’ of which I am very impressed with the overall graphic quality. I begin to explore some more, walking over to a water-like feature and then all of the sudden I am in the middle of the dance party-maybe these are the intelligent NPC’s that Blue Mars touts as one of the features?! Hum, not sure. But they’re not looking so intelligent dancing around in their short shorts and leopard print mini-skirts.
To me Blue Mars is an eye candy type of virtual world. Guess it may be time to begin creating things in Blue Mars- since that is the professed main appeal of the VW. So the jury is still out- will Blue Mars be the next big thing next to Second Life? Do I dare address a comparison and contrast model of Second Life to Blue Mars… I don’t think I will go there this time around. Some potential for corporate use? Maybe, I guess time will tell. I realize that Blue Mars is only currently in Public Beta and I believe that it could have big potential down the line if the technical cards are played right.
So after all of my rambling you may ask what is Blue Mars? “Blue Mars is a free to play massively multiplayer virtual world featuring stunning graphics, realistic characters, and endless social bonding activities. The Blue Mars virtual world is made up of an expanding set of independently operated cities that feature unique themes, activities, and attractions such as shopping, avatar customization, unique personal spaces, and games like dancing, racing, and golf. Cites on Blue Mars are tied together with a unified login system, persistent global Avatar ID, and platform wide participation based reward system that encourages users to explore, play, and make new friends.”
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