The Second Coming of Virtual Worlds 117
An anonymous reader writes "Things have been a bit quiet on the virtual world front recently, but according to an article in Silicon.com, things are about to change. Apparently it's only now that virtual worlds are really going to become a force to be reckoned with. 'Now experts predict the virtual world phenomenon is entering a second phase in which businesses will become shrewder about their involvement in such environments and look more carefully at the tangible benefits they can realize. Emerging technology specialist at IBM, Robert Smart, is confident virtual worlds will become more important to businesses in the coming years.'"
Things have... (Score:3, Interesting)
An Honest Question.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Has any business, anywhere, recieved any tangible benefit from their participation in Second Life?*
I hear about all these businesses and universities spending so much money on virtual places that are lucky to get a dozen "hits" a month. Are any of these visitors buying a product, becoming more brand-loyal, or spreading the word?
*Linden Labs and Second Life developers not included.
The economics of a virtual world. (Score:4, Interesting)
The economics of virtual worlds are driven by synthetic scarcity. Indeed, any digital product is subject to imposed scarcity as an infinite amount of copies could be created at practically no cost.
A big difference is that with virtual worlds, copy control and usage control can be enforced more rigorously to drive up prices. This is why you see people paying for virtual gifts on Facebook. $1 for the right to give a worthless icon to a friend. Here, the value of the product is not the product's uniqueness, but the product in conjunction with the limitations of use. You are buying back a freedom that was taken away from you by the implementation.
Second Life allows users to create and sellp roducts and take advantage of the imposed scarcity, but will skim profits by controlling the
conversion rate between linden dollars and USD. It looks like a real economy, but it's more like a pyramid scheme, as the profits will inevitably trickle up. It's like a casino. The house cannot lose as long as people keep coming.
I suppose the positive side of this is that if people are happy spending real money on virtual objects, then they probably have enough money.
When given lemons, make lemonade! (Score:3, Interesting)
Embrace the tech!
Imagine that the NEXT boring meeting dominated by hours long powerpoint slideshows....
*1. From your 'virtual' meeting, access a proxy, and hack/crack the presentation with flying penises.
2.How 'uncomfortable' can you make your avatar?
3.Bonus points for hacking the system and substituting a lip-sync'ed animation of Richard M. Nixon replacing your PHB in the next teleconference.
4. Uhmm?...Use your creative imagination?*
P.S.
I agree with you, this is just marketing looking for multi-bucks.
Since big businesses have noted the 'exposure' available on such sites as "Second Life", Google's clone of SL, etc. there seems to be a rush to exploit this perceived market/resource.
It's not about the advantages to businesses, but 'how much can we sell this "solution" for, with extended support contracts', and for how long?
Re:Real translation (Score:3, Interesting)
The real annoying thing is how everyone seems to be getting their own "MY" version of their already functional and customizable site.
Oh the humanity it's a bandwagon epidemic.
Re:Real translation (Score:3, Interesting)
I couldn't have said it better myself.
As the saying goes.... follow the money. There is also a whole bunch of, well I should say something a little more vulgar but I will leave this PG-rated, bolvine excrement.
There are some amazing things that can be done with virtual worlds, and I've been a part of some of that effort myself (both as a user and as a software designer). Still, there isn't anything really new here nor frankly anything novel that has come around since text-based MUDs, MUSHes, & MOOs other than much more intensive graphical environments.
If there is going to be something different that will be coming along, perhaps it will be some folks with Hollywood-class talent for telling stories to make something much more entertaining than exists at the moment. But how common is that, even in Hollywood (California)?
Otherwise, wake up me up with the holodeck is created. That is the next generation technology.... if it is ever built in the first place.
Re:Real translation (Score:3, Interesting)
P.S.
Here are some cool images from that 1985 game. Remember: This was all done with a primitive 0.064 megabyte computer and phoneline modems that barely ran 1 kbit/s. It's amazing that LucasArts was able to create a graphical world using such slow connections.
http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue77/habitat.php [atarimagazines.com] - And a RUN magazine article: http://thefarmers.org/Habitat/2004/09/the_avatar_is_legal_voting_age.html [thefarmers.org]
Check out the cool Commodore 128 Pizza Box. I want one. :-) http://web.archive.org/web/20070221043915/www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/page05.jpg [archive.org]
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
I, for one, (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate surfing on sites where I have to click through list after list of things I don't want to finally see what I want. In a virtual werehouse, I could clearly see all the hanging signs, fly to the part of the store I need, wave my hand at a poster on a wall, and buy what I want with paypal or some other convenient form of payment. It combines the convenience of rw store layout, quick online payment, and instant access. I could teleport from store to store, listen to music, interact with virtual salespersons when I need help, meet girls (or furries or whatever), and (importantly for vendors) make impulse buys as I walk around. This has the potential to be a much more interesting and fulfilling shopping experience than simply searching through Google Products, eBay, or New Egg.
there is a change afoot (Score:2, Interesting)
Over the past few years a very quiet and innovative revolution has taken place in 3d graphics. I know this because I am immersed in it. Now I don't really know how much bandwidth will be required to make it all fluid. Without getting into brands or specific applications there is software that abstractionalizes all 3d entities into basically database records with a visual component. That visual component can then be placed and oriented into 3 dimensional space. This object can then provide as little or as much information about itself as is required. So I don't think that poo pooing the idea is makes it a stupid one. For over a decade I have imagined a 3-d warehouse that can be navigated visually and then reorganized according to whatever criteria amuses the user. It can be done now rather easily with the right combination of skilled people and software that exists now. Of coarse the computational power is a huge factor. However back in the day when I had a 1meg 386 with a 40 meg hard drive I could not even fathom 500 gigs of storage so that is a relative thing too. I just wish I had the resources and the backers to actually do it. I envy those that are doing it. I smirk at those that don't have the imagination or the knowledge to understand just how feasible useful things can be created this way. So stand by to be wrong.
As a Second Life business owner/developer... (Score:3, Interesting)
From my experience, a virtual economy can support itself without any intervention or participation from outside companies. For example, there are lots of people who sell skins, clothing, accessories, you-name-it to the residents of Second Life, and *I* make money by providing business tools to them (for visitor counting/automated greetings/report services/surveys, etc.).
I think Second Life paved the way for bigger and better things, but by no means should it be considered the model for the way a virtual environment should work. The utter lack of an interactive forms API and zero support for interaction with real-world documents (such as PDF, .DOC, Excel, PowerPoint) are big flaws that are already frustrating businesses that try to conduct meetings in SL. And don't get me started about their "land" approach to paying for CPU cycles.
From the outset, SL hasn't been about business. Linden Lab created a barren virtual landscape and has let the residents create just about 100% of the content using a very limited (dare i say "primitive"?) set of tools. It has been a big hippie-furry-fetishfest that has concentrated on bugfixes rather than connecting to the outside world. Considering how long it's been around, Second Life shouldn't still be regarded as a place where cyberweirdos go to get their kink on...and yet it still is very much regarded that way by even hardcore geeks.
Now that Linden Lab is starting to realize that their talk of SL as a place for serious business isn't just the hot air even *they* thought it was, they're trying to turn the ship around with some meager business-related integration. Fortunately for them, most other tech companies have watched them struggle and have stayed out of the game.
business value of virtual worlds (Score:3, Interesting)
Over the past two years, I've conducted close to 50 lectures and business meetings in Second Life. This has save me time - I can easily appear "live" to an audience half a world away without the attendant cost of time to get there - and it has saved IBM money - I'm shipping my bits, not my atoms. I created an avatar that looks very much like me in real life, and by using voice inside Second Life, the overall experience for those with whom I interact is close enough to real life to be good enough for real business use, especially given the economic benefit. Before the end of the year, I'll have started a virtual office on one of the IBM islands where I'll be holding regular office hours - something that many Lindens already do - for we do have an in world community that spans the world, and this will actually extend my reach.
So, it's not about the economics of buying and selling virtual things in world; for me, it's using a virtual world as an extension of my real world. Being in world is subtly better than NetMeeting (which works ok for point meetings but not so well with multiple attendees...and besides, I prefer to use real operating systems, so I only have Mac and Linux machines around) and - especially when I'm connecting to places where the network infrastructure is less well developed - requires no special equipment on the distant ends. When all the folks with whom I'm interacting are in world, social interaction carries out much like in the real world, with small groups forming and reforming. This is better than video for me, as it to some degrees encourages serendipitous communication and addresses the watercooler problem.
Lest you think I'm a shill for IBM, please note that I'm only a minor player in the larger metaverse community that has evolved at our grassroots. There's more going on than I can describe here, with regard to IBM's internal use of virtual worlds (as one brief example, we just held our first Academy meeting entirely in world; additionally, given these economic times, a life Academy meeting had been cancelled - but in its place there will be, among other things, an in world meeting).
With growing energy costs, conducting business in world as an extension of the real world is where I, for one, am reaping economic value.
SecondLife Resident Backlash (Score:1, Interesting)
They've just increased the lowest simulator monthly charges by 66%
Everyone is going ape-shit
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/10/27/openspace-pricing-and-policy-changes/
http://forums.secondlife.com/forumdisplay.php?f=354
Re:"Virtual worlds" will never take off (Score:3, Interesting)
"Part of this is the fact that such applications require someone to relatively social and extroverted (to find value in interaction for interaction's sake), yet also find a need to supplement or replace being social in the real world with doing it online. These subsets don't overlap too much."
You're assuming way too much here, I believe the audience would be for the introverts first. Introverts ARE social beings, it's the real world face-to-face stuff that throws some of them off. They recharge by being alone, they are drained in crowds in the real world. A virtual world takes away the "draining" aspect of socializing, it also gives introverts time to think and respond, instead of having to do it instinctually on the fly.
What is slashdot, if not one big socializing forum on a page? Most people come to slashdot for the comments, the stories are important in their own right. But they act more like a lens to focus discussion on relevant (and not so relevant) issues to people. What would slashdot be without it's comments section? People want to engage other people, whether they are introverted/socially mal-adjusted or whether they are extraverted.
Land Rush (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a few days ago, I finally installed and ran an OpenSim server [livejournal.com] on my own box.
Given the absurdity of being effectively forbidden to make backups copies of the stuff in Second Life they claim I own the copyrights to (a deal breaker in my book), I'm pretty happy to finally see an actually open and complete virtual worlds platform (even if it is alpha).
It wouldn't surprise me if the burgeoning openness of these and other VW software projects is what is driving business to take a second look at it, as well.
Probably another astroturf attempt here too (Score:1, Interesting)
Certain bloggers that are sponsored by virtual world consulting companies keep doing this. Sometimes you can follow whole chains of postings implying virtual worlds are catching on because so and so said this.
The current article looked like more of the same.
With the econemy going into the shit tank- (Score:1, Interesting)
We can guess that most people's real-lives are going to be horseshit, so there may well be a higher demand for virtual-lives. My guess is that this means more/better mmorgs, probably ones designed to run on a cheap console because there is no way they are going to be able to afford high end PCs.
XBOX and PLAYSTATION development may balloon in the next 5 years. (Or bubble...)
How big does a balloon have to get before it is a bubble?
Re:"Virtual worlds" will never take off (Score:3, Interesting)
I never intended to imply that virtual worlds would replace IM. Your scenario of spontaneous communication with office mates was not what I had in mind. IM is actually very good in that situation because you already have a lot of face time with office mates. In that situation, brief text is all that is needed.
Consider this situation. You have coders in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. You've noticed that their defect counts have started to escalate out of proportion to your local team in the USA. It's time to schedule a meeting to find out what the problem is. You could use a phone but accents get in the way and telephone use is still pretty expensive. You could use IM but you've noticed that, in the past, people don't really participate. Remember, you are twelve time zones away from them so either you are going to be tired or they are going to be tired whenever you communicate in real time. That's a situation where virtual worlds might make a difference. The virtual reality aspect of sitting in a room with other avatars arouses your social instincts and you tend to get more involved with the conversation than the dry text only user experience of most IM clients.