Virtual Horizons

Weekend Whammered

2008-08-28T15:29:00.001-07:00

So, courtesy of a $5 purchase at Fry's, I found myself in possession of a key to unlock access to Whammer's (Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, aka WAoR, WAR) preview weekend. Whammer is the next big thing in the Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMO/MMOG) industry. Even better, the makers of Whammer, Mythic, lifted their NDA so I can actually say what I think (gee, lucky you). This preview weekend was for this last weekend only and will be supplemented by an open beta slated to start September 7th, followed by early access to the released version before the general public (the latter, as long as you purchased the game). Beta releases still fall in the bug-fixing stage and the application was peppered with feedback forms soliciting information during the course of play, and was understood to be lacking in aspects intended for the general release. Judging by past betas, beta characters will likely be wiped whereas early access characters will persist as long as purchased product key is offered up. Nevertheless, at well over nine gigs of download and at this late date, one can expect this beta to have much of the same look & feel of the final product.

That's not always the case: Funcom apparently pulled off an industry hail-mary between the beta and release of Age of Conan (AoC), which was said to be plagued by problems and apparently foreshadowed yet another disasterous MMO launch from an industry keen to tap into the huge revenue stream presented by Blizzard's World of Warcraft (WoW) phenomena, but often without the wherewithal to put together a product that will ultimately stand to the test of thousands, or what all competitors hope to be millions, of players. In Funcom's case, probably through caffeine and other stimulant-induced development overdrive, managed to overcome most of the issues that haunted their beta and deliver what is oft-stated to be one of most successful product releases since WoW's own launch years ago. To date, AoC is the only competing MMO, a fact noted by Blizzard executives, that has managed to take a noticeable bite out of WoW's marketshare, and that that bite being very overstated, being really no more than a nibble. How at 400k players, AoC qualifies as a success whereas EVE Online (EVE) is considered a more niche MMO at 250k excapes me. I would think compared to WoW's 10.9 million, both are rather niche. Still, the fact that 60% of WoW players who left for AoC seemed to have left WoW altogether, presumabely for AoC but possibly for other titles, has provided some notice, one might presume concern, for Blizzard executives and shows that WoW is starting to show it's age, with the inference that that lucrative revenue stream that has flowed and swelled each year into Blizzard's accounts is at jeopardy of being channelled into other coffers. Put another way, if only WoW's monthly fathful can be lured to pop into other gaming temples to partake, they might be seduced to convert, congregate, and hence tithe at a new fount of fun.

With such a hope, Mythic, supplemented in development funds after their purchase by Electronic Arts (EA), hopes to spin the Warhammer franchise into gold, and not the virtual kind mind you. For those that don't know the history, there is also said to be a bit of rivalry between these titles. The original Warcraft and Starcraft RTS computer games were originally developed by Blizzard as spin-off products for Games Workshop's successful roleplaying and miniatures tabletop wargames, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and Warhammer 40K. Due to a falling out along the way, they were rebranded, leaving superficial and obvious similarities but no direct tie between game universes. If any of that is at all true, then the irony is that both Warcraft and Starcraft have eclipsed their inspiration to dominate the computer game arena. Though Warhammer FB and Warhammer 40k have continued to success on the computer and game consoles in various incarnations and continue to be successful in their miniatures forms, nothing to date has equaled the raging monetary success of the Warcraft and Starcraft titles through all their incarnations, including and especially WoW.

I predict that Warhammer Online will be a success. In fact, given the horde of Warhammer miniatures players that will be tempted to try out an MMO, if only for the Warhammer name, success seems almost guaranteed as long as the product is viable and captures some of that Warhammer feel; Whammer is and does. But niche success is not what EA Mythic, nor any vendor I would argue, is after. There has been a continual parade of MMOs since WoW's breakthough that have embarked on the seas of public fancy, with dreams of plunder and fame. Many it seems have either sunk on their journey, landed and died or are dying via subscriber starvatation, or have washed ashore, barely clinging to life in a market landscape that cannot support them all. Yet more come, lured by the sirens' call of money - a lot of money. Blizzard's annual revenue is stated to be somewhere between 1.1-1.3 BILLION dollars anually, WoW contributing most of that. Though subscription rates in the hundreds of thousands guarantee a profit stream, the ROI is not titanic, given the time to develop these monster offerings. Game manufacturers, who had been quite content before with the raging success of two-hundred thousand monthly subscribers consider such to be niche titles nowadays - sustainable and perhaps a small cash cow for new offerings - or at best something that will grow over time but will never be the market dominator. I suspect this shift in perspective has something to do with the WoW banner that each company holds up when attracting investors. The problem is, use WoW as a showcase for potential, understand that investors will expect WoW-like returns - which in turn puts pressures on development to deliver and deliver early.

Mythic was said to be shielded somewhat by a massive cash infusion from EA so that items previously on the shelf were back in production, though several key features will still be absent at launch, such as key tanking classes and cities for some of the races. So how did Mythic EA do judging by my eyes over this weekend? Well, to be honest, though I devoted many hours last weekend to try the product out, that demands on my time would not allow for anything other than a cursory examination. So take what you read as being simply superficial observations in the context of personal preference and not a good valuation of the product beyond that context. Games are like movies and books, each title speaks to its own audience and people find such that best fit their own personal tastes and are valuable only if you lean towards the same kinds of material in a similar manner. For myself, I tend to value MMOs as a casual social function to hook up with IRL friends, and value their environment and storytelling (quests) immersive experience - which puts me squarely in the PvE camp, admittedly though I have a blast when mixing in PvP and love to go on PvP jags as a welcome break. I also have an admitted short-MMO-attention span and will jump titles, being more interested in the mechanics and game aspect, rather than in creating any long-term presence.

Cost

Whammer is intended to be a subscription-based MMO with a monthly fee ($14.99), same as WoW, like EVE, like LOTRO, like AoC, like Pirates of the Burning Sea, like Dungeons and Dragons Online, like City of Heroes/Villains, like Everquest (EQ), like Star Wars Galaxies, like Final Fantasy XI (FFXI), like Tabula Rasa, like Huxley, like Vanguard, etc, etc, etc. Does anyone see a pattern here? Does anyone see a problem here? Well, I suggest the problem is that these vendors are starving themselves of revenue by trying to outdo WoW in ways other than monthly revenue model and, often, even pricing. An interesting thing about products is that you tend to go with what you know. Before Macromedia was ingested by its competitor, Adobe, I once went to a product review where Macromedia was showcasing it's new line, including Freehand. We oohed and ahhed and rightfully admitted that Freehand was a better product than Adobe's Illustrator on many counts. Why then was Freehand a minority product at probably less than 5% of market share? Why did, in a crowd of hundreds, only two people who were admitted Illustrator users, commit to switching to Freehand? Because people like to go with what they know, despite their products perceived inferiority. There's just more efficiency, less new learning, less cost, and a realization that your product will probably rip off those fancy new features given time anyway - which Illustrator did. I guess it won't come as a shock then that every MMO on the market is derivative of others in some way, in most ways, and that process is ongoing, with even venerable WoW not above incorporating "new" features in their forthcoming expansion that already exist in current competitors like LOTRO. And beyond that, something very particular to virtual worlds in general, you tend to go not with what you know, but with who you know. Unless you're a game jumper like me who just follows the fun, MMOs are also social ventures where you build up an online relationship of friends and associates; you're less inclined to try out a competing product because you'll miss your friends and whatever social distinction and ego-loot you wasted half your life in accumulating when your MMO alter-ego (emphasis on ego) goes away and you're a miserable peon again, possibly mimicking your real life.

In order to break through that tough skin of resilience and "loyalty" in such a lop-sided market, competing vendors really need to start thinking about ways to entice users into trying their products by being cheaper and more accessible AND better since better is almost required but not enough. Several of the above MMO products, at least to my thinking, are far superior to WoW - having learned from WoW to do what WoW did and cherry-pick the most successful vendor's (that would now be WoW) best features and either ignore or improve on the worst. But trying to steal WoW's thunder by costing the same is admitting defeat before the battle. Cost, trouble and especially sad farewells of leaving friends and associates (and armour) behind who will not exodus the old venue will always give the homeground advantage to WoW. I think one of the shocks for the Turbine's execs was how many people were willing to pony up a one-time $200 for a lifetime subscription to LOTRO in lieu of the normal monthly fee option. Though LOTRO has a healthy population that's growing, it's estimated to be quite small for all the quality that LOTRO presents and certainly when compared to WoW or upstarts like AoC. Just imagine if LOTRO had lowered that fee a bit. People who just cannot stomach the thought of another monthly subscription fee, especially in this economy, might be enticed if the fee was only a third of that fee or there was a fixed-price pay-up to reach that mark. The sucker punch is that, like micro-transaction and "free" MMOs, you still get people to pay, just through expansions and other extensions of an optional menu of ala carte bonuses and items and expansions, so the savings are somewhat illusionary.

Which is why I think that micro-transaction MMOs, if they ever manage to a) get over the cultural barrier in their penchant for grinding b) manage to get some quality writing and content will be the most likely challenge to WoW's market dominance. He who gets the most money wins, despite the revenue model. And if people paid more attention to the fact that Guild Wars (GW), which does not have a subscription fee, but bases its revenue model on expansion sales has sold millions and millions of copies and still has millions of users, despite also being rather long-in-the-tooth - gee, guess who's the real winner in the take-home sweepstakes? The answer is, unless you're WoW or GW, it's not any of the above. And my guess is it also won't likely be Whammer. So for cost, Whammer won't be more than other vendors, but since game-jumpers like me who have no real loyalty and leave for the next new thing aren't a good basis for long-term revenue stream, Whammer, coming as late as it does into the market, will really have an uphill battle seducing established MMO players away long-term. They might have a better job bringing in new players who adore the Warhammer brand name but who are new in general to MMOs. For Whammer's sake, let's hope so.

Combat & Quests

(/yawn) Sorry? What did you say? Sorry, let me read that quest text again: OK, it's no secret that all MMOs pretty much all use the same types of quests: kill x, get x, carry this, find this, rescue and escort some hopeless git, yada yada yada). Whammer cannot likely find a new paradigm, nor does it even seem to be trying. But given the wealth of lore already extent in the Whammer universe, can this MMO create engaging quests that hook me and move me through the story? Well, perhaps I was just distracted by the ugly graphics and bad animations but though I should have been engaged, I wasn't. Whammer really doesn't ease you into the world, and help you get a sense of your character's place in it all. Oh yes, you get the basic quests and if you know about the lore, you're probably ready-set-go. But compared to stellar quest writing as exists in games like LOTRO, and certainly AoC's maturely written quest lines - especially those on Tortage, Whammer is snoring boring. And there's little attempt to help you create that construct that makes for more emotional engagement (which means I'll want to log in and find out what happens next in my "personal" story). I mean, the Whammer races are full of nuance and rich lore and backdrop - and yet, Chaos felt as cookie-cutter as did Dark Elves as did High Elves. Greenskins maybe had a better feel and more time with them might have helped verify that. For someone who was not already versed in Whammer lore, I would find it pretty disjointing. I mean I know the factions are at war with each other - but why? And more to the point, why should I care? I was pretty much dropped into the world and quests were an excuse to go whack-a-mole - despite a veneer of racial context. Not until I got into the Public Quests, and that probably more due to the fact that that quest mechanic was fun rather than the quest itself, did I find myself getting engaged. And this is from someone who knows the backstory. I think not having a good springboard into the world probably left me with that sense of distance which is so regrettable because of any titles with a huge wealth of engaging lore to draw upon, Whammer would be among that number. Perhaps Whammer suffers a bit from being the offspring of Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) developers married to an offshoot of a game where lore and story were merely a backdrop of getting together for a massive battle. Stories in Warhammer miniatures are like building a lovely sand-castle but where the real act is the tearing down and the anticipation of the destruction and carnage to come. The real story is in the battle and anything that comes before need only been a pretext for the action. And the quest writing for this game, the game itself in fact, feels much the same rote mechanism of laying out the props, terrain and dressing for that battle.

Do I get the sense that the quest NPCs had any real depth or personality behind them? I did not. Certainly AoC's uneven yet slowly expanding quality voice-acting has yet to be matched. But even LOTRO and WoW, through just good story writing, managed more presence than Whammer did from what I experienced. And I'll have to hand it to LOTRO for a nice touch in that quest givers remember and respond to your character based on past actions, which even if its a bit of flavor text, helps preserve some of that epic story feel. There were some small exceptions but overall, Whammer quest-givers were as bland and forgettable as the environmental textures around them.

But, let's give props to Whammer that, like AoC, quest drops are more like they should be in a game to help cut down on the needless tedium of grinding. No more liverless boars or tongueless turtles that you find in WoW. But again, this should be a given, so it's welcome, but something that many if not most MMOs are doing now.

Public Quests are one of Whammer's strongest points and my personal favorite. I can't say how much fun it was to play in the Public Quest areas: general open areas tied to a quest where the goals and rewards can be contributed to by anyone in the area and therefore a chance at the lucrative (virtual albeit) rewards. Funny thing about virtual worlds, but I often find myself a bit shy in a crowd - even a virtual one. With open game arenas like those presented in Whammer's public quest area (which were not zoned or instanced in any way), you simply discovered them and when the short timer reset (if you happened upon them too late for the loot rolls at end), you could just pitch in and lend a hand next round and pretty soon you're on your way to meeting people. It's a great feature that many other MMOs would do well to borrow (as apparently Whammer did I am told, as this feature is/was part and parcel of another MMO: FFXI). In fact, being an avid observer of virtual world use in general, not just those for gaming, I would say that activity zones where people can just opt into an event or game or fun challenge without invitation or a need to partner or group or ask permission is a great feature that would benefit any communal medium for its social draw and benefit. The ones I experienced in Whammer consisted of three linked events comprising the overall quest and really did more than any of the other quests to help capture that faction feel for self-definition as regards character and a character's place in the overall world.

Combat? Hit a button and watch an animation, watch the numbers and eventually it dies. But will anyone care? I didn't. Combat was repetitive. Though later, I did unlock some buggy timing aspects that gave me a little variety in that one ability might unlock others and once I started getting the hang of that, I was finding myself getting more engaged and finally some of the intent of the game started shining through. But it took some time and effort for that to happen. Right off the bat, I wasn't having much fun. It reminded me somewhat of LOTRO, though I got the inkling that Whammer will eventually do a better job in keeping me focused on the combat, it still didn't offer the same level of engagement as AoC's simple 3-key targeting. Still, I got the sense that the method of this madness was very nuanced and was one of the potentials of this game, even if the visual execution - though varied - was a bit off. It still all felt very WoW-like, but with funky animations where blows didn't seem to quite connect with foes. Also, aggro radius was so minimal that my character was hardly in danger unless he/she wanted to be, and therefore hardly challenged. Quests became very boring as a result and PvE combat was a thing to be suffered rather than relished, as it is in AoC.

Death penalties: none, nada, no repair bill; runs back were short. Like that? Yeah, I did. But.... not sure if death penalties are always a bad thing as they do lead to a bit of caution and discipline and use of tactics. I think the summation is that I don't miss death penalties when they're gone, nor do I mind them much if they're there as long as they're not excessive, as EQs was said to be. Both treatments have some merit. And I have to say, WoW still has the classiest death experience - or did. I haven't played in ages and I think someone told me they got rid of the b&w ghostly vantage, which is a shame since it was beautiful and surreal. Whammer does have a repair function though, which is for damaged loot that can be reconstituted by a merchant to something nicely useful in many cases. Now that was a repair bill I was happy to pay.

Crafting

Didn't see it; didn't do it. Did read about it in the PDF that came with the download though. Seems like there are more abilities to influence craft outcome than in WoW - similar to what LOTRO does in some ways, but more complex and to my mind, more interesting for its implied nuance - insofar as one can get from reading a manual and looking over intended interfaces. However, only a true test will bear that assumption out. I really can't stand crafting in most MMOs. I like the products of such because they help my characters look dudded out and their whack-a-mole abilities get nicely boosted but the means to those products are often dull dull dull process of hours of tedious gathering and used, as in the case of games like WoW and LOTRO, to disguise the fact that people have run out of things to do in the game. I don't know that Whammer will be any better, but at least the process adds a lot of complexity (hence wasting even more time but let's face it, some people, many people I'm guessing because these things keep getting added, like games with crafting complexity) getting "leet" and "uber" craft gear and abilities now to have some boasting and usefulness beyond whacking or sizzling things. And as proven by EVE's complex and studied virtual economy, rare crafting abilities can and will help your characters money pile grow, hence opening up other opportunities (sadly, like the real world, the lust for the bestest and mostest is everpresent and money, virtual or otherwise, is key if that's what you're after).

Graphics

It has been said for graphics that the real deal will be in the installed product. The graphics in the beta download, in order to keep the file size down given it was already over nine gigabytes, was stripped of higher resolution textures and defaulted to medium/low. So there's no way to really accurately and fairly judge the product until release. Sadly, Whammer did not take a page out of LOTRO's book by giving out a disc in its preview package that included high resolution textures. Even so, since many who participated in the LOTRO preview did so via download, like Whammer, that game also was criticized for looking poorly - which when you think about how lauded LOTRO is for its environmental graphics, makes one wonder how many dissed the game and never looked back not realizing that they were missing key files. There is that maxim that you can only make a first impression once; I think for general public access like these open betas - best to not assume that everyone realizes the unfinished state of the product. Not everyone is that experienced or savvy about these things. And not including the high resolution textures as a seperate download or really overstating the point that the beta did not include final graphics I suggest was a mistake because it has led to the proliferation of rumour that Whammer is a somewhat ugly game, which may or may not be true. Insofar as an unfinished beta will allow then...

Character graphics were limited. I found very few of the "pretty" race faces to be appealing. If you're going for character as opposed to beauty - well, maybe a bit more choice then for your orcs and dwarves but really, character models and combat animations rather dull and limited - and actually I think Whammer really does less well than most other MMOs since WoW. Some of the incidental animations, like characters' hair moving or different poses adopted while standing still were welcome, but for the most part, the rather oddly rigid stance of standing and running mimicked the limited mobility. Sometimes I was wondering if they were taking being miniatures' game inspired a little too far. I had to check and see if there was a bit of plastic underneath my characters' feet.

Whammer, sadly to my mind but I think I understand the reasoning, went with a cartoony look from the school of WoW - certainly better looking - for cartoons, but toons nonetheless. I suspect this one done to help create the stability required for engaging in the huge PvP battles that will govern much of Whammer and pay homage to its miniatures roots as well as keeping the game accessible to a variety of systems. Still, it's hard to find a recent MMO that has worse looking character models in fact. Several "free" toony MMOs like Silk Road, Sword of the New World etc even manage to outdo Whammer. I would say, even venerable Guild Wars and its giraffe-necked creations looks far far better in this aspect.

Environmental graphics are a mixed bag. The overall art design is really fascinating to someone who played in the Warhammer world, either in computer RTS or miniatures. So to virtually step through this world - there were some really great buildings, weapons, and structures to see. Several NPCs or dressing characters marching to war were stock out of game replicas - only moving - so how cool is that? (<-- yeah, geek factor - so what!). But the execution again was very disappointing, flat, well, again, cartoony. It was good looking for a cartoon world. But given the environmental richness of LOTRO, EVE, or even to some extent, AoC, very ho-hum. When you've seen dynamic shadows, specular lighting from a moving sun or moon, water, or clouds, as well as varied weather - it's really hard to get excited about something as dated looking as Whammer. In fact, Whammer reminded me of nothing more than Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC), another Mythic title that I believe predated even WoW. I never played DAoC but I've seen it enough on YouTube videos to not get the sense that perhaps that the Mythic art department was falling back on old styles a little too much. Item variety, even for what little I saw, was actually quite good. I was presented with a number of very interesting upgrades, which if it holds true to endgame, bodes well for the game. Sadly, in the rush to get such a large offering out the door, item variety and textures can sometimes suffer - well often suffer, let's face it. Not everyone has the development resources of Blizzard and this aspect has a "we'll fix it later" aspect to almost all MMOs. AoC is rightly held up to lacking in such - characters at 80th level looking hardly different than at 30th. The items look fantastic for their detail, but the world has the uniform look of an Orwellian state for its lack of clothing options. Now, though this is an aspect of vanity, it does showcase what people are like within an MMO: object variety, perhaps more to the point, object recognition based on its graphics helps lead to that status aspect at a glance and people crave such. A good MMO will understand this need to cater to vanity and variety and Whammer, from what I can see, is well on its way to doing a stellar job, and certainly better than many.

PvP

I really had a good time in PvP. It was just like WoW (*ducks for cover*). It was fun, yet hardly groundbreaking. Since I was playing ranged classes, I probably missed out on collision detection (if they got close I died and that was that), which opens up a whole new world of strategic possibilities, so kudos to Whammer for that. But given the fact that AoC has collision detection already, the fact that Whammer introduced it into their version of WoW's battlegrounds is welcome but more a statement of what I think all MMOs should be doing anyways rather than something special in and of itself. Collision detection will I think really make for some very interesting and engaging, strategic even, uses in Realm versus Realm (RvR) combat (imagine a shield wall of armoured melee protecting your squishies). As for RvR areas, I did not experience them. My reading suggests that they are massive battle auto-flagging zones with capture goals. And the fact that hundreds of players can engage in open-air battles and sieges (with all those fun siege engines from Warhammer) is fantastic when you think about it. And the fact that they even reshape the world boundaries a bit, right up into the capital cities is huge - and might also be a huge pain if Whammer suffers from some of the faction imbalance that plagued WoW. But for general PvP, when you think about the fact that you might now be able to PvP in mobs numbering hundreds on a side, for anyone who's suffered through WoW's open world PvP or LOTRO's PvMP Ettenmoors stutter-fest on a crowded night, you really appreciate that its the game not the graphics that drive the fun in these sessions. And Whammer is crafted for the game and delivers fun through this kind of game it seems. But we'll have to see how they shape up post-release. And that is probably also indicative of DAoC roots and the intent of Mythic - to build upon the tradition of what is said to have been the best massive PvP game that ever existed, even if it means some compromise for graphics. But then I would argue that EVE manages to do massive battles and look good doing them.

One thing really welcome, something that was promised for AoC but has yet to makes its incarnation, is that you get XP for PvP. So instead of being tied to quests, you can exclusively PvP for levels or more likely do a mix as your mood strikes you - which is even better than what I get a sense of from what AoC intends, given that PvE and PvP bars are parallel, meaning an either or. In Whammer, it's both at once. PvP, PvE - whatever. You do, you learn - brilliant. And, unlike AoC, it was great to see it actually implemented in a game. In fact, the whole rewards structure for achievements and PvP and other was very well done and had me going for "one more" round of action, just to see what I could unlock in the way of titles, accomplishments, etc.

Sound

It was present but not something to make note of. Games like AoC especially, but to a lesser extent LOTRO, do a much much better job of ambient sound. But again, this might be a case of having to limit media files for the beta. For now, having experienced AoC's rich but never intrusive treatment, I'm not likely to be impressed by other vendor offerings. Sound in Whammer does what it is meant to do, seems accurate to the setting but did little to draw me in and was in fact absent in many cases when compared to AoC or LOTRO.

Music

Very martial and in keeping with the tone of the game, really helped me focus on the fact that my characters were at war. But otherwise, ironically uninspiring. Certainly music seemed far substandard compared to WoW's wonderful score. AoC and LOTRO also do a much better job, both with incredible music scores. For Whammer, I found that music seemed more as a required afterthought and dressing to the whack-a-mole events and indicative of the intent of what I take as more of a PvP venture then a story and quest exploration.

Stability

Whammer didn't crash my system but once (and that wasn't a system crash but a client lock. I just forced quit and restarted happy as could be). Those other graphically rich games crash me like mofos - so that's something to be said about Whammer graphics: like WoW's, they're hardly taxing and very approachable to the masses. I'd say they did this at risk of being dated but they seem to have purposely made them dated. Retro Whammer runs just fine and that's a blessing to be sure. And this really impressive when you factor that this game is still in beta.

User-interface

I really liked the Tome of Knowledge interface that included not only quests, but social standing, awards, titles. This was easy to access, well-organized, and often contextual, as in I could right-click on the quests visible in my tracker (displayed on the screen) and if I forgot any details, I could find them easily as the book opened up to the right page. Map objectives were clearly indicated, though not as well as in AoC, pretty much the same and certainly a lot better than in LOTRO and WoW. This of course is a mixed-blessing in some ways as it tends to cut down on exploration. But let's face it, who doesn't run to Thottbot or some other such at the first sign of "can't find" anyway.

There was a wealth of information other information within the Tome including some very tantalizing hints at future exploits and accomplishments ready to be unlocked. "Good" MMOs tend to tease, a bit or a lot, in holding off access to ultimately valueless items or titles or abilities (except in the context of the game), where their exclusivity makes them a desired commodity among people who share the delusion that virtual items have real worth (which leads to virtual items actually being worth something since people can and do play even exorbitant money for something that exists only virtually - but that's fuel for another blog post). Anyway, this was a very nice feature as a lot of this stuff gets thrown all over the UI and can be a bit of a search in other games. Here's it was well organized and well at hand, and shows that Whammer devs were analyzing the competition to do what every good MMO (and product) should do: do the competition better.

I also liked the built-in key options and easy and varied binding options. It took me a while to get used to what keys could do what, but once I got the hang of it all, I was clicking away. I was annoyed however by the delay in getting my character to react to my input, but I'll put that down as an obvious beta bug. If there was some sort of lag indicator, like framerates or latency, I wasn't able to find it. If it's there, it should be as such is really helpful to analyze problems or at least give a heads up if you think you're about to drop connection so that your team can wait before launching that key attack.

Summary

Whammer is more about being a good game than looking good. Its strengths are in its well-organized support features like guild organization, the Tome of Knowledge, and offering several ways to level - and in its ability to apparently deliver on the massive battle feel. But like the wargames it derives from, I often felt that the content was merely dressing for a prepared battleground and of secondary importance, as were the graphics and other attendant media.

In a nutshell, I would say that the product is rich in context, which is not unexpected given a quarter-century's worth of gaming lore spun from the original products, even if that context is not fully explored as it could be for more emotional and storytelling engagement. The execution, therefore, is uneven. What results is what seems on the surface a fairly dated product that has a lot of shortfalls but when examined in more detail offers great potential and delivers a lot of fun, often despite initial concerns. In fact, I was surprised at how much fun I had once I got over my initial disappointment. MMOs based on intellectual properties share a lot of the same pitfalls as does anything based on a shared genesis. It's like reading a book and then going to see the movie. The book sent you to the movie but colours what you expect to see and almost sets the movie to disappoint at some level: same with MMOs. That said, though I was surprised in ways I hadn't expected, overall I was very underwhelmed and somewhat disappointed in the product. Compared to some already existing titles, Whammer seemed fairly lacking in several key points, though achieving high notes in others.

Still, whether you're a Warhammer fan, or an MMO player just looking for the next big thing, or you just need a break from WoW-fatigue, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is certainly worth taking the time for a look-see and virtual spin. It's going to be a great game for some people. And anything that helps foster competition and diversity in this area of virtual interaction is welcome and will make for a healthier climate for everyone, WoW devotees included.

Top 20 most influential people in the MMO Industry (2007)....

2008-06-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

...are listed here. But if you want to read the rationale behind the choices of those selected, that is the list according to Beckett Massive Online Gamer, you'll need to get their July/August 2008 issue. As a bonus, you'll also get a list of up-and-coming names that will possibly loom large in the 2008 list, along with other information about current and future MMO titles.

MMO games have proven to be the most successful virtual worlds to date, not only in terms of revenue generated, but in how they've captured the focus and time of millions of users. These games are so popular, they provide the opportunity for social uses and activities outside their intended function. I argue that any attempts to bring non-game virtual worlds more into the mainstream of the Social Web, let alone a comprehensive virtual medium, need understand and account for these social phenomena within their own solutions matrices.

Beauty of the Blowfish

2008-04-04T12:29:00.000-07:00

I was amazed at how the fish effects were pulled off for The Chemical Brothers' video: The Salmon Dance. You would swear that they had used real fish. So I went and found an old blog post on Creative Review interviewing Framestore CFC's Ben Cronin, the VFX Editor for the video. The details left me even more impressed. Of course my favorite, like for most I think, is the beatbox blowfish. 360 individually drawn fish (I had been told it was 200) were created, with most of the animation and lip-synchronization done manually. I was impressed just watching the video but now - wow!

And yes, for you aquarium purists, the video mixes species that would never live in the same environment. Not only that, according to the interview, the blowfish is a composite of two different species and the squirrel fish has attributes scanned in from a fish market mullet. So just take it for fanciful fun - and fun it is.

Google Earth's impact on virtual discovery

2008-04-01T15:11:00.000-07:00

Australian geologist, Arthur Hickman, now has a meteor crater named after him, thanks to his use of Google Earth. While cruising Earth virtually from up high, looking for channel iron deposits, Arthur discovered the now-named, Hickman Crater, North of the town of Newman, in Western Australia. Previous surveys in this mining area had failed to identify the crater, which stood out visually to Dr. Hickman's eye. He was able to have a fellow scientist corroborate his find by visiting the site and the rest is news history.

I thought the subtext of the news report, that Google Earth already has this demonstrated commercial geological value and use, was very interesting. I'd not known about it and wonder how many other scientific uses this and similar virtual tools are currently being put to. This discovery will no doubt inspire more such virtual "expeditions": eager professional and amateur virtual explorers will seek to add to our understanding of our own world, and thereby make a name for themselves, all from the comfort of their homes and offices.

Survey results for virtual worlds collaborative use

2008-03-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Results from a virtual world collaborative use survey undertaken by the Virtual Worlds Consortium for Innovation and Learning, Special Interest Group on Virtual Worlds, the Serious Second Life Group in Boulder, and the MetaverseU Network of Stanford University, have been published under the title: Virtual Worlds and Collaborative Work: Survey Results.

Survey sections are titled: Participants Profile and Background; General Issues and Questions about Virtual Worlds and Collaborative Work; Collaborative Work in Second Life: Now and In the Future; Collaborative Works Using Virtual-World Platforms Other.

The participants were mostly virtual world users or advocates, mostly with a Second Life affinity. There seemed to be a lot of unfamiliarity with other vendors. But there's some interesting surprises I found, such as: the preponderance (read enthusiasm) of business responders vs those from academia; management being seen as a hurdle to virtual world adoption; overwhelmingly positive outlook for Second Life for educational use but uncertainty that it will do as well for business collaboration.

It's a fairly brief document overall so certainly work a look. Though not necessarily comprehensive, it was thought-provoking, especially where I tended to disagree with the majority. It certainly made me think twice about my own opinions.

I know the avatar I'm talking to isn't real. But is she real?

2008-03-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

Presence can be costly. It's a lot of overhead to consider. And one has to figure that the virtual world never sleeps. Logging into Second Life at different times, it takes on a European, Australian, or Asian tone. Companies have to figure that a visitor might pop in at any time.

Which is why AI avatar "bots" are being developed that can take on that overhead instead of having a real person. They work quite cheap - free in fact beyond their build cost and they don't take breaks. The initial ones are likely going to be fairly simple responders but there are rumblings of some very savvy ones (see Artificial Intelligence Applications in 3d Virtual Worlds) that can do a credible job of mimicking the responses of a real person.

This of course undercuts one of the basic presumptions of virtual worlds, that an avatar represents a real person. One of the interesting aspects of virtual worlds and MMOs is that people tend to treat an avatar at face value, as if they were what they appeared to be. If that avatar appears to be a human man or woman, you, as a virtual world user, would probably respond accordingly. Imagine a virtual world where someone can seed avatars to make a space seem more popular as if other people really found it engaging, making you think twice about stopping to take a look around at the offers. This is already being done in MTV Virtual Worlds: when an event doesn't draw in enough people, bots are seeded to dispell the impression of unpopularity. Or that person chatting you up and that seems so interested in your latest real world shopping adventure could be a bot mining you for buying trends. Or your new "friend,", taking advantage of how viral marketing works, just swears by Eau'dee'doh perfume or MuskOxen deodorant.

"Cogito ergo sum" doesn't quite sum it up any more, does it?

We are who we're not

2008-03-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

Second Skin is a new documentary that examines the lure and some of the dangers of virtual worlds, specifically the MMO games: World of Warcraft and Everquest.

Judging by the trailer, it appears to be in the same vein of other documentaries, like Trekkies and Darkon, movies that gave us an intimate glimpse into the lives of people who are so drawn into fantasy worlds, that their fantasy lives become dominant factors in their real lives. It is understood and shown that for many, these events are purely fun and casual. Not everyone has the same degree of fascination or hunger for an alternate existence. But the true focus and power of these films is when we meet people who's fantasy lives become so excessive, they supersede anything else. Trekkies highlights social groups and individual lifestyles that gravitate around the Star Trek universe, showing how the Trek franchise and fan numbers have increased with each decade, where Darkon explores a live-action roleplaying and wargaming group born out of the success and interest in Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy-embellished history enactment. Though both movies show associated individual pastimes, what is ultimately underscored is that these are both social phenomena. Even individual pursuits mostly take place within a larger context: individuals associate in groups that congregate in even larger groups which ultimately engage in large-scale annual or semi-annual events.

I think part of the fascination with these movies is that they are in part cultural anthropology and in part, geek-voyeurism. We get to peek into lives that for most of us are very different. For many viewers, I think there is a trap that they can somehow feel superior for being so non-geeky, or at least less a geek. And yet, say what you will, for Darkon especially but even for Trekkies, the emphasis seems to be highly social and to bring about friendships, bonds, and human interaction. And this counters a commented upon trend in modern culture that people are becoming more insular and less community oriented than preceding generations. So regardless of how you might approve or disapprove of the lifestyles of the people shown, they are meeting and interacting with others, often in the flesh, forming life bonds and exercising social will. Socially, they will have succeeded in functioning in ways that many people who might disparage or judge them have yet to achieve in their own lives.

That said, Second Skin seems to show a different short of community altogether. Though virtual association can precipitate a real world gathering for romance or group meetings, for the most part the interaction is befitting the medium and done solely through virtual selves. Missing is the "meat-space" physical engagement and association of Darkon or the showcase of club and convention gatherings that underscores much of Trekkies. Though participants in both these group phenomena embellish their social interaction through virtual mediums, for the most part virtual or Web interaction functions to support and enhance real-world engagement. For those shown in Second Skin, it seems to be more the opposite: rare as they are, real world engagements seem to underscore and reinforce the main activities, which are solely virtual. If true, the effect in some cases would be to push the person back into the virtual medium as the basis for generating more such social contact.

What happens when alternate reality becomes more important and more meaningful than just a casual activity? All three films examine this question of obsession. The core physical activity of Darkon shows the most real engagement of self. Alternate reality is compartmentalized and though it drives a lot of activity outside of the events and might be one of the most important things in a given life, there is clearer distinction between fantasy self and the real world. With Trekkies, though we are given to understand that there is a broad range of engagement, we meet several individuals for whom the alternate world of science fiction influences not only their pastimes, but crosses over to become part of their dress, work, lifestyle, life choices, even their sex lives. It's really hard to judge by a short trailer, but with Second Skin, it seems to show people for whom their real world selves are not necessarily subsumed physically by the alternate reality, but where the real world itself is largely irrelevant because it has no meaning to a virtual existence. I'm guessing the folks shown in Second Skin share much of the same needs for acceptance, social status, success, and wealth with those in Darkon and Trekkies, factors that might very well be missing from their real lives and which are certainly missing for some of those shown. Mentally then, the only way to achieve these is solely virtual for the most part. And so their alternate lives tend to, I suspect more so than in Darkon and Trekkies, become dominant to the exclusion and proper functioning in the real world, according to how much they feel they need the rewards provided solely in their lives as lived through alternate realities.

There is another, perhaps even darker aspect to be shown as well. Though commerce and merchandising are a big part of all such activities, one of the lives reviewed in Second Skin is said to be that of a "gold famer." This is usually, but not exclusively, a person from Asia who works long "sweat shop" hours in front of a computer to feed their own hunger by feeding the world hunger for virtual goods, or the virtual currency to buy virtual goods. Since for many people, virtual status equates to real status insofar as they're concerned, there is a real market for such goods. A New York Times article last year estimated that the money generated from such sales was then $1.8 billion. Given the growth of virtual worlds overall, and the large numbers of new children's virtual worlds funded by commercial and media giants, one can expect that number to be much higher and to only increase over time.

Second Skin is currently being shown at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, where I believe Darkon made its debut. I have high hopes, that like the other documentaries mentioned, I'll soon be able to see it for myself on either the Independent Film Channel or via a video rental service like Netflix. Hopefully like those other fascinating perspectives into alternate reality and social groups, Second Skin provides an insightful, non-judgmental, and carefully balanced glimpse into real lives. I understand that most people who were featured in these documentaries felt the portrayal was fair and were mostly flattered by the attention. I hope that such is the same for those who are letting us get under their Second Skins.

Sims Online gets second life

2008-02-28T15:40:00.000-08:00

Now the question is: will The Sims Online (TSO)'s, now dubbed EA-Land, bid to become the next big simolean come up "a day late and a (linden) dollar short?"

TSO arrived at the virtual gate just a bit before Second Life. Unlike the new runner, it came with an impressive pedigree, having been a No. 1 computer game with millions of sales and, presumably, users. A lot of good money was probably expecting that to translate well to the MMO field. The bets were on. But at first go, TSO's eyes weren't on that skinny new horse, Second Life, saddled with the rather odd notion of a non-gaming virtual world, but on the lead thoroughbred, the one with all the derby crowns and the prize money to boot: Blizzard's World of Warcraft (WoW). As it turned out, TSO failed to win, place, or even show. Second Life continued to run just happy to be in the race, and would eventually come to dominate the non-gaming track. TSO could still be seen on the field, but in time, it became obvious its running days were over. Those who wanted to remember it fondly from its game incarnations kindly said it was in semi-retirement. Others looked to TSO's lack of motion, the cloud of bad buzz hovering around it, and the stench of failure permeating from it's direction and concluded that it was, in fact, a dead horse.

As it turned out, TSO was running the wrong race. The strengths of the computer and console game: the ability to craft a personal environment, meddle in virtual lives with god-like powers, and hone one's stable of sims to better or worse ends, were best enjoyed as a solo venture. These sorts of activities did not translate well to a multi-player environment. The attempts to instill some sort of multiplayer gaming activity overlay were said to be non-productive and boring. And one of the core strengths of The Sims game, the ability to create objects, houses, neighbourhoods and share them with other players, was not allowed for in its online incarnation, essentially alienating this core and beneficial group of users who enjoyed creation more than "playing." By the time user-created content was somewhat allowed, TSO was already a non-entity, nearly abandoned by its owners, and populated only by small cadre of hard-core users. As an MMO game, it had failed.

Had the owners of TSO and The Sims seen the growing interest and potential in social virtual worlds and the Social Web, and had they not been so fixated on the gaming and monthly revenue model, they might have taken similar steps as Linden Lab. They might have fostered a game economy that tied to real currency, the concept of personal space in virtual land ownership, and the notion of the sim avatar not as a gaming construct but as a personal extension of self. Had they done those things, they might have shifted gears, providing more avenues for social venture as the main raison d'etre for TSO. They might have reopened the flood gates for uploading user-generated content. After all, having dedicated modelers (modders) who actually like to make content to share is like having a club where the patrons bring the booze, food, and music and are happy to pay for the privilege. Looking back, imagine the what-if had TSO done all these things and to boot offered a free downloadable client and access, realizing that their "game" was never going to be another WoW, but that it had the chance for a successful niche nonetheless for social users and modders. What if they had also made each install and supplement of the game function as well as an online client and as a bonus come with both game and online objects, homes, and neighbourhood access that could only be found by buying the supplements? On start-up, one could have had the option to log into personal space or into the communal grid. I mean, as virtual worlds of all sorts have shown, there's a passion for virtual kitsch hoarding. With the ability to use registered product keys for existing customers to get their online goodies retroactively, and the notion of fostering the communal online grid as a means of collecting even more objects and additions, even if the sole intention was just to use them in the installed version, owner, Electronic Arts (EA) would have seen existing players enticed to at least try out the online version and likely return. Online players would have been eager to buy the next install supplement, if only to get the proprietary additions that such offered. The installed versions could even have been marketed as good modder tools, a way to actually create and share new content. Online and install, each would aid the other.

Had this been done, the existing user-base and modder community already existing in The Sims could have provided both an overwhelming head-start in numbers, and a defined activity in the form of modding environments and objects, and an active core user base, who were willing to add content on their own time with no cost to EA. Second Life had the same thing I suppose but they were just getting started. The thousands upon thousands of existing Sim objects, landscapes, buildings, already in existence, most of them free, would create a tsunami-like inundation of rich content comparison that would swamp any challengers. Even the fact that Second Life was a fully realized three-dimensional space compared to TSO's 2d/3d rendering I think would have worked in TSO's favor since mainstream computers then lacked a lot of the graphical power to work well with something like Second Life, whereas they would function just fine, or certainly better, with a graphic rendering already tested and applied in the desktop version. And a focus on social activity but keeping and expanding on the gaming functions of the failed version, adding things like maybe How to Host a Murder sharded "dungeons" etc, would have given TSO as a social world something still today very lacking in Second Life, more fun activities to help embellish and support the social function. Increased sales of games and supplements by online players as well as increased use of the online version by installed players, finally add to that a modest surcharge for uploading user-generated content and EA would have seen a healthy revenue stream. I doubt Second Life would have survived such competition and I suspect that the virtual landscape would have seen TSO as the WoW equivalent to the non-gaming set.

But hindsight is 20/20. And the leap of faith taken by Linden Lab and Philip Rosedale in establishing Second Life in the face of conventional wisdom is to their credit and it is the reason why Second Life, not TSO, is synonymous with virtual worlds in the minds of the general public. EA was only dabbling in online gaming, though I suspect with high hopes. I imagine the focus of developer, Maxis, and parent company, EA, was always more on development for the next Sims incarnation, The Sims 2. And that was the smart move. Game sales were a proven success and The Sims 2 went on to foster a whole new set of users and aficionados (my niece for example) as well as keeping the franchise healthy and active. Success is proven by the never-ending, it seems, list of supplements that can be purchased. And there are rumours of a Sims 3 on the way. So there's nothing to really fault Maxis/EA for dropping TSO. I can conjecture the "what if" and they might be thinking the same. But, a censured world like TSO would have been, and that EA-Land will be, for modded material would not have satisfied those who sought more adult activities, like gambling, etc. Those activities underscored much of the initial growth of Second Life, just as they did on a much larger scale for the Internet in general. Even the Sims enjoyed a fair bit of risque modding judging by some downloads. It was not the issue for the Sims because each install was a "world" unto itself. Having the desire for more "exposure" in a communal setting and not having an outlet might lead to dissatisfaction if such users turn out to be significant in numbers. And as far as the dress code, if one were to judge by a lot of the stuff one sees in Second Life, perhaps social worlds have to at least allow for King Crap and Queen Skank strutting their stuff as there seems to be a significant number of users who seem to enjoy the expressive freedom for this kind of display. Freedom of expression, I propose, will ultimately be more attractive and lack of censorship is one of the reasons for Web growth and adoption in general among adults. And this equates also to scripting and construction. Second Life constructs have the potential to be much more powerful, having nearly limitless underlying functional properties, whereas those embedded in Sims objects seem to be purely for manipulating game parameters: useless in a broader social sense beyond their cosmetic features. To say that a TSO that undertook some of the popular conventions of Second Life, as EA-Land proposes to adopt now, would have made TSO the dominant social virtual world (or least a successful venture as opposed to an outright failure) is not the same as saying that TSO would be either the most successful non-gaming virtual world ultimately (not even Second Life can knowingly claim that) or by extension, some sort of 3d incarnation of the next Web.

So given these realities, how does this new old version of a virtual world shape up now that it's found itself, supposedly? Well, I won't be able to judge until I'm able to get in. But on the surface, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have created a version of the Sims 2 (or 3) that mimicked an online version of that incarnation, which as I understand it, is a fully realized 3d space. Since user content was essentially denied for most practical purposes, it would have been a lot easier to make this migration for existing TSO users (just translate the existing objects) before opening the floodgates to user mods. Once they happen, it will be much harder, akin to impossible, to make the migration to a new graphical look, ala Sims 2/3, without abandoning some user content. People apparently think that the 2d/3d graphical use, being as it is popular in worlds like Habbo, which has users in the millions, means that there is nothing to worry about in the lack of graphic panache - and they could very well be right. But an online Sims 2 would be more akin to existing virtual worlds that EA-Land will be compared to by users first trying it out. Again, just my gut feeling that a more realistic virtual space will have the legs for the final race to who ultimately succeeds as a virtual worlds vendor for adults.

But maybe trying to capture the adult virtual landscape isn't what EA is really after. If EA is just, like so many companies with a wealth of media titles to offer, trying to establish it's own virtual gateway for its products and test the virtual waters, then I think the reincarnation of TSO as EA-Land could be a great success and is a wise move given the cost to reinvigorate an existing property rather than create it anew. EA has a lot of titles and the course of advertising and trying to entice users of EA land to explore some of these could be a bridge to offering what a lot of social virtual worlds lack, fun activities beyond the scope of social, shopping, and roleplaying. Many EA titles are going to appeal more to a younger crowd. A Sims-like incarnation, sharing as it does, the 2d/3d aspect of worlds popular with young children, might find a good niche in that space in-between when children are older than the Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin set, but younger than MTV Virtual Worlds users, say ages 9 - 13 years old. I think that could be a recipe for success. EA-Land looks more like worlds they're coming from but more sophisticated. It's a safe environment; it's social; it has more options for them to contribute, and hopefully will have some fun activities to keep them engaged. Thing is, I think if EA-Land can capture this market demographic and offer activities that would appeal to them as they got older, they'd have the adult crowd of tomorrow and younger users today just might stick with something like EA-Land as they got older, rather than trekking over to another offering en masse. But to achieve this, there must be a realization that the same steps that might have made The Sims Online a raging success when there was hardly any competition years ago are not going to have the same impact today. Couple to that the likely reality that many fans of the original The Sims game have probably migrated and cannot be considered to still offer the overwhelming figure they might once have been, both as users and contributors. Considering that children's virtual worlds are the most successful to date, the retro appearance of EA-Land can play to its favor if it were to be rethought of in terms of whom it is intended to target.

This is all good conjecture. But I'm still a little confused though who EA-Land is actually intended to appeal to for the here-and-now. The Play-doh logo makes me think children. EA games tie-ins, if they even exist, would appeal to a broad range but shifting more to the younger demographics. But the demographic of the original game, and any TSO returnees, are going to be older. Also the notions of a real currency equation, virtual real estate market, and Facebook tie-ins make me think of adult users.

So can TSO make a successful go of it in this crowded list of virtual worlds? Again, I really need at some point to get into the sim to see for myself, and that will need some precious weekend time for that, but on the surface, my list of pros and cons to offer for consideration toward answering that question are as follows:

Pros

Product recognition - people are generally aware of The Sims, even if they didn't play it
Adopting conventions of virtual land "ownership," currency, user-generated content, and other Second Life conventions should help make EA-Land what TSO could/should have been
Continued thriving user-base that can be tapped into (The Sims is still sold, supported, and used by fans of the game)
EA has an impressive list of titles and could/should expand EA-Land to be a springboard for all of these - hopefully with free content that could not only further interest and sales but as well, help provide activity content.
Online version could stimulate games sales and vice versa (they really need to think about how to bridge these products, if not my suggestions above, some way)
Thousands of mods online, some better than the original content, potentially to make their way into the online version (rich content area ready to be tapped into)
Millions of former users don't need to be sold on the concept and can get up and running if they find their way to EA-Land.
Predominately female demographic of the original game represents a key market focus group as yet unavailable to most virtual worlds and MMOs, which could attract investors, corporate participation and use
Some game functions existed in the older version, so there's a promise they still might exist (though poor from what I heard. Still, they could represent an activity function lacking in many social worlds, though they should be improved/expanded upon - especially if more EA titles are brought into the mix.)
2d/3d diametric graphic display works wonderfully for many popular children's virtual worlds and is a natural bridge to adoption
Display requirements a lot less than other virtual worlds (I can really see EA-Land translating well for mobile use say and with mobile use projected to increase, this could be a key factor)
Censorship - given user content oversight, a much "safer" environment potentially than other virtual worlds
Facebook/Social Web tie-ins (Nice! Very good idea, IMHO and one of the best features).

Cons

Product recognition - Can former users of TSO especially, but anyone, trust that EA can deliver the goods to be worthy of the time and emotional investment to get involved in personal space and avatars in EA-Land when they failed the first time?
Is abandoning The Sims name in re-dubbing the offering going to make it harder for current and former The Sims aficionados to find or realize that it exists?
In some ways, Maxis/EA are their own competitors. The Sims 2 has probably wooed many away from the original The Sims and adopters of Sims 2 aren't necessarily going to like the function and environment of EA-Land, which is essentially more like the original.
If there's no tie-in between online and installed products, success of one will have less impact on the other. (As far as I know, there are no plans to say offer unique "goodies" for online use from purchasing installed expansions nor any mechanism to bring installed users gracefully into the online fold. If this continues, I see this as a lost opportunity).
Just because there are thousands and thousands of mods online for The Sims doesn't mean the creators of that content will ever bother to have it offered for EA-Land. Many will likely have gotten bored with the Sims concept and moved onto other games, or will have adopted successors like Sims 2, or even Second Life, or some other virtual world, and enjoy more making objects for those spaces instead. This would lessen the resource potential for fast object growth from users to enrich the experience.
Demographic target still seems to be adults. Realizing that the virtual world market has changed and focusing on young teens might see better results.
Activity space still an unknown; original game did not translate well to multiplayer (Prior versions obviously failed to inspire people to stay with TSO. Will there even be any attempt at gaming functions within EA-Land?)
Graphic display dated, lacking the panache of many competitors (but this could actually be a plus if EA intends to target a younger demographic used to a similar display format)
Censorship (it imposes overhead on the part of the space owner and it could turn people away Eg. Branded objects are highly desirable to create a realistic living space since they populate real homes and lives: Coca-Cola, Apple, Mercedes). But when "officially" reviewed and approved, they present copyright problems. Censored worlds will probably decline to see these uploaded, which can lead to some dissatisfaction perceiving a lack user control I'm not saying it's right but it is reality. In fact, I read an article that suggested that such "pirated" virtual goods actually helped promote brand recognition and were still a positive force for the brand owner).
Censorship will also turn away adult users unless some form of zoning or demarcation (combat zones, etc) is provided for, which doesn't sound like will be the case.

So can they make a go of it? Can a dead horse be flogged to life? (/shrug)

You tell me.

Row, row, row your house...

2008-02-21T14:40:00.000-08:00

...gently down the street... Wait! That's not quite right, is it? Oh well, there's plenty not right in the world, global warming being one of them. Global warming is especially alarming, I would expect, if you're living in a country with a lot of landscape "borrowed" from the sea. And with rising sea levels threatening to take that land back during storm seasons, floating that "loan" takes on a whole new meaning. What do architects, Waterstudio, mean to do about the situation? Well, I'm glad you asked that question. I'm sure this would not surprise you, given their name, but this Dutch firm specializes in watery solutions. You don't believe me? Take a look at their projects page. Houses? Ha! Try neighborhoods, try apartment buildings, parking structures to boot. Now these structures aren't meant to go anywhere. They're moored essentially and rise responding to fluctuating water levels. So no rowing down the street, unless you're in big trouble. This not only makes such structures ideal for weathering global warming, but in any area prone to seasonal flooding. As you'd expect, coastal communities around the world are becoming very interested in such solutions.

Mobile Second Life? Dial me in

2008-02-21T12:14:00.000-08:00

Mobile game vendor, Vollee, says you can access your Second Life from your 3G-enabled mobile device. Of course, this kind of activity has long been anticipated and others are viewing this with anticipation of a different sort: the first hint of that bridge between mobile devices and the most popular virtual worlds: MMOs. Given that many children seem to be umbilically attached to their cell phones and gaming, the pairing seems both logical and explosive, ushering virtual world use into more mainstream adoption for that age set and beyond.

Mobile devices have already overtaken PCs in some areas of the world as the platform of preference, and in terms of gaming, are projected to overtake consoles. It seems quite likely that they will be the nearly universal working and communication platform of preference in the not too distant future, if use trends in Asia, as they often do, continue to project themselves around the world, and if more useful and entertaining applications continue to migrate or be developed for mobile sets.

If you are interested in partaking of a more mobile Second Life, sign up for the Vollee Second Life beta, which will commence in May. There are some qualifications for equipment (promise of a supported list forthcoming) and reminders to check your billing plan to make sure it can support this kind of heavy media use without breaking your purse/wallet.

Aside: it occurs to me that the phrase "dial me in" is both dated and dating; it is either destined for obsolescence, or its literal meaning will get lost in time (like the horrible "rule of thumb"). I bought a refurbished (same outside, newer insides) 1930's phone for the home office. It works with modern phone systems just fine. It is quite angular in parts, intentionally functional, and the hefty solid weight of its handset and the cloth covering on the cord mark it as something not quite right with this time. In fact, the tinny voice you hear and project make it seem as if you're talking to or from the past. Though not obvious at first glance, you also soon realize that this is something that has seen a lot of use. Its black surface is spotlessly clean but dull, a few tiny but tell-tale chips and scratches found here and there. I imagine all the lives and passions that have spoken through that same handset while I'm holding it. Many of those voices were long gone to dust before I was even born. And yet here is that same handset, that same dial, bridging the years between us. If there was ever to be found a "ghost in the machine," this would be the one. Speaking of that dial, it used to be when people asked to "use the phone," it was only obvious and most courteous that they be given an accessible and mostly private room to use: the office. But then there would be that dial. It is not like the dial even accustomed dial users once knew. Not easy nor gently gliding, this dial is only for the serious caller. It takes a firm hand and resolution to see the number all the way through on its journey to the finger stop. But in recent years, everyone has a cell phone and no one asks to use the phone. So though people still step into the office for some privacy, requests for help have fallen off. I still get called in on occasion. I'll step inside to find someone sitting down, finger pointed at my desk. "Is that a phone?"

Thinking inside the box

2008-01-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

Not that I have time for this sort of thing right now, but when I saw a post on the NMC Campus Observer advertising the availability of Stephane Zugswang's Virtual Reality Room (VRR), free and copyable for educational or non-profit uses within Second Life, I felt I couldn't miss the opportunity to observe the Tuesday demonstration, which as it turned out, included a whole wealth of attendant information.

The VRR is basically a square room. The nuance is in the application of seamless tiling to create an expansive vista that is not square but which appears, for lack of a better word, global - hence depending on the subject chosen, endless, as if you were standing in a real environment stretching all around you. This is achieved by using Apple Computer's QTVR technology. It is not a true QTVR viewed through the Quicktime player, but done to export textures applied to a Second Life cube to achieve the same effect.

And this effect can be quite remarkable insofar as Second Life graphics, that is as long as you can manage to stand inside the circular boundaries of the floor marker. As you can see if you have occasion to visit the NMC Resource Center to secure your own copy, stepping outside that boundary can sometimes lead to distortion as if you're standing in the sky for instance. Since the location at the NMC is also a working VRR, you'll have an option to judge for yourself by clicking on the HUD to change the setting and see the change render around you. Based on your choice, you can set the HUD on your own copy to be only visible by you or available to be clicked on by anyone as it is at the NMC. Depending on the speed of your computer, you'll just need to wait a bit for the scene to render. Examples ranged from real world vistas such as cityscapes to effectively shrinking one down in size to stand inside of a now larger than life room. And the entire affair can be rez'd or collapsed with hardly any effort.

To create the raw material for his rooms, Stephane prefers a good SLR camera along with a steady tripod. The process of photographic QTVR creation requires rotating the camera to take a series of overlapping pictures which are stitched together within a QTVR application. The pictures can be retouched if necessary using an application such as Photoshop. Stephane uses two lenses, depending on the subject. His Nikon 10.5 mm fisheye lens lets him capture his scene in eight pictures while he uses a telephoto lens that lets him do same in 16.

After capture, the whole affair is assembled and converted into a QTVR image using any number of available QTVR applications. Stephane uses and recommended the RealViz Sticher, which comes in three price options. The unlimited version, which depending on the exchange rate, currently costs just under $600 U.S, has features and options that Stephane recommends will be very welcome and worthwhile for anyone who seeks to create a number of such room textures. There are number of other applications and utilities that can create QTVRs, even freeware like Panotools (see SourceForge link). Given that it's free and has a user and knowledge base to draw from, Panotools is certainly worth more than you paid for it, but Stephane suggests that if you can afford it, you'll find it much easier and far less frustrating to use something like Sticher. A good application and a practiced hand can produce a QTVR in 10 minutes, depending on the subject.

Another exciting option is to create your landscape, even fantastic or otherworldly ones, within 3d applications and export the render as QTVR. Some applications already support this option (Bryce, Lightwave, Terragen) or require a add-on/plug-in (Mojoworld, 3DS Max) or a helper application to post-process (Maya). Post-processing output is sometimes done as well in lieu of internal or add-on methods for better speed to render.

Either photographically or via 3d rendering, the final output is exported as flat images to be imported into Second Life as textures: six, one for each wall, floor and ceiling. The process is described in a tutorial within the VRR Documentation packet. Also, there is a VRR Picture Controller for sale at Stephane's store, the VRR Shop if one would rather opt for that method.

This project is a cooperative venture between Stephane, the NMC, infoisland.org and the Commonwealth Islands to help expand the tools available to educators and non-profits. The particular version in question will only work on a select list of sims, all of which relate to education or non-profit use. Currently there are over a hundred such sims. To be added to this list, the requirements are that the sim must be founded for educational or non-profit use and be tied to a real-world organization. Parties interested in adding their own sim to this list need contact Lorelei Junot in Second Life.

Eight sizes of the VRR are included within the kit, starting at 20 square meters and going up to 120 sqm, which constitutes a near quarter-sim. There is a larger size that is a full sim that is available only in the retail unrestricted version (as in can be placed anywhere). That and all other retail versions, along with more environment textures and an application to help bring your own custom textures into use are available for purchase at the VRR Shop. The NMC has stated that they also intend to make more room textures available at their location as they become available, I assume through the product of community efforts now that this free version of the VRR is available.

I had been thinking that one of the effective uses for virtual world education might be to negate scale and as well place the student inside of a setting for a new perspective. This tool is pretty much an application towards that end. I'm very much looking forward to the novel uses that I'll have wished I'd thought of yet to come.

Windows users go on Safari

2008-01-07T18:29:00.000-08:00

The latest version of Apple Computer's Safari browser, now in beta, promises to offer its ease of use and yet another alternative to Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and others for users of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

What's probably more important to Windows web developers who must test their builds against all these is that not having a Mac isn't a barrier to now test against Safari, since the Windows version should render and behave the same way as its Mac sibling. Given that Mac has recently achieved its highest market share gain at 8% and likely to grow further, testing against Safari is now more of a priority for developers who wish to "bulletproof" their builds as much as possible against failure before release and the PC version of Safari should be a welcome tool in their tool-kits.

Warner casts a Blu-pall over high-def landscape

2008-01-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

A probably fatal blow in the high-definition battle between HD-DVD and competing standard Blu-Ray was cast on Friday when Warner Brothers announced that it would be, starting in May 2008, exclusively Blu-Ray. Subsidiaries New Line Cinema and HBO Films were excluded from the announcement, leaving those studios free to make their own decisions. However, it is expected that both will follow Warner into the Blu-Ray exclusive camp. Warner Brothers will likely continue to honor any existing HD-DVD promises through May, though HD-DVD releases will lag behind standard and Blu-Ray title releases.

The decision of the last major studio to support both formats to change its stance to be now exclusive to Sony Blu-Ray forced a quick cancellation of Toshiba's planned CES announcement for HD-DVD, since Warner Brothers was said to feature prominently in that press release, being touted as one of the success factors for HD-DVD and one of the most prolific studios to release high-def titles.

HD-DVD supporters, Toshiba, Microsoft, Paramount Pictures & subsidiary Dreamworks, and Universal Studios remain the only significant backers of HD-DVD while the Blu-Ray camp includes not only major studios Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, MGM, Sony Pictures-Columbia Studios and now Warner Brothers, but most of the smaller studios and distributors as well as most hardware and PC vendors. The Warner move gives the Blu-Ray camp about 70% title share, according to the Financial Times; with more to follow IF Paramount (and Dreamworks) exercises an alleged clause in its HD-DVD switch agreement that allows it to reverse its exclusive move if Warner were ever to drop HD-DVD. Even prior to the Warner announcement, a number of smaller studios that had been HD-DVD exclusive announced that they would be supporting Blu-Ray as well, indicating growth for Blu-Ray, while no such defections occurred from amongst the exclusively Blu-Ray supporters. Even the controversial decision last year for once-format-neutral Paramount and its subsidiary, Dreamworks, to defect to the HD-DVD camp excluded any Dreamworks films by Steven Spielberg, who was said to be either a backer of Blu-Ray or someone who favored supporting both formats.

Warner Brothers executive, Kevin Tsujihara, specifically mentioned that Warner Brothers did not take any money from the Blu-Ray group to come to its decision, contrasting the decision last year of Paramount and subsidiary Dreamworks, to switch from format neutrality to be exclusive to HD-DVD, a move the New York Times later revealed to have been motivated by a payout from the HD-DVD group for $100 million and $70 million respectively to make the switch. Warner Brothers was said to have been courted with a similar deal to switch to HD-DVD exclusivity, which had it occurred, would have likely ended in a format stalemate.

This move by Warner Brothers was said to reflect industry concerns that the format war was hurting the overall adoption of either format since consumers were both confused and wary of purchasing product that could at one point become obsolete. This has kept high definition disc sales stagnant at a minute fraction of potential sales compared to standard DVD. Director Michael Bay, who was highly critical of Paramount's decision to switch to the HD-DVD camp and who was initially furious that his blockbuster Transformers would only appear on HD-DVD, openly stated his opinion that the money used to essentially bribe Paramount and Dreamworks came from Microsoft and that Microsoft's true motives were not to back HD-DVD but to ensure that the format war would continue until Microsoft could develop a high-definition digital download service, undercutting both. Apple Computers, which does continue to expand its own digitial downloads service for movies, was a backer of Blu-Ray and recent news has indicated that Apple intends to offer Blu-Ray drives in its computers at some point soon.

There has been no news on how this might effect the third format, VMD, which unlike either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, uses a red laser and is said to offer a much cheaper alternative for high-definition content for vendors since it does not require the same level of retooling to produce the discs. It seems likely though that the Warner Brothers announcement will spell doom for this late-comer on the high definition scene.

Update: Apparently New Line Cinema made the expected move to Blu-Ray exclusivity. This will bring the impressive New Line catalogue over to exclusive Blu-Ray distribution, expected to include the Blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy whenever that anticipated title makes its high-definition disc debut. There is no word yet that I've seen about HBO Films.

Also, the purported reasons that Michael Bay assigned to Microsoft support of HD-DVD may well come to pass at some point, subsuming movie disc sales to those of digital downloads in the same fashion that CD sales, though still strong, continue to give way to digital downloads. In addition to Microsoft X-Box Live, the pairing of Apple iTunes & Apple TV, and those already available through cable and satellite, Netflix is intending to offer a streaming downloads service as well, premiered at CES. Sony has hinted at much the same for the PS3 with movies and other media potentially available through portals such as Playstation Home. Given that Sony is the only hardware vendor that actually owns their own extensive movie catalogue, competing services might find themselves starved for certain titles or scrambling to lock up exclusive deals of their own. If such fractured availability should occur, I would think it could only harm the adoption of digital downloads in the same way that the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray battle harmed mass adoption of either format.

Update: HBO Films have moved to Blu-Ray exclusivity as well. There is some rumour that Paramount/Dreamworks is mulling a move away from HD-DVD according to the Financial times, Universal possibly as well according to Variety, despite statements to the contrary made by both studios. Both studios have declared support for HD-DVD but Paramount's only move so far is to delay two forthcoming HD-DVD titles by three weeks. And further questions have been met with a no comment response.

In any case, I think the final summation of all this is that it's too bad that the studios could not have made a compromise forestalling this format war. This see-saw battle not only hurt themselves and left both standards in jeopardy of being preempted by direct downloads, but seems likely to have left over a million adopters of HD-DVD bereft of future title releases and having to hope for after-market solutions to keep their HD-DVD high-def title investments viable down the road. Apparently corporate memories are short and the lessons learned in the debacle that occurred between VHS and Betamax that helped lead to universal adoption of a single CD and DVD standard had since been forgotten.

Virtual world industry leaders forecast 2008

2007-12-19T17:26:00.000-08:00

VWN is offering a report that details the response of 45 virtual world managers and leaders to a five-question questionnaire that asked:

What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?
What business goals have you set for 2008?
What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for the virtual worlds industry?
A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on the industry?
How will the above changes affect your specific segment of the industry in 2008?

To order the Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2008, simply send an e-mail to to address listed at the former link and you'll receive a PDF copy of the report in your e-mail.

I found this a fascinating read and I'll have to read it again to compare the disagreeing statements. A number of the respondents were at the recent Virtual World Conference in San Jose and I appreciate the chance to read what they had to say. As you might expect, some had very different opinions regarding the upcoming months. I also noted that education seemed to figure prominently in a number of forecasts as did the expected strong growth in virtual worlds for children.

My only druthers for this report would have been to have the company name repeated after the name in each response since I don't know all of the responders by name and I couldn't follow their association with the industry from question to question.

Newbie ponders what "there" is of IBM's and Cisco's Second Lives

2007-12-19T10:56:00.000-08:00

Computerworld writer Gary Anthes was tasked to do a piece on Second Life, which, after spending nearly a week of his time within the simulation, he titled Second Life: Is There Any There There?

Within this piece, he is somewhat critical of the corporate presence within Second Life, having had a rather empty and underwhelming experience at the islands built by IBM and Cisco.

"Knowing my editor would ask me about practical IT applications, I sought out a virtual island owned by IBM. To get an idea of how exciting this place is, imagine a 1950s-era IBMer in a starched white shirt and tie with a "THINK" sign hanging on his wall."

Part of his frustration was his failure to find any company representatives to talk to about goods and services, or to just answer questions.

"I returned to IBM's main island determined to find an IBMer who could answer some questions. I didn't find such a person, but I had a long chat with a well-dressed wolf who said he was from FurNation. He said he was only there to use the public "sandbox," which is provided by IBM, to build things."

And failing that, finding any person was a welcome respite and at least a chance to ask some questions.

"I told him I was trying to find out if companies in SL made any money. Virtual companies make real money, he said, 'selling furry avatars, sexual bits, weapons and the like,' while real companies like IBM only advertise and recruit. The wolf was not applying for a job at IBM, it seemed, but he thanked IBM for providing the sandbox."

And of course, all of this begged the question of what function did all this corporate presence provide?

"Still fretting about bandwidth, I traveled next to the Cisco Virtual Campus and walked into the Cisco Training Center. A sign indicated that it was for use only by Cisco partners and employees, which raises the question of why it's on the public Internet and not on a Cisco intranet.

In any case, I found neither partners nor employees in any of the training rooms, and no books, computers or training materials of any kind. Never had it seemed so reasonable to ask if there really was a there there."

Though he did have a relatively better experience at Sears, the author I take it was not impressed with corporate presence within Second Life, or that much with Second Life itself for that matter. Some of his advice:

"Each major company location in SL should be staffed with a real person, at least during business hours. If some friendly and attractive avatar at the Cisco center had approached me and said, "Yes, sir, how may I help you?" and then had given me useful answers to my typed in questions about training, employment opportunities or products, I would have fallen out of my chair with amazement and delight."

So what do I make of this? I'm not sure where the subjective "attractive need play into this. Well-groomed would do for me. Otherwise, I think it's a good piece. And it's original. As far as negative criticism goes, it's not some regurgitated bit of anti-hype backlash. Nor is it a piece written to reclaim credibility damaged by over-reaching optimism by riding the pendulum swing going the other way. I wouldn't even argue that it's all that negative. I don't think this writer had any axes to grind. I think he came to the assignment with a fairly neutral standpoint. What Anthes is describing here is a very typical regrettable newbie experience. (And it probably didn't help his experience that some web links were broken).

If you read the full piece, you see that he spends at least two days of his assignment just trying to learn his way through the interface and figure out how to find places. Out of desperation, and having wasted time through misunderstanding and bad advice from another confused newbie, he buys a book. Now, if he had me to help him out, I could have handed him a Notecard with some landmarks to visit later, maybe even checking out a couple places with him. I could have taken him to New Dove and New Citizens Incorporated (NCI) to get him started on his own look and get him hooked up with help resources, even classes if he was interested.

But Anthes didn't have me there to help him, did he. He, like most newbies, was left stranded in an empty virtual landscape having to rely on people just as new, confused, and ultimately as bored and frustrated as he came to be. Experiences like his are one of the reasons that though Second Life can claim millions of registrations, they can only muster an active user population of 30,000 - 55,000 on most days. People try it, go "huh?" and leave, never to come back.

In fact, I was one of those. When I first went to a meeting showcasing Second Life for uses at work, I dutifully created an account; I logged in; I then had my "Huh?" moment. I forced myself go through orientation and get onto the mainland. But my experience only degraded the more time I was there. Totally underwhelmed by the perceived function , the lag and abysmal graphic quality, I thought, "Are people serious? Someone has got to be kidding me, right? This is lame. This is a total waste of time." And I left, never to come back, or so I thought. Had it not been for an overdue promise to visit a co-worker's build in Second Life, I would never have given it another look. And the virtual light bulb above my head would have never gone on.

Truths out of the mouths of newbies

Yes, having a real person staffed in Second Life is a big overhead for a company. Server space (aka "land") is not cheap, let's face it. Tack on some employee cost tasked against really no revenue for most Second Life corporate uses, and how does one justify that on the books?

Well, I would ask, how much is your company image worth? Do you want to build a presence, which I presume has some underlying marketing potential, and then leave it to a a visiting anthropomorphic wolf or rabbit with no company affiliation to explain your presence for you? Even if you have staff in simulation, not being able to find them is just as bad. In a large build, teleport signs can be your friend, and the friend to visitors.

I wouldn't expect my local GAP store, even if they could lock down the goods, to just leave their store abandoned, hoping that I'll come in to admire the goods but not having anyone to talk to, and expect me to still walk away with my questions answered, a good feeling about GAP, or likely to buy something. The GAP doesn't have a virtual store that I know of, but if they did, I would ask: why treat a virtual space any differently? Insofar as how a person (and the force driving that avatar, at least for now, is a real human being) is going to react to your company, a virtual space can have the same impact, good or bad, as a real building. That's why companies staff people to help greet and guide visitors in real world lobbies.

If you have goods or services to sell, jobs to offer, information to give out, have someone there to do it for you that speaks for you and has your interest in mind. If you have a virtual space that you are using for a corporate function, do what you would for a real building when not in use - lock the doors (or in Second Life parlance, just restrict access). In the former, you're going to improve experience and maybe actually drive some use and results; in the latter, the lock will probably give the impression the space is important and actually sees use. In most corporate builds, I suspect that the space probably isn't and doesn't but they don't have to know that. Perception is everything.

Doppelganger cleverly controls perception by use of space in vSide, making it appear larger then it really is. In fact, restricting the overall space has the positive benefit of channeling people into the same area, giving the perception of popularity and a crowd, even with a small number of users. Let's face it, we're social animals and many people feel more comfortable in a crowd, even a virtual one. People imply popularity, that you're in the "right" place, and that there's something engaging to do there. Effective virtual builds, like real world buildings, are probably going to need to adopt architectural solutions for crowd management, but at least for Second Life, factoring in the ability to fly.

Nothing is more lonely or gives a sense of a places unpopularity in Second Life like coming into it and seeing that there's only one green dot on your mini-map - and it's you. Now maybe you are visitor number 2,001 that day and you just happened to come at a time when no one else was there. But you don't know that. Unlike web pages, we can see who's visiting at the same time we are. And it doesn't matter how many people were already there or who will come back later. If you're a newbie, you probably got the impression that the space is unpopular, and that feeling maybe carries over to the brand behind it, like there's something wrong with it maybe?

When Electric Sheep opened the Virtual CSI:NY presence in Second Life, I first peeked in after the show just to see what's what and to try out the OnRez viewer to see how different it was. Well, it was crowded, with a bunch of lost newbies who were tripping over their own interfaces. There was a clever use of audio media and a HUD to explain the CSI game. But the game wasn't the problem. It was Second Life. Even more sad was a veteran SL user who popped in to see and who was valiently trying to explain the interface. She didn't realize that all these newbies were using a different world viewer, the OnRez viewer provided by Electric Sheep, where buttons and functions could be in different places than the Second Life viewer provided by Linden Lab. I could just see the thought bubbles going up all around me: "Huh?" <-- brought back memories; "I don't get it"; "I'm so confused"; "How do I get my clothes back on?"; "This is silly." I tried to do my part and both help guide the newbies by giving them links to helpful places like NCI and New Dove, as well as help flag the veteran Second Lifer that there was a new viewer, hence the mismatch between what she was trying to explain and the reality in place. Well, after such a fiasco, you'd expect to come back to Virtual CSI:NY and expect to see few or fewer dots. But such is not the case when I've peeked back in. Why? I can't be certain but one of the things that I noticed was that there was a staffer, I presume from Electric Sheep (maybe CBS) to greet, answer questions, and help new users get started in the entry zone. Wander farther into the simulation, what does one find but more helpers. And those little green dots on the mini-map? There seem to be quite a few of them, all congregated in various spots. Just in case this was an aberration, I checked back a couple more time and the dots at a glance, seemed about the same. I don't know how profitable Virtual CSI:NY is given all that manpower investment, but I'd have to say in Second Life terms, it's popular. Green dots it seems have a way of attracting more green dots.

I know the avatar I'm talking to isn't real. But is she real?

Presence can be costly. It's a lot of overhead to consider. And one has to figure that the virtual world never sleeps. Logging into Second Life at different times, it takes on a European, Australian, or Asian tone. Companies have to figure that a visitor might pop in at any time.

Which is why AI avatar "bots" are being developed that can take on that overhead instead of having a real person. They work quite cheap - free in fact beyond their build cost and they don't take breaks. The initial ones are likely going to be fairly simple responders but there are rumblings of some very savvy ones (see Artificial Intelligence Applications in 3d Virtual Worlds) that can do a credible job of mimicking the responses of a real person.

This of course undercuts one of the basic presumptions of virtual worlds, that an avatar represents a real person. One of the interesting aspects of virtual worlds and MMOs is that people tend to treat an avatar at face value, as if they were what they appeared to be. If that avatar appears to be a human man or woman, you, as a virtual world user, would probably respond accordingly. This probably belongs in its own post, but imagine a virtual world where someone can seed avatars to make a space seem more popular as if other people really found it engaging, making you think twice about stopping to take a look around at the offers. Or that person chatting you up and that seems so interested in your latest real world shopping adventure could be a bot mining you for buying trends. Or your new "friend,", taking advantage of how viral marketing works, just swears by Eau'dee'doh perfume or MuskOxen deodorant.

Let's forget about the ethics of AI bots for the moment. Until such bots are available to help "staff" virtual builds, companies who are going to spend a lot of money and time investing in virtual worlds need to consider the whole experience if they want to make it a success, imho. That means considering staffing such builds as if they were real locations, at least to the point of offering someone to help answer questions and take down contacts. I pity the poor person stuck in an empty Second Life island all day but hopefully such exposure will help that person suggest ways to bring traffic and make the spot a purposeful destination point with the intention of conducting business or inquiry of some sort.

Otherwise, just hope that the visiting furry using your sandbox is polite and friendly (I have to say, they often are) while she tries to answer people's questions. I'll conclude with the rest of Anthes' advice:

"Yes, I know that would cost serious bucks. One or more real people would have to be paid real dollars to do that. But if a company can't make its virtual experience substantially better -- and I mean really head-and-shoulders better -- than its existing Web capabilities, it might as well not bother.

Because my wolf friend isn't going to buy an IBM computer because he spotted it through the window while playing in the IBM sandbox. The IBM island must be a destination deliberately sought out by people with an interest in IBM, with the knowledge that they will have a really cool virtual experience there while being treated like a real human by a real human."

Enchanting Dryad

2007-12-18T10:27:00.000-08:00

Stanford Virtual Worlds Group has a nice little package for us under the Yule tree this year. It's a free tree creation utility for 3d applications and worlds called Dryad. Dryad works on most Windows XP & Vista systems, as well as Mac OS X. There is a promise that a Linux version is being compiled, but will possibly be some time in coming.

Dryad did not function correctly on my XP work T60p (I could use it fine. I just couldn't see any effect in my black preview pane that only blinked now and then to show part of that area). I have had numerous problems with the T60p in regards to virtual world use so I won't fault Dryad too much just yet.

"We are aware of a small number of incompatibilities with existing systems which manifest themselves in the form of graphical corruption. We are currently working to resolve these problems. In the meantime, we suggest you run Dryad on another system."

So until I can get home and pop Dryad onto the Vista game rig and Mac workstation, I'll have to take some of the claims on faith. If you have any updates or comments, please do share.

Since I could see some of the interface, I could explore a bit. The right-hand pane, as you can see in this borrowed screen capture, is a contextual options selection. It changes view according to the editing mode. In this initial view, one chooses the basic tree form. Since I could see the occasional glimpse of the interface, I knew where to click to access options. In one case, I accessed numerous slider bars that would change my tree's form and appearance. Finally, clicking the center checkbox allowed me to save my work in the generic and widely supported OBJ format. Since I don't have any 3d applications on my work machine, I was not able to open my edited file to view any of my work.

Trees are very complex objects to render and have them look any good. I remember I was all excited when Bryce first added tree models and very disappointed in how some of them looked upon render in that older version. WorldBuilder was one of the better approachable applications in terms of getting off the ground quickly but look at the price. Let's not even talk about Lightwave or Maya. Looking at some of the gallery images, Dryad appears to do a mighty fine job for current virtual world use; it's intuitive to use; it's free.

Whats more, there is a collaborative aspect that VWN reported on in their coverage, albeit one that I was unable to witness. If as reported, there's a great potential for growth, communication and building upon the work of others as the Dryad application is stated to improve and grow the more it is utilized by the community - sort of a shared object database I'm guessing. I also took advantage of Dryad's prompt to join the Stanford Virtual Worlds Group mailing list, the form conveniently found on the first page of the Dryad site.

Other than for some bugs which I have faith will be worked out, my only objections regarding Dryad is that is is free, easy to use, encourages creativity and collaboration, and outputs in a generic file format understood by most 3d applications (ah, if only most virtual worlds allowed for direct utilization of OBJ). I mean, where's the elitist factor in that? Give people powerful tools for free or modest cost and soon everyone will be creating these wonderful scenes and objects to use and share. Creativity will become the focus instead of tool use and access.

What is the virtual world coming to? Bah humbug! ;-)

Eyes inside virtual worlds

2007-11-26T10:28:00.000-08:00

There's been some good buzz here and there recently about the iWear VR920 virtual reality goggles from Vuzix. Given the mostly positive vibes I'd been reading, I had been expecting a lot more coverage by now in my fav blogs. Haven't seen a word dropped therein. So I'm going to kick this out there. Hopefully someone with some more spare cash than I've got can give them a look-see and get back with some more feedback for the rest of us. I'm especially keen to read about their use in Second Life.

Just like you read it, these are virtual reality goggles. They simulate a projected 62 inch (157 cm) screen via two small LCDs parked in front of your eye-balls. Now, I'm not in favor of strapping another source of EMF radiation directly onto our heads, but I can't say I haven't been dying to give these a spin nevertheless. And though the current drivers are mostly for games, as you would expect, I think there is a huge potential for use in virtual worlds.

The difference is perspective. One of the strengths of virtual worlds, and why they are so attractive in their varied forms, is the projection of a formed self, aka avatar, interacting with other counterparts. But you, as a user, are still mostly removed from the setting, peering at your avatar from above, or even in mouselook, through a window that is your computer screen. In other words, there's still a bit of distance between you and the medium and between you and other users. What these goggles do is to put you into the setting, removing the boundaries. They react to your movements by changing the perspective and reaction of your view as if you were really there. It's a not so subtle distinction and I think the experience could be a great driver for interest and use of virtual worlds as it makes them a bit more natural, at least to our eyes. They are also a step, I think in the right direction, of removing some of the construct of the interface for virtual world use, and let us function more directly in the medium. In this case, it's merely a visual perspective but that's a lot and the difference I imagine (until I find a spare $400 that's all I can do) is profound and if popular, could lead to other inputs such as hand and facial gestures recognition. And though not really enabled as yet (these work, but only with older graphic cards - sometimes), there is a potential for stereoscopic 3d and the creation of depth perception as well.

Getting back to the here-and-now, the linked review and a commentary I read about a user finally getting to use these in Blizzard's World of Warcraft underscores the wow!-factor. Unlike some predecessors, the price-point for these goggles is not unapproachable for the masses, though still far too high for mainstream use. And they are said to be finicky to calibrate and set up and require learning a slower head-turning response. But, this is a point that was underscored in the reviews, they actually deliver as promised. In fact, I'm hearing there is a bit of a backlog in getting one of these so perhaps they are catching on after all.

These goggles currently work with Second Life and a select list of games. But there's no reason that drivers for more virtual worlds and games can't be created given interest and time. Like virtual worlds in general, game use can provide the adoption bridge that brings these into more common use and the non-game virtual world spill-over I think could really help bring new users into that medium. I can imagine these goggles would make Forterra's already excellent training simulations all the more engaging and, after Second Life, I would just love to strap these on and visit an ultra-high DX10 session of LOTRO or Entropia Universe's promised DX10 makeover.

Just want to make a final note that despite what the reviewer erroneously states for supported systems, my understanding is that these work as well on Apple's OS X, not just Windows. So we Mac'sters are apparently covered.

Is an island bigger than a planet?

2007-10-19T01:02:00.000-07:00

Not so fast with your answer now. We're talking about virtual worlds here, where all things are relative.

VWN is reporting that Entropia Universe intends on potentially giving away whole planets to businesses, as long as those businesses can "add value to the universe as a whole" (in other words, bring in traffic and use I expect). So planet is something of a misnomer here. What MindArk deems a planet I believe is more like an asteroid in current Entropia practical parlance. We're not talking Mars, or even Ceres here, for real estate. However, there's nothing to say that given the mutable laws of virtual physics, that such asteroids can't grow themselves over time (or just open up heretofore inaccessible terrain) given the need and traffic.

That gulf of spacial separation will allow for different laws and function - I would expect - perhaps even different techo-themes, bringing to Entropia, customization ala Second Life's island sims. - I was wondering how Entropia was going to offer different environments given that their core design is built around a science fiction theme with an embedded gaming function, sort of. I would say this points the way.

So even if (insert company name)'s New Mars turns out to be someday as big or bigger in pixel depth as the real Mars would be in virtual terms - which will really be bigger, an Entropia planet or an island sim in Second Life, has yet to be determined. I'd say, for this moment, the island is bigger given that it has more use and with more potential to drive traffic (or at least media buzz), but that can certainly change. It's really up to you and I and everyone else to ultimately decide.

On other Entropia topics, I got an e-mail from the Entropia folks telling me to go in and spruce up my avatar, in anticipation of the Crytek-enabled graphic revamp. I haven't gotten around to it as yet and the sample pics didn't entice me much. However, I am very much looking forward to the rest of the makeover. This much hyped revamp has promised to make Entropia Universe one of the most graphically pleasing virtual worlds - simulating the experience of top-end games that use the same CryEngine2 game engine: such as Crysis. We'll have to wait and see. The entry-point for a game like Crysis might be fine when catering to a market of afficionados with top-end rigs. But when trying to pose a product for a world, much of whom insofar as game-like applications are concerned have less than stellar systems, could create an entry barrier. Not fulfilling that promise can undercut the pre-generated hype and anticipation buzz. I suspect they'll have a way to degrade gracefully, like most games do. But I'll be curious to get a sense of the experience range when they finally do launch the changes. And if the use proves practical, I don't suppose that Crytek has given exclusive license to Entropia but we'll see. I know at least one other MMO has licensed the engine and with this cash-and-carry potential, there's nothing to say that an Entropia rival with deep pockets can't just mimic and ultimately steal Entropia's graphic-enabled thunder.

I've always termed Entropia Universe a hybrid virtual world: part social world, part game. I think the folks at MindArk understand that one of the failings of Second Life is that it often lacks for activity function beyond the purely social (even more so with the closure of gambling) and would like to tap into the success of mainstream MMOs (everyone of course thinks of World of Warcraft, but even LOTRO, or City of Heroes, or EVE Online). But trying to be both things at once, I'm just not sure it works. I think it better to have distinction between the spaces but the ability to interlink and travel between them as the needs and fancy suits the particular user. And some users might exclusively prefer one over the other but can still function in the overall space. Otherwise, people can be put off, say, by the violence and conflict or trading function that governs the game activity or find the social function superfluous. I think Sony intends for their Home to be such a bridging construct and I suspect Microsoft has been considering similar uses.

This opening up of "planets" could be just the thing to help move Entropia Universe away from the science fiction gaming anchor and allow it the versatility to function in multiple activity zones. If more business or media "planets" open up, they could provide the social, possibly even educational and commercial, perspectives leaving the main original Entropia planet to explore its function shifting more exclusively to games without feeling it has left the social users abandoned or put upon by their more combative brethren.

Virtual Worlds Connect(ed)

2007-10-19T00:31:00.000-07:00

Join more groups!

I must have woken up with that mantra in my head. It's the only reason that can excuse signing up to yet another site for virtual worlds: Virtual Worlds Connect. If so, I'll state that it was obviously divinely inspired and therefore fate.

What the heck: it's free; it's run by the folks behind one of my fav blogs: VWN (and those affiliated functions like the recently attended Virtual Worlds Conference); and ya never know, it pays to be connected (so they tell me).

Anyway, if you feel like it, come join me in the crush. I even started a group (who's subject seemed to be sadly lacking imho or I'd not have bothered).

Virtual Worlds Conf. - San Jose, 2007: Content Portability

2007-10-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

Day 1, Session 4 - Technical Perspective: Designing for Cross-Platform Delivery and Long-Term Content Portability

Panelist: Aaron Delwiche (Metaversatility)

Given the ever-changing scope of virtual worlds, with new offers appearing every month, almost weekly at times, one is never certain which might ultimately come to the fore. And with the risk imposed by the current lack of standards to build by, if your project or product is too intertwined with a given world, and that world ultimately does not prove to be successful, how do you prevent all your hard work and your clientele from being left stranded in a marginalized virtual environment?

The best solution is to have a - suitcase mentality, - ready to pack it up and move elsewhere when required. But that's easier said than done. What are the practical considerations when envisioning such a virtual gypsy existence?

The panelist for this session is a professor on academic sabbatical, due to return soon to his work at Trinity University, Austin. Delwiche proved a good speaker and I found myself engaged and entertained throughout this session. Nonetheless, given how new virtual worlds are, and like many other panels I attended, there wasn't a lot of concrete example or proven methods attached to the topic discussion. The content was mostly supposed and common sense and despite being a very full session, can be summarized in just a few points:

Plan for portability from the onset.

Preserve copies of your asset files in multiple formats. Use generic, aka the most mutable formats, when possible (eg. OBJ, COLLADA, etc).

Preserve layers, when applicable.

When working with a 3rd-party vendor or sub-contractor, always try to secure the highest quality source files in addition to whatever use files you receive. Note: Most vendors will offer such but often at a much higher cost than just getting either "flattened" or down-sampled use files. After all, they can make more money if you have to come back to them later. Just be sure to account for any such in both your negotiations and budget if using outside talent.

Focus on accessibility. If you do so, portability is likely to follow.

I have to say this is great advice and the most ethical tactic. Too often, disabled users are considered only as an afterthought as to how to service their needs. And accessible solutions too often address the minimum adherence to laws governing requirements rather than effective use and enablement. I've personally found that if you plan and try to future-proof for the effective use of both accessibility and internationalization using a modular solution that can adapt, such will realize long term benefits. Modularity means that you can adapt specific components, realizing faster solutions and not being stuck reinventing everything from scratch, or being caught in a legal bind. And in this case, modularity means a greater likelihood you will be able to pack up at least parts of your kit and take it with you, ala the previous mentioned suitcase analogy.

Regrettably, virtual worlds seem to have taken the somewhat typical approach of not addressing accessibility from the onset. But Devlin, from IBM Ireland's contingent at the IBM booth, was able to offer a great example of virtual world accessibility. He and his team have worked on scripting proximity detection via sound within Activeworlds, in order to help enable virtual world navigation for the visually impaired. It is encouraging to note that some companies are working on accessibility even at this early stage, rather than as an afterthought.

Design your presence around core principals of virtual community. Since technology changes, standards shift, it is sometimes impossible to preserve the functional technology of a space.

So if nothing else, understand that community is the most important thing to preserve when migrating.

That last sentence is particularly key. It was suggested that in order to preserve community in a new space, worlds vendors and managers really need to be already involved, in tune, and understand the core concerns of users/consumers/clients engaged in the original space. "Be kind, be interested, pay attention."

Some panelists in other sessions I attended discounted any value in the interaction of virtual space with the Social Web experience of blogs, forums, wikis, etc. Here though, it was suggested that such spaces are very useful when preserving "community memory" since they are independent of the technology used for the virtual space itself. Certainly it provides a compelling argument to at least consider interlinking functions of the Social Web within or adjunct to virtual offerings.

It was suggested for further study on the topic to understand that value of preservation of The Virtual Community, to read the works of Howard Rheingold, the man who is credited with having invented that phrase through his seminal works.

During the Q&A session, there was some discussion about how to preserve files from Second Life by possibly taking them out of that setting. There was mention of applications, some that would allow for the export and theoretical preservation of native Second Life constructs into XML (LIB SL was mentioned & OpenSim was possibly inferred), or re-importation into other forms via other applications, but which violate Linden Lab's terms of service.

CopyBot, for example, probably built with the best of intentions to help develop Second Life, has been used for outright theft of intellectual property within that simulation. So for the time being, there is no way to legally store for safeguarding or migration anything built or purchased in Second Life outside of that setting. But, with the opening up of the source code, it is possible on a limited basis to import some sculpted prims created in other applications, preserving some aspect of those constructs outside of Second Life. And hopefully more opening up of that simulation will occur, as has been promised.

Virtual Worlds Conf. - San Jose, 2007: Stickier Virtual World Builds

2007-10-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

Day 1, Session 3 - Technical Perspective: Designing Stickier Virtual World Builds

Panelist: Christian Lassonde (Millions of Us).

Lassonde introduced himself, mentioning his impressive list of gaming and virtual world credentials, including working on Millions' Second Life build for Pontiac, the massive Motorati group of sims, stated by Lassonde to be the second most visited area in Second Life. I will ignore the lobster pot analogy as I seemed to have lost its thread early on, but he seemed a nice very pleasant fellow.

In addition to Motorati, Lassonde went into a history of some Millions' past efforts that dealt with interactive participation. One very successful effort was Microsoft's "What's in the Blimp" campaign. This campaign detailed a challenge to solve the puzzle involved, in some cases, offering hurdles such as answering questions nearly identical to Microsoft's interview questions. Mention of this campaign seems to again, highlight those themes of events, brands, and community found in other conference sessions.

The example brought up for stickiness was the forthcoming initiative to reinvigorate the Second Life space for Toyota's Scion. Lassonde went on to detail some issues they had had for a build for Toyota Scion. After launch, the build lost much of its initial attraction so they started inviting people to take up residences and businesses in the build, hoping to get stickiness by creating a community. What they found was that the community soon took on a life of its own and this suggested that the next incarnation would be a launch where the Scion community could help shape the story itself and not just be recipients to the next phase. And this apparently has been well received and like the CSI effort by Electric Sheep, a good proof in what many at the convention were saying about brands driving community and events. Then we watched some Machinima that was to kick off the event (and which was reshown in the Day 2 keynote intro). This animation sequence, titled "Sand" if I recall, follows three explorers in a sandy desert finding a buried vehicle which inadvertently leads to their receiving a broadcast from the future.

He went on to show another example where virtual storytelling, started and monitored by the vendors and Millions of Us, but largely driven by the community which took off in ways unexpected and unplanned for. This event was the WWE Summerslam for Gaia Online and I think the experience was so positive that it seemed to suggest something grander perhaps for Scion, or that is what I was sort of sensing.

The thing is that the notion of virtual storytelling, which I've no doubt it is very attractive, exciting, buzz generating and worthwhile - and frankly one I'd not considered before so I was glad to hear of it - it is only one aspect of a sticky solution - and a possible sticky solution at that since it remains little tested at this point.

I had been hoping to hear about some existing web and other industry techniques that could be adapted to virtual worlds or discoveries that have come up to date. I pointed out, in one of my questions, that real estate agencies from the U.S. and Australia had gotten good space traction and continued brand exposure by offering subsidized houses conjoined to views of simulations of real houses. That community aspect was perhaps more natural for them but it still was a good sticky point. Could he offer anything else like that?

Well, no. He just kind of shrugged, seeming a bit lost for what I was asking. So, I pointed something that I'd noted before about the Pontiac build, which, though like all of Millions' products - top notch in terms of looks and design - still seemed to be a lost opportunity in terms of branding and "stickiness" when I was there. Since he'd helped build that, it would hopefully put this into a better context for him.

I stated that there is a weekly race in Second Life by residents on My Control Speedway where people come with their latest builds along with friends, have some fun and compete for a small prize purse put up by a German company. The company gets some recognition and thanks but the event is run by Second Life volunteers and overall costs the sponsor very little. I asked Mr. Lassonde, why isn't Pontiac, who spent a fortune building this huge beautiful facility, doing that? (Maybe I was just unlucky but in the several times I'd been there to take screen caps for a report, Pontiac sims were nearly empty). So not my exact words, but something like they could be offering weekly Sunday formula 1 races, stock car races on Thursday nights. They could have monthly car shows where Second Life builders can come show off their goods just like in a real car show - maybe with a charity race afterwards. They could rent out small vendor spaces to set up booths just for the event, not to generate any real money, but to make it more like a village faire - giving people a sense of anticipation and something to look forward to on Motorati each week, month, year - etc. That kind of thing is natural to the space and there would be volunteers to help run it and the cost to Pontiac would be quite small but the branding potential and success story would be golden.* Anyway, he just shrugged and said that was all up to Pontiac.

*My picking on Pontiac is absolutely undeserved and better stated to be a generic example of some possible community activities for any automotive dealer. I now understand that Pontiac has been doing a huge amount of community activity around car culture, including offering space to devotees, and doesn't need my advice to find more sticky points than I can ever think of. The point was just to suggest some sticky options that took a different track than interactive storytelling.

So the next question tracked back to interactive stories and I was just trying to bust my brain to come up with something that could show that stickiness was a nuanced theme, one that could benefit from more than one example. Since no one else was asking any more questions, I asked another about the interlinking of the Social Web. If the Social Web was as sticky as everyone seemed to be saying, as in the panel before and the keynote intro, were there any ways to tap into that to bridge the two environments and keep people engaged in both spaces?

Well, he turned to one of his co-workers in the crowd, the fellow giving the next day's keynote intro I believe (you know him well I suspect), and they just sort of nodded that they'd discussed this and I'm not sure of the exact words of the answer but it seemed that they didn't see any interconnectedness between Web 2.0 and virtual worlds and had pretty much dismissed such, each being different animals I suppose, though that's not exactly what he said.

I gave up. I have to say that I did not find this a particularly useful session. It would have really been better served by people from product marketing, even better, people who had applied existing marketing strategies to discover what worked, what didn't work, and what was unique to virtual space. Instead I felt what we had was more of an enthusiastic sharing, though very valuable in the concept of virtual storytelling, of just one aspect that has really yet to be proven on the scale intended. (And one that will require a lot more over sight and it seems must be somewhat limited in duration unless the ROI justifies keeping it going).

Had I not parked myself dead center in front of the panelist, I'd have gotten up and hightailed it over to another session (I always wish I could be at two or three places at a conference). However, not wishing to be rude, I decided to just stick it out and hope it ended early (which it did thankfully as questions dried up). I had a full fifteen minutes left and a booked it over to catch the end of the Multiverse session, which as it went into overtime, gave me a good peek into that session as well.

Multiverse

Well, I really wish I'd been in this session instead. I caught the tail-end of the Q&A and I was really impressed with the answers and the product. It seemed they were really trying to cover all contingencies and I think the product is probably better poised than I'd indicated from my notes in my platform session.

But since I missed it, next best thing is to find a cover post with all the details and more than I would have noted, courtesy of VWN.

Virtual Worlds Conf. - San Jose, 2007: So Many Platforms

2007-10-12T17:42:00.000-07:00

Day 1, Session 2 - So Many Platforms, So Little Time

Panelists: Valerie Williamson, John Swords, Chris Carella, Jonathan Collins (all from Electric Sheep).

This panel discussed a number of the existing virtual worlds. The information was very engaging, though somewhat tethered, since Williamson was there to make sure that no NDAs were violated in the course of discussion. I got a lot of specific info for my concluding report on Virtual Web notions so I'll probably just save that for later rather than rehash from here. Most of that information is fairly obvious and known from other sources. It was just nice to have it restated so nicely all in one place. Some things I did not know though so I found this a very valuable panel overall.

A couple of standouts though, to my mind, were Icarus' Studios and Multiverse. Icarus' Studios I already glossed over in my first break report and more can be found from the company site linked above. I'll add here that Electric Sheep is considering them for some projects.

Multiverse is a product I'd looked at initially after launch back in early August. In concept, it sounded great, but I was very underwhelmed by the product itself. I felt at the time that they'd been a bit premature to market and there were noticeable glitches; the dearth of showcase material with depth didn't leave me with any warm fuzzies either. But it did have potential and I have to say that I have been keeping my eye on this product - but apparently not close enough. It's shown a lot of growth since I first looked at it, and as an out-of-the-box solution for MMO game developers, it is one to be definitely considered when reviewing tool choices. I haven't seen the graphic richness and support structure of Icarus' Studios product. But that can change in future. What Multiverse offers is an easy entry point into the marketplace through a scheme of revenue sharing as just one of many price options. This encourages someone with a good idea but not a lot or any capital backing to get to programming and get their idea up for the world to subscribe to.

Though games can be customized, the basic U.I. seems the same in every game I've seen, just dressed up differently. Rafhael Cedeno, the CTO of Multiverse, happened to be in the audience and some of the questions were addressed to him since he was there - including when there would be a Mac client available. Cedeno said one was forthcoming and polled the room to see how many mac users there were (I'd guess about 40% or more raised hands - which seemed to surprise him; he stated that the Mac and Linux clients would release at the same time and both be forthcoming next year.

(Side note: Given this and some info from the DAZ 3d folks, I stopped by the Multiverse table a second time on day 2 just to get some more details about the Mac client and other things I'd heard from DAZ (wonders of wonders, I was the only attendee at the booth and had both Multiverse employees at hand) and, though I'll discuss it later there, was told very different things. Check Day 2's report for more info).

If I were to compare to two on the surface, I would say that Icarus' Studios has the gloss, production capability, support and power. As long as I could afford the price point, if I were building a new stand-alone MMO or virtual world, that would be my product of choice, no question. If you're just starting out, or you have talent but don't have a lot or any money to spend (remember that the client is free), Multiverse can let you make your dream come true and it could look fantastic.

But I really think Multiverse could have a sleeper hit on their hands. They've thought a lot about contingencies when building it, trying to really future-proof it and set it up for the demands of today and tomorrow. If I were them, I would strongly consider: creating a shallow client for people to build their own social virtual world or MMOs hosted on their own system; small virtual stores out-of-the-box set for same; and perhaps selling back-end systems to ISPs to sell virtual world storage the same way they sell web-page hosting - all tied back to Multiverse's common grid (yes, that's what I'm saying: Multiverse would essentially become it's own mini-Virtual Web/walled garden. They are already for their MMO games but this would be a much bigger garden. Imagine thousands of personal and professional games and social worlds all tied together that could be visited with a common avatar - not years from now but much sooner (or as soon as they could pull it off).

They really do need a custom avatar tool though - that or a heck of a lot more AV models than from when I last looked at them. Also, there is a significant problem in that, back when I looked at them - hopefully they have or are soon correcting this - avatars did not persist beyond a world. Your account did but you would have essentially multiple avatars, each stranded in situ.

Anyway, I heard conflicting data on this point, but the world I got from the Multiverse mouths was that they were not considering any areas outside of MMO games for the moment. We'll just have to wait and see. It could be that if there is any issue about not wanting to expand or admit to wanting to expand beyond the MMO frame, it might have to do with the heretofore announced pairing with Google to expand use of SketchUp models brought into Multiverse for instant virtual worlds. But will those virtual worlds just tie into Multiverse's grid or will they be extensions off of some Google presence, like Google Earth?

My posed question to the panel was essentially what forecasted products announced but not yet available were they each looking forward to try and why (eg. what strengths of these call to you)?

One of the panelists dismissed the question since he never bothered to think about products until he could actually get his hands on them - how very disciplined and electro-zen of him I thought*. But I, like the rest of the panel, couldn't help imagining what new products and their features might enable so they, like me, had a few notions: Qwaq, Metaplace, Wonderland**, Ogoglio, Croquet, 3B, and HiPiHi.

And someone from the audience volunteered VastPark.

*In fairness to Mr. Electro-zen, it seemed he did have a some notions that he was comfortable sharing once everyone else chimed in and some of the above are his.

**One of the fellows I lunched with was from Sun and also mentioned the Wonderland launch.

Second break

I went by the Forterra Booth to look at their Olive product. It was very crowded (again). Taking advantage of height, just stared over the shoulders and listened to questions being answered. I really wanted to evaluate some of their educational spaces but the only thing I got to see was a retail training program, which I have to tell you, I thought was very realistic and very nuanced, hence very impressive. Whoever designed this course knew what they were doing and my stress level rose just watching those poor harried sims trying to navigate a busy day with all sorts of customer demands put upon them.

I thought this was one of the best uses of virtual simulation I'd ever seen and I can understand why hospitals, corporations, law enforcement, and the military turn to Forterra for solutions. I really wish I had had the chance to see the educational product though. But for someone who wants to build his own, I'm not sure why I would choose Forterra. But if I were looking for a solution to be built, nothing can beat real life, but what I saw was an excellent preparation mimicking real life events.

SceneCaster also was a very interesting product. In fact, to say that it has a lot of potential falls pretty short of the mark. As a product, it comes along the lines of growing the Virtual Web out of the Social Web, directly tapping into the popularity of products like Facebook and Flickr as a natural user base with more to come I'd expect. It's a sort of hybrid product for now in that it's not really a virtual world but it's a nice bridge in that it allows people to build and share virtual scenes. In many ways, products like SceneCaster can help transition a full virtual world with those who like the Social Web, who like to share media files - in this case based on virtual scene creations - but who are not comfortable with or fully understand the notion of something like Second Life. It's approachable, already has thousands of objects, growing each day from Google's 3d Warehouse, and with SketchUp, it has a creation tool at hand along with an initial list of market pairings and more likely to come forward.

Given the association with Oddcast, I suspect any forthcoming avatar usage will be 2d and there isn't any plan to actually "walk" the space for now other than with eyeballs. And for "stickiness" and ease of use, in addition to Facebook, Scenecaster will let you plug into eBay, and Amazon.com. It has a model for advertisement revenue and has paired with some other vendors for items. But if you think about it, if you're a manufacturer, a product like this will enable you to show someone your product in their scene - and then eventually link to buy it... wow. Second Life and similar products can't really touch that ease of use and access for now. Speaking of access, SceneCaster is regrettably Windows-only, but it will run on Vista as well as XP.

And yes - according to the attendant, they are considering ways to bring in real avatars - and - working on the ability to import 3d models from other applications (but how far away that is, who knows and they say anything sometimes at shows.) I think this is just a nice-to-have-someday thought but there is no way to bring it about as yet. New technologies come about, and this can change overnight to become a reality. Obviously the folks at SceneCaster sense the fast-changing environment. Linkups with Multiverse I suspect are designed to help them achieve dramatic changes sooner than later. Once that happens, avatars, the potential of having social spaces that can be visited, easy drag and drop for the novices plus import capabilities for the more savvy - interlinked in with social sites like Facebook, Flickr, vendors like Amazon.com, and eBay - who doesn't think this isn't going to be big?

Products like SceneCaster really highlight the need for standards. Imagine a huge repository of SceneCaster scenes someday and more accessible virtual worlds - even a Virtual Web. People are either going to want to take those time-consuming hard-worked-on scenes and either export them out or bring people in.

Speaking of avatars, I walked over to the Poser desk next - or rather the e-Frontier booth. They also own Shade, btw, another app that I've been meaning to buy. It's really great to see all those old Metacreations products, like Poser, still living on (see my Daz 3d post later somewhere in day 2) - alas for Canoma though. They've just passed through so many hands it seems, I wonder if I can ever get the current owners to honour my past copies for upgrade pricing?

Poser of course was always a fun (and at times frustrating) tool. It's been the mainstay of animation creation for those rico-suave dance moves in Second Life. It's coming to the point, with this talk about portable avatars, that avatar creation tools are going to be very popular for people wanting that handsome unique look that isn't off-the-shelf. It's not really practical at this point, but theoretically, you could take your mega-polygon Poser output and bring it into something like Activeworlds. But then you'd be crashing the server and everyone would hate you - which is why Activeworlds protects everyone by having, albeit a very expensive, custom avatar review process. But someday... I just wish the basic version offered the COLLADA output format. COLLADA is going to be very important transfer mechanism between so many of these products and for that, you need to pony up for the pro version from what I could tell.

Now, about that upgrade...

Virtual Worlds Conf. - San Jose, 2007: Demographics and Numbers

2007-10-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

Day 1, Session 1 - Demographics and Numbers: Where Things Are and Where They're Headed

Panelists: Michael Cai (Parks Associates), Nic Mitham (K Zero), and Mary Ellen Gordon (Market Truths Limited)

Alright, I'll have to confess at this time that I hadn't drunk enough coffee and, having missed my shot at some CSI-chocolate, was still in the process of waking up and that's my (weak) excuse of why I didn't note who said what in my notes. I think Mary was the woman panelist, but without coffee, I really couldn't be sure.

Market penetration and branding once again were the kickoff in this first session (I think this was K Zero, but remember: no coffee). Market penetration for virtual worlds was fairly weak in Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia - but this also showed that a huge potential for more growth in the virtual world space that was ready to be tapped into (side note: South Korea has entered Second Life). Older users ("silver surfers") are also under represented (very much so as shown be data below) and represent a potential market growth point.

The fact that adult virtual worlds collectively paled in numbers when compared to the existing user-base of children/teen virtual worlds was hammered home. Success of branding, not only in MTV Virtual Worlds - but in Second Life, was shown by the dramatic influx of German users to Second Life following the advertised entry of BMW and Mercedes Benz into that space. In fact, every brand entry has resulted in a population increase in virtual worlds underscoring that brand activity is key to bringing in users and helping create successful use of that space.

A good brand or theme function can by itself be the basis for a successful virtual world, ala MTV Virtual Worlds, or virtual worlds/games, like Football Superstars, restating again the strength of brand spillover to virtual world usage. (I'll make a side note that most game-based virtual worlds, like Football Superstars, also exploit forums to help foster that sense of community, even while outside the virtual space - another example of that Social Web tie-in already used in successful spaces).

One of the reasons for the aforementioned age disparity is that the virtual medium is already internalized by younger users. They don't question its validity as it's already part of their world understanding.

For adult virtual worlds to grow, what's needed is easier interfaces, web-based virtual world clients (note the theme of interconnectedness again) and clients for mobile devices.

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Some projected population growths by the end of 2008:

Second Life: growing from 10 million to 20 million users
There.com: one million bumping to seven million
Kaneva: increasing from 0.6 million to three million
HiPiHi: 0 users to 10 million (and this is just based on the initial offering to the huge potential of the Chinese market. HiPiHi has stated intentions of creating European and North American installs)
Whyville: three million to 10 million
Club Penguin: 15 million to 30 million
Football Superstars: 0 - 3 million

(And why was Activeworlds omitted from these figures?)

Stickiness was another point. Subscription based services can obviously justify their numbers with cold hard cash. Children/teen virtual worlds had great retention while adult virtual worlds do not, and even where active numbers exist, a significant number must be deducted for assumed alt(ernative) accounts.

And if adult virtual worlds pale to children and teen virtual world usage, they fare even worse to Social Web users when compared in a table listing percentage of users likely to adopt a particular medium after having tried it, based on age. Gender played a role here with many female users opting for the Social Web while the majority of virtual world users seemed to be male (And obviously 0% must be considered to not be an absolute but an indicator of a very low potential).

Adoptive rates
Age range	Social Web	Virtual Worlds
55+	2%	0%
35-54	14%	5%
25-34	40%	12%
18-24	71%	10%
13-17	35%	5%

Though these numbers might seem bleak, other numbers suggest the very strong potential for how engaging social virtual worlds are, as in these next numbers showing how children like to interact in virtual world games. K Zero's speaker noted early on that virtual worlds seemed to spread by word of mouth, a statement reinforced in the community management panel on Day 2 where it was noted that something like 60% of users of one of the older pre-teen virtual worlds (hence a lot of data to mine) used that world to interact with friends from school. This paints a picture that virtual worlds are often used to preserve and engage already existing social networks and a significant part of their strength lies in that application (something alluded to as well in Day 2's keynote) versus just using them to essentially socialize with people unknown outside of the virtual context.

For teens active in games, the following figures were offered:

76% like to game with others
42% like to game with Mom
40% like to game with Dad
only 19% prefer to game alone.

Again, indicating the strong social underpinning and foundation for virtual world engagement. When asked if they thought Second Life would be a good platform for conducting business:

55% said yes
30% maybe
only 5% said no

Brand perception in virtual worlds tended to follow the same level of brand perception in real life. Positive brands have an advantage that carries over to virtual worlds while neutral brands have to work harder on their images. Researchers have found that brands who are not even in virtual worlds can sometimes receive a positive perception due to unofficial "knock-offs". Brands who choose to effectively engage virtual spaces benefit more from organized events. The problem with such events, more so for Second Life I would imagine, is that technical limitations tend to put a cap on how many can actually be at the event without crashing the sim. My own observation from past reading, poorly anticipated, such events can have a reverse effect on the intended brand perception if the event fails to come off as planned.

The significant strength of virtual worlds for marketing relies in the nature of how people buy products based on recommendation or exposure, again, like the process of "viral growth", offering an example of purchase by the same social mechanisms.

57% consider purchasing a real product based on a friend's recommendation
55% recommend a product to someone else
25% look at a real product after seeing it in Second Life
9% buy a product in real life buy a product after seeing it in Second Life
8% have bought a product in Second Life

(Opinion: either I had a caffeine withdrawal twinge and jittered my notes (very possible) or I'd like to see the data for these figures which must be survey-based and how many samples were taken. If there was a 9% return rate, I would think that is amazing and Madison Avenue would be gushing over virtual worlds, which is hardly the case at the moment. Oh well...I will try to get an update and verification for this set)

Anyway, to conclude, there was a prediction that brand-focused events would increase both the use and popularity for virtual worlds and to expect more of same forthcoming (very nice prediction, btw. Note: the I am Legend tie in to SL)

HiPiHi

The Virtual Worlds in China session was running late and I jumped into that, listening to the question and answer and getting my first good look at HiPiHi through something a lot nicer than a YouTube video.

I have to say, HiPiHi looks very handsome. It does have a somewhat stylistic look the reminds me of some Korean MMOs, but doesn't suffer for it and I heard it runs pretty well - so Linden has some competition - or does it? HiPiHi was one of the first virtual world vendors that had called for working under open standards and in the limited time in the session, I saw them take some frank questions and give what seemed realistic answers regarding things like censorship and open sourcing. Sometime after this session, VWN announced that HiPiHi had signed a deal with Millions of Us to help bring in some of those brand-driven events made so much about in the convention.

I'm glad to hear about the IBM-Linden Lab joint ventures. I don't know how comfortable Linden Lab feels about cozying up to what they might deem a knock-off, but I would have been more glad to hear about an IBM - Linden Lab - HiPiHi joint venture. I think these folks have something to bring to the table; a vendor who is willing to really open up and work with the community and industry towards commonality is not always easy to find; they bring with them the strongest virtual world foothold in the Chinese market so why I'm not hearing about more HiPiHi hook-ups is beyond me.

Lunch

I had picked a nice distant table, hoping to unclutter my notes (reminder to self: order new laptop battery). But I was soon invaded, which was just as well, as I had a very lively and productive conversation about virtual world standards. We discussed things about the uses and implications of AI avatars. Considerations such as if businesses would or would not like to reveal in an OpenID sort of way that the "person" you are talking to is just a bot and how that might impact brand perception were discussed. We chatted about how hard it is to get people to adopt standards (one gentleman had been at the Day 0 event) once products are in place. He cited examples from broadcast standards and how people never want to give up their own standards even towards a common good. I brought up my notions for not reinventing the wheel, so to speak, by borrowing from the games industry, using libraries as downloads, and having the libraries themselves being part of the standardized offerings, noting that at least two of the vendors, albeit walled gardens, were already using this idea of local downloaded assets to the client to both improve performance and enrich the experience. I was very pleased and a bit surprised that the reaction from the table seemed very positive. Some people even grabbed the concept and were explaining it to others. (See, I thought it was an easy notion)

Virtual Worlds Conf. - San Jose, 2007: Day 1 Keynote

2007-10-10T20:10:00.000-07:00

General impressions

a) It was a lot smaller than I'd expected from other conferences I'd been to, though apparently larger than its predecessor in New York City. This was noted in the keynote intro by the event organizer, Chris Sherman. I suppose intimate is the word, though I would not say it was quite that either. It was a good showing, more so for the extensive spread of representation than in sheer numbers (1000). I'm guessing this is more a factor of the nascent state of this new industry.

b) Linden Lab had a surprisingly understated presence, though they were a sponsor and Lindens were sprinkled about. Philip Rosedale ghosted out of a couple of sessions I sat in, noted only, since I was intent on the panels, by his name being called out - at one point to come back and comment - which he did not. IBM was perceived as a dominant force in numbers, made note of in off-hand comments by some panelists. I got the distinct impression that the announcement of collaboration between IBM and Linden Lab which, though I take it is more of a formalization of efforts already underway and statement of agreement on principals to move forward, seemed to strike a chord of unease in some. This was alluded to some in the last session of day 2 that I attended, in which a frank and refreshingly candid employee of Linden Lab did help panel and answer some concerns in that capacity.

And just to digress, since I'm on the subject, that commonality and standards were not only a mantra of sorts by many panelists and in the second day's keynote, it was also an agreed upon principal in informal conversations I was party to. Apparently not everyone agreed to this though as it was reported by one of the panelists on day 2 that Disney (perhaps they missed their invitation to day 0) had stated though they were committed to avatar portability between their own virtual worlds, had no intention of making it possible to export avatars outside of the Disney realms - such it was stated.

c) MacBooks abounded, both in the audience and on the panels, sometimes it seemed to being the majority. One of the panelists even commented about their ubiquitousness.

Buzz generators

present - Web-based clients for existing virtual worlds. Unlike AjaxLife, Movable Life, a Second Life web client out of Japan was announced and is ready for action (more on forthcoming changes for this product in the day 2 post). (Side note: I notice that on topic, InDuality, a multi-capable functional plug-in based web browser extension (whew!), was reported in the VWN on this day, providing more growth potential for the already attractive Blink3D). It proposes to ship with features already enabled that are only forthcoming in Movable Life).

not present but accounted for (and mentioned often with anticipation) - Metaplace

Day 0

The session I really would have liked to have been a fly-on-the-wall for had already taken place the day before, an invitation-only event by select attendees: namely, representatives from many major virtual world players conveniently in proximity due to the conference. Buzz: it was about open standards and commonality. Only those there would know for sure, but given that statements to such were forthcoming afterwards, seems a safe bet. It's great that such discussions are taking place at venues like this because, with as yet there being no standards organization of pedigree that has taken on virtual worlds' as yet, such talks at least challenge companies to shape their products with a future-cast, sowing seeds that might grow the theoretical musings of today into the tangible product harvests of tomorrow.

Welcome, intro, and keynote

Sibley Verbeck, CEO of Electric Sheep, was introduced and gave a very informative talk about the shaping virtual environment, stating that even though virtual world offerings were growing, principally in the young child, tween and teen spaces - noting MTV Virtual Worlds as a breakout success due to its successful exploitation of brand focus - future competition was bound to be brutal with at least 40 such products vying for attention in a year's time, not all of them ultimately to succeed in such a competitive environment.

Two things were significantly lacking, according to Verbeck: progress in the adult space, hence a lack of mass adoption to the scale of children's virtual worlds; real integration of the virtual space with the even more successful Social Web and the need to find a way to integrate social virtual interaction concurrently with existing Web 2.0 facilities.

I'll digress again at this point to mention that this theme of Social Web and Virtual Worlds being intertwined and mutually accessible in the same viewer came up a lot later on during the conference in many forms: detraction (as in it was a silly notion), evolution (as in virtual worlds would grow out of Social Web spaces and such would all transform themselves over time), and absorption (Activeworlds was showcasing Facebook interfaced and captured inside of their product). So obviously Mr V. had touched upon something already on the minds of many.

Franky, and I'll save this for a later post, why Linden Lab, Activeworlds, etc just don't build their world viewers so that they all have a tabbed Mozilla browser in a separate accessible window is beyond me. It would make their spaces so much more attractive and useful for the here and now.

At this point, CSI creator, Anthony Zuiker, came out and turned out to be a very engaging speaker, talking about his background, the genesis of CSI, and little more quickly how he came to be involved with Second Life and virtual worlds. He then went on to detail the ambitious plans for the space being built in Second Life to not only host the interlinked CSI: NY television/Second Life event, but to keep alive that space with more fresh content to engage Second Life users. (And he and a helper tossed out some candies - about sixty pounds or so - to the audience). We were treated to a video preview of the CSI episode event, its conclusion in the next season to be directly influenced by activities taking place within the Second Life space being built by Electric Sheep.

So Zuiker essentially echoed Verbeck's theme of interconnecting media, this time television and virtual worlds, and underscoring Verbeck's highlighting MTV World's brand-focused achievements with a brand-focused effort, this time in Second Life - with the understandable point that this is where they see a potential for soon-to-be realized success in virtual worlds.

First break

Well, I didn't get very far in my vendor perusals first break. I suppose being the first, the crush was bound to be a bit thick as this was everyone's first crack at the showcased offers. I think I was a bit distracted though in my first stop, the co-joined There.com and MTV space. There.com's representative wanted to point out that their review of user-generated content before it was uploaded created a safer space for users and as well protected brands. Now, I'd heard about this before and frankly, I think it a bad idea that cannot scale well. Either a log jam is created by reviewers who cannot keep up with the pace if popularity swells (which, by the way was projected for There.com in one of the sessions I attended that day - so we just might see if I'm correct) - or if they grow the review staff, either these people have to be trained, which takes time - or if rushed into service too soon in order to alleviate frustrated users, are prone to make mistakes or errors. This either puts brands at risk or angers users through mistakes or perceived unfair rejections. I pointed these factors out to the attendant but she was insistent that There.com could quickly put people in place to forestall any review backlog in case of growth and at the same time, have absolutely no risk to brands due to the increased flow of user-generated content.

But in defense of There.com against my own druthers, they are trying to adhere to the community rules that they have set forth very openly from the onset, very much in keeping with community management principals as discussed in a later session. And they've been doing this successfully long before I or Second Life or anyone came into virtual understanding. They feel, and could very well be correct, that community itself is one of the attraction points to a virtual space and a vendor that pays attention to the values of that community will see some traction ROI.

In any case, I still think such a scheme creates a lot of overhead and has its own risks; it just seems a bad idea because it hampers user contribution by placing a choke-hold on creativity and user input; it puts the onus of censorship and all the ill will that it generates on the vendor company. Censorship and regulation are the province of governments and the community. Companies can help foster and set the foundations for virtual community and help to enforce laws as put forth, but trying themselves to be the content police on their own is just asking for trouble, from both sides. And, this next was brought up by others as well in sessions, the better idea is to enable user creation - ala Second Life, ala Google Earth, ala YouTube, ala Neverwinter Nights - because there are so many users out there, some of them more talented and creative than you or I, or anyone There.com can hire - who will do a company's development for free if you let them. I think that just convinces me that There.com is more comfortable being in the walled garden space, but we'll see.

Anyway, MTV's Laguna Beach looked good, as did There.com. And both seemed active and populated. I thanked the representative and moved on to the Icarus Studios' station, which was understandably swamped. Icarus Studios' suite is a very handsome and seemingly robust set of tools for MMOG and virtual world creation. If you're looking for a full suite of tools to start creating your own MMO or virtual world, this wouldn't be a bad place to start as the output was decidedly very sweet. They also offer creation services. I was not able to actually talk to anyone though that could provide me any information as they were all somewhat busy talking to others. I did talk a bit with a developer but he was distracted trying to debug something (don't you hate when that happens to you in public?) as well as find out why and who had deleted or removed his character from the world. I caught some smiles and a sigh of relief as I headed for my next session so I took it as a good sign that all was well again in Icarus Studios' world.

Map of online communities

2007-10-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

John Swords, of Electric Sheep, posted a fun and informative map he'd created outlining the various social and virtual worlds as regions. He posted this map as a photo on the Virtual Worlds Conference internal networking site. Since that isn't available to everyone, he kindly offered one that is upon request.

Very funny. My favorite areas are the tiny peninsula dubbed "Attractive MySpace pages" out of the huge MySpace nation, the Viral Straits, the Blogipelago (haha!), and the warning that "HERE BE Anthropomorphic Dragons."

I thought it was interesting how small the kingdom of Facebook, though not small by itself, is in comparsion to MySpace's Empire. John Swords stated that he tried to make the relative size of these "nations" corresponding to numbers of users according to real data. I'd heard that Facebook was kicking butt in this area so I guess the success is not so much overall but relative to the time that it has been in existence.

Virtual divisions: choices shaping technology

2007-09-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

I like to think of virtual worlds as a new and future tool for engagement. Not everyone wants to or needs to make use of them. I don't think it's matter of right choice but personal choice. I think predictions that virtual worlds will replace the Web are about as accurate as those who predicted the Web would replace print. There will always be other channels to use, and people will mix and match according to the occasion. And given that the cornerstone of the virtual experience seems to be primarily social - or function in context of social interaction - then I think there will always be channels for those who just don't like the medium - and more power to them as well.

Virtual worlds just don't work for some people. They're too awkward and surreal I suppose, though I think there must be a better word. I share some of people's doubts regarding the current efficacy and benefits of virtual worlds as voiced by some pundits. Sometimes what seems like a good idea doesn't play out in actual use. I've seen some examples where virtual worlds impose a needless application layer over information exchange better served by other methods. The medium of virtual interaction itself can be very distracting sometimes, getting in the way of conducting business.

That said, I'm a big fan of virtual worlds and see a lot of potential. I think situations like I've described above are normal to the process of exploration. People who love a medium are going to bring their processes to it, maybe because they see novel solutions, but I think often more because they just love the medium and want to find - sometimes force - uses that are not an organic fit. Application of existing processes often don't pan out. But some will. And such failures are important because we collectively start to internalize the nuance of the environment and start realizing ways that it differs and works better than what we have already. I think the best uses of virtual worlds have yet to be discovered, possibly because the infrastructure and mechanisms that will allow for them have yet to be developed, but also because that process of initial discovery is still very new and ongoing. Some people will look at these sorts of failures and I think take the wrong message away (or maybe not. It's all conjecture, isn't it and I am a self-admitted advocate after all). <-- grain of salt time :-) So, why do people "love" a medium and adopt it? Sometimes because it suggests itself as being better - but I think that this is rare and mostly not the case, imho. I think it is mostly because, as a form of expression and communication, it better suits the personality of the adopter. They find that they can present themselves better or more fully or with more satisfaction. And since such come to be a more attractive natural form of communication for themselves, they want to use it and get others to use it as well. People forget we're social animals that feel better when part of a group (wanted to say herd). But not everyone will adopt or "get" the new method. Each new channel of communication adds interesting aspects, new forms of information, new capabilities - but all such leave something behind as well. And users who enjoy or are comfortable more with existing channels don't find the new methods particularly attractive. They find they can communicate better and be understood better, get more information across, or just enjoy the nuance more, of existing methods. There's also a cost factor. New methods require new equipment and processes. Not everyone, even those who might be attracted, can find access right away. However, for an established medium, I think that's not the case. Such tend to be ever present, in easy reach. I think we grow up with them and take them as a matter of course and they become natural internal methods - so much so that people who lack those methods are often left to a degree out of touch to those who do "speak" through those channels. So I think from a business perspective the need to understand and find a way to interact in virtual form is generational: what people are seeing in virtual worlds is not necessarily a better form of communication for themselves, but a way to speak to the next generation of workers and consumers through the methods and processes that today's children, teens and young adults use to speak to each other. I know they're out there, but I haven't met a parent yet whose children are not engaged in some form of virtual interaction, be it MTV Worlds, Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, or MMO games. For current uses, I would say there are three other aspects that are attractive: perceptual, psychological, and practical. The first two relate to areas new to this form of interaction not utilized in say Web or phone communications. The added information provided by immersed dimension I just see as not being able to be duplicated better for now than what's being done in virtual worlds. For educational purposes, spatial relationship is really key to understanding some concepts. Having taken my one class in Second Life so far (I have a dodgy computer that doesn't like it) - I have to say that I found it very engaging. There's something about the manipulation of objects that even though done virtually, it brings something of the tactile experience of working with my hands - something missing in a lot of current education. I think it helped keep me more engaged and focused and I wonder if others wouldn't have the same reaction. I know MIT has done some chemistry courses in SL, requiring the students to assemble molecules and study their relation in the formation of complex elements. Architects have been able to mock up and showcase both practical and fantastic designs to show off or get more immediate feedback - or just to see how they feel walking through the space as framed by their creation. Of course there are CAD programs but they are expensive, have a high learning curve and lack the immediate access to feedback that SL provides - but offer more detailed renderings. Again, different tools for different uses. Psychologically, there's both a vanity and engagment aspect. We make up a little cartoon-like person that is us as far as the world is concerned. I've talked a lot about this elsewhere so don't want to go over too much again. But there's a lot of attraction to the nuance and freedom of expression when we recreate ourselves in these avatar forms. Its not for everyone but even if someone doesn't understand that attraction, don't discount that it is an attractive pull for someone else. And interestingly enough, seeing this three-dimensional form, I think, helps personify that the force we're dealing with is in fact another human being - more so than any chat text, phone voice or e-mail can manage. Short of meeting the real person, and irrespective of whether the avatar is accurate or not, having the same form and movement of a human body, avatars seem to stimulate that response in a lot of people. There was a news report I'd read some time back discussing some interesting initial psychological observations about virtual worlds that said users of MTV Words - where MTV "encourages" the people in the show to come in and interact in avatar form - were really excited and engaged to have "met" and talked to the celebrities. Of course they didn't. They interacted with a cartoon driven by the celebrity. But that association of interaction was similar to having met the real person - at least for some.

Practical to my mind really relates to the ready access of most virtual worlds coupled with their distance negating qualities. True, distance negation is a cornerstone of Web and communication technologies. But coupled with the first two aspects, it really pushes the engagement level up. Distance negating and perceptual environment, distance negating and ego-realization - very different twists on the distance negating aspect that really make it an experience unique to this virtual environment, and not like its Web, phone, or video counterparts.

Bottom line: get it or not, it doesn't matter. People I hope can feel comfortable about "not getting" something and having personal choices that suit them. I can't get The Hills and probably think about that show (and the people in it) the same way some people think about virtual words (and the people in them). My wife loves that show. If she wants to watch it, I can go into the other room and fire up an MMO. I get those. My wife has about the same opinion of them as I do The Hills.

Will Google's be "MyWorld"?

2007-09-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

When one looks at the names of the some of the current corporate players who have large stakes or tie-ins to virtual worlds, from the likes of CBS, Cisco, Disney, IBM, Intel, MTV, Sony, Warner Brothers, Wells Fargo, and even Virgin Airlines' Richard Branson, two large Internet giants stand out for not making the list: Microsoft and Google.

Now, Microsoft does have a presence in Second Life and has made successful and active use of that virtual world holding two job fairs there to date. But overall, given the reputation of this company, that use seems rather understated. Hence, the anticipatory buzz concerning a forthcoming Microsoft virtual world seems almost taken for granted in that it will happen; it's just the details about how this might shape up that we are waiting to hear about. Would it be a Virtual Earth extension or would it be a Games For Windows extension, or something altogether different?

But whatever it brings to the table, Microsoft, like any leader whose presence is felt to be both pervasive and at times domineering, will face challenges. And one company that seems to have mastered Microsoft, at least to date, in capturing whatever it sets its eye on is Google. Google Earth, already successful and popular in its own right, has been posed to usher Google into the mainstream of virtual world offerings. Two reports I read this morning from VWN and The Times, suggest that we are likely to see this equally anticipated foray by end of year in a product called MyWorld.

This alleged product, if it is indeed based on Google Earth, already brings with it an active user community and, due to some clever acquisitions on Google's part, it also brings in some nice creation tools. SketchUp, though not as powerful and nuanced a tool as that already found in Second Life, still provides a good baseline which can be extended and, following Google's community contributor approach, has a lot of downloads available. But my guess is that any content creation on this more intimate scale is likely to be something different, leaving SketchUp to the current use of Google Earth, but possibly taking aspects of it forward into new forms while leveraging the extensive and active user community of Google Earth.

I for one am looking forward to all such virtual world offerings, Microsoft's included, and am eager to try MyWorld out. Given how much I use and appreciate the well-crafted user design and elegance of the Google browser and Google Earth, I cannot help but wonder if my next virtual world might not be MyWorld, at least in part.

Intel's 80-core, umm, controversy?

2007-09-12T16:46:00.000-07:00

I don't know what amazes me more: that Intel has managed a relatively power-efficient 80-core processor capable of two teraflops, or that some people are said to be in a tizzy about this.

Didn't they watch that X-files episode where the evil scientist declares "Because I can!"? Didn't they watch those videos on Intel's blog with 20,000 pigs running amok!? - Cmon, 20k virtual pigs being rendered and tracked simultaneously with collision detection, tell me you're not impressed.

If I ever win the lottery and I tell you that I'm not going to quit my day job because I need something to do with my life, please, tell the lottery officials that they need to take that money back and give it to someone else. I think what we're seeing here is a similar lack of imagination.

Yes, few seem to know how to take advantage of the new capabilities offered by quad-cores, let alone 64 or 80. Yes, there is going to be some learning curve to leverage the power of these new processors. But since when is having potential so bad?

80-core processors ain't going to be out on the market or in my game-box anytime soon. No one is going to be asked to program software for such - yet. It's meant to showcase the potential of something and let others re-imagine their own potential. I would have thought this was obvious and obviously beneficial.

And yes, more powerful processors are going to find a use. Intelligent minds don't like a vacuum; creative curiosity will find applications. And, like the aforementioned articles said, one of my fav topics: virtual worlds - will find welcome use for such. And such will help enable same (I'm sure making a tasty profit for companies ready to step up and service the technology and service requirements of all these new demands.)

Movie notions: Carnival of Souls

2007-09-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

Carnival of Souls is a cult classic "B" horror movie that I feel transcends its humble origins. It was the product mainly of an industrial film maker from Lawrence Kansas, Herk Harvey. Harvey was a proven talent for the sort of industrial films of the post-WWII period showcasing agricultural, industry, and business themes, promoting the qualities of Kansas among other topics. Though he worked several years in that capacity and received a number of awards, including an Academy Award nomination, he is largely, somewhat to his chagrin, known for this one venture into mainstream film and horror genre. His choice of making a horror film was a practical consideration since he felt that it would sell well and fund future, more interesting feature film projects.

Such was not to be however. Limited production funding, limited advertising, distribution by a lackluster company that later went out of business, and I would argue, being somewhat ahead of its time, doomed it nearly from the start. Carnival of Souls disappeared and its cast and crew thought that it had simply gone the way of many such failed attempts at movie-making.

It was the process of late night television coupled with word-of-mouth that resurrected Carnival and brought it back from obscurity. This started mostly in big cities like New York City but later spread across the country. It soon became a regular staple of late-night fare and was an often requested favorite for Halloween movie marathons. Reviewers "discovered" the film and praised its surreal qualities and Siskel and Ebert even listed it among the finest movies of its genre.

Carnival I think owes its relative success to a number of factors, many of them fortuitous measures taken by necessity, and just good timing in that it came back into focus when its qualities were able to be more appreciated. Herk Harvey was a proven no-nonsense veteran film maker who could bring a project to completion on time (useful for Carnival since it was shot with many of its principals on vacation from Centron, the company where Harvey worked). And having only a meagre budget, Harvey could make use of Centron equipment. And since he knew and was friends with many Centron employees, they could be approched to work on Carnival. Many locals and businesses in Lawrence also participated or allowed use of their facilities for free.

The acting in Carnival runs from either the credible to quirky, with some very awful wooden performances thrown in. The real star of the movie is the abandoned Saltair amusement park, site of filming for most of the one week that Carnival made use of location shots in and around Salt Lake City. Harvey had seen the Saltair driving through Utah and the image stood with him. It formed the seed of the idea he would pitch to veteran Centron writer, John Clifford. There is something so lonely and pervasive about such a huge abandoned space falling to ruin that was once intensely filled with hundreds of people day in and out. Some of the most haunting scenes of Carnival have Mary, the main character, wandering the empty edifices of the Saltair, strangely drawn to something she doesn't understand. There is no dialogue, only rich black and white cinematography and a wonderfully moody organ score (Mary is an organist, a necessary convenience since Lawrence was home to the organ factory shown in the film). The film makes use of awkward angles and stark yet beautiful images shot around Salt Lake and Lawrence to add to its creepy tone. Some of the most inspired, unusual, and hence most memorable shots were apparently managed and undertanken by Reza Badiyi, an assistant director who appears in an uncredited cameo. You might not know his name but you know his work. Badiyi would later go on to become one of the most prolific television directors in Hollywood and the list of his credits includes most of the successful shows of the past decades. But Badiyi's work for Carnival, some of it done at risk of injury, coupled with cinematographer Maurice Prather's practiced and yet for Carnival, ambitious eye, helps make Carnival stand apart from anything before, except perhaps the films of Cocteau, to which it has been compared.

The story has elements similar to other contemporary stories in shows like Twilight Zone. But if it is derivitive, it is also inspiring and Carnival has been linked to the ideas of later directors and writers like George Romero and John Carpenter. The story draws on feelings of not belonging and being out of tune with everything. Being disconnected with the world or things or people around us is something I think many of us have felt, but here it leads to an awful truth. And because the lead actress, Candace Hilligoss, insisted on applying her method acting process to her character, clashing at times with Harvey's insistence on a more distant portrayal, we are drawn in and can feel Mary's desperate desire to not be removed and her fear of the inevitable process pulling her unwillingly toward's the film's end.

There are many substandard versions of the film outstanding and it can be rented or even purchased as part of B-movie compilations. And though it was not an overlong film, it was cut drastically in several, if not most, of these. If you've never seen Carnival of Souls and would like to see the best example, do yourself a favor and hold out to rent or find the Criterion version, whose restored print stands as the best to date. This version also includes a lot of interesting background material for fans of the film, including a reunion celebration and documentary, touching in that all these people who worked so hard on a labour of love could receive some validation, years overdue, for what they had managed to achieve.

And, like all movie recommendations, take this one with a "grain-of-salt." It's not for everyone, so don't go out and buy it for your first view. If you watch it and go "Huh?" - then you're at least only out the rental fee. :-)

Bellwether bears

2007-09-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

A bit of depressing news concerning polar bears came in on the news feed when I logged in last night. I had heard that there had been a marked rise of polar bear drownings; that nearly every documentary filmmaker visiting the arctic had been witness personally to such. But I don't think I had been expecting such sad news, certainly so soon and to such a scale. I think somewhere in the back of my mind it had always been a possibility, but I never really thought I would see the day of such a prediction.

Polar bears are one of those favored zoo staples growing up, right up there with elephants, alligators, and monkeys. To understand there is now a potential that those zoos might be the only place to find such creatures one day, and because of the effect I, you, all of us, had on our planet, breaks my heart. We're not exactly certain to what extent the changes global warming will manifest one or two generations from now. Opinions run the gamut, from the dismissive to the apocalyptic. But deny it or not, change is coming.

They are now talking about the fabled Northwest Passage above Canada becoming reality, open to shipping; soon the same for the Siberian and European arctic zones. The positive benefits of this warming seem very shortsighted and miss the point. To open up access to even more fossil fuels just to compound the warming problem is the same sort of short-sighted self-aggrandizing thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. To open up access to methane hydrate as a fuel source is very tricky and if done carelessly, could be disastrous. Shifting much of the World's shipping to the far North will have economic repercussions on the service centers that support existing trade routes that will see declining traffic; while at the same time, opening up new jobs and permanent spaces in the North will bring more ecological impact to areas that have been isolated before. Indeed, the potential to access and exploit virgin and heretofore inaccessible areas of Siberia could see new population centers spring up along with deforestation of one of the most important oxygen producers on the planet, and perhaps more significantly, simultaneously, one of the greatest removal systems of carbon dioxide.

And given that the poles are the dynamic engines that power our weather systems, how our planet will fare with one of those engines "turned off" part of the year when the North Pole is totally free of ice in Summer, let's just say, it's going to be a very "interesting" place to live in the upcoming years.

It doesn't take a genius to see the effects of global warming. It seems everywhere in my country, people are talking about how the weather is just "off," and has been getting more "off" with each succeeding year. In one area it's near drought; in others flooding. You are probably able to point to examples you've seen. Where my in-laws live, large animals are coming down from the mountains because of lack of water, so desperate they're willing to come into populated areas in the valleys to drink out of swimming pools. Spring is coming earlier and staying later, bringing more pollen, longer fire seasons, and a lack of sustained cold that kills off parasites. Where I live, we've had record numbers of oak and apple moths. Such usually only breed in two cycles in a good year (for them). Because of the earlier Spring, they've had three. Liking to fish, I used to sometimes check the chum buckets and talk to fisherman to get an idea of the catch, and see if it was worth going out the next day. One day I marveled to see all these strange and exotic fish, brilliant with colours I'd never seen before This phenomena of warm waters appearing off our coast was said to happen once every 30-50 years. It has happened several times since, that I can recall. And it seems that the frequency is increasing so that it's not such a rarity anymore to catch albacore or other fish more appropriate to Southern California and Mexico.

Oh yes, we can and should apply ourselves to living green and make those process and cultural choice changes part of our functional lifestyle. But the current requirements to just freeze the growth in greenhouse gases, not lower that growth, not turn it back, just to keep it at the same pace, are so prodigious that I sense there is not enough will or desire in this current generation that will ever bring this about, let alone to undertake the methods to reverse it. But please, do everything you can to prove me wrong. Otherwise, our generation is destined to have failed to be the shepherds of the planet that we should have been. It will fall to the next and the next after that, who will have no choice but deal with the effects that ours and preceding generations have brought about. I hope that they will be able to succeed where we have not. I don't think it will be a case of finding the will or denying that change is coming. By their day, such arguments will be mute and the necessity to deal with the ramifications ever present.

I just hope that when they have managed to bring their world back to a form of equilibrium, that whatever that world is in future, she still has a place for wild polar bears.

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MetaCard: should avatar debt be considered progress?

2007-09-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

I saw an interesting bit coming across the news feed yesterday regarding something billed as the First Virtual World Credit Card. The credit rate is horrendous (but aren't they all) and the limit is so low as to only be practical for the superfluous purchases of avatar tinkering. But this credit card does mark an interesting point in the evolution of Second Life, which, for all its faults, provides a testing ground for issues that would be tasked against a possible future Virtual Web. In this case, we see an example of identification (if choosing the gold option) and payment subcutaneous to an anonymous avatar overlayer. Closed systems do not have to deal with this. They function either not needing such methods of validation or one is already validated, in a sense, by the process of subscription to access the space and create an account.

A more distributed system, ala a Virtual Web, I suspect would not have an embedded validation method in place, courtesy of a single vendor. How then to manage validation, secure payment, and transfer of pertinent details, such as real name and contact information?

I've put forth that we need to evolve our need for identification to be on a verified but hidden level only, allowing for personal choice regarding anonymity and appearance. Avatar appearances, at least in the successful virtual worlds, have no guaranteed match to the actual persons anyways. Dress standards are all right when functioning in a business sense. But trying to enforce some sort of visual conformity on the general populace because we can't think past the surface is asking to be unpopular and abandoned, imho.

IF one accepts this requirement for anonymity, how can I ever really be sure that the person I'm buying from really is who they say they are? How can they be sure I am who I say I am?

Are we always going to have to access intermediaries like PayPal or eBay as the price for anonymity with some level of validation? Or are we going to be able to do person-to-person interactions with verified means when necessary?

Related to the topic of identification, I see that Linden Lab is now going to require identification to enter certain naughty zones. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism, but as I understand it, one has to be essentially "carded" when going in, providing a drivers license or passport number. Naughty zones are not a concern for me but the mechanisms for access are. Not just based on age, but security, paid-access, child-protection are all going to require some sort of access control. I think that the method Linden Lab is apparently applying in this test-case is too cumbersome. I suppose it is a stop-gap for now, but if I read that right, it seems both inaccurate (what if my parent was passed out from a binge and I "borrowed" theirs?) and insecure (like I trust Linden Lab with that info? They can't even get their application to run on Vista).

There is talk about having to sacrifice rights in order to preserve them (which I think irl is a crock, imo) but there is some truth to this when considering virtual worlds. A child in the real world wouldn't even consider entering into such a "red light" district but could consider going in as a poser because virtually he's indistinguisible from an adult if he so chooses. If a little kid asked me IRL about buying my used car, assuming she wasn't packing a really prodigious wad of cash (in which case, I can't say the thought of throwing in wood blocks so her feet could reach the pedals might not cross my mind), I'd chuckle and not bother getting involved in a pointless interaction. But in a virtual world, how do I size up a valid prospective buyer from someone who's a waste of my time?

How do we access information that would be ours by right visually in real life, and yet preserve the virtual bill of rights, including article 17: "A man is a man, unless he wants to be a woman, or wear bunny PJs."?

Again, I think a unified model is going to have to wrestle with this conflicting duality of needs. I think that user accounts would need to have some sort of sublayer linked to real identification and payment methods. Such should also be seamlessly accessed by the browser, say upon trying to walk through a virtual door, age screening is done automatically. None of this carding stuff. Children could register in schools; teachers would be equipped with processes to get their charges safely into virtual worlds, knowing that the alarm bells and virtual iron gates would close if said precocious young'uns try to get into places they shouldn't. And if little miss tried to yank my chain a bit for fun by pretending to buy a car with her virtual adult self, maybe I couldn't get her real age, maybe I couldn't access anything real about her except to verify that "she" was "old enough" to buy a car.

And when Dateline and Chris Hansen's avatar next decides to undertake another episode of To Catch a Virtual Predator, parents can know that those bad and troubled avatars got away but the people behind them did some very real jail time.

By giving up some "rights" as to anonymity to allow for basic functions of commerce and verification in a hidden but accessible based-on-need manner, I think the issues around preserving surface anonymity would go away. I would argue that it would encourage more use since people, as long as they felt they could trust the integrity of the verification process, would be more inclined to use the Web, virtual or otherwise. But trust, now as Shakespeare would have it, "ay, there's the rub."

Such a system would have to be absolutely transparent in its application, with no potential for misuse. As to who maintains, and even more important, who has access to, the information behind the avatars is the key issue.

You know, eBay and PayPal aren't looking so bad after all. Maybe that's what it would take: bonded intermediaries who can vouch for you and who provide these go-betweens. Given the varying laws about what age constitutes legal access, local companies who are vetted by some standards organization can carry on that function. Though we would still have to give up some information if we wanted to function beyond the purely social, there would at least be some choice about which vetting agency, and some accountability if any such should fail in their duties to keep my information secure.

Virtual druthers: social union of games and Web

2007-09-04T15:19:00.001-07:00

This is the second part of a three-part post that examines potential aspects of a future Virtual Web experience. Part 2: Virtual druthers: social union of games and Web discusses asset management, sourcing and standards, and offers a list of 15 salient aspects and why I feel each is something to be considered for a successful offering. Part 1: Reshaping the ego for the Virtual Web makes the case for the essentials of self and a review of the current phenomena of the Social Web to conjecture what might take shape and work well in any virtual successor. Part 3: Virtual contenders is a list of some of the major virtual words, current and future, and how I feel they stack up against the former arguments.

Notions for a Virtual Web

What makes for an ideal virtual web? I think whether there will even be a sole Virtual Web near future or ever is debatable. Certainly virtual worlds have really captured the imagination and press recently. But if product history for web clients hold true, it is more likely at this state that a number of virtual worlds will come to market and co-exist, carving out various niches in their activity zones with committed clientele. But I couldn't help thinking about what aspects might take shape in such a phenomena as would constitute the Virtual Web. We are standing at a very exciting time, near to the big bang of explosive virtual growth. Even if several worlds ultimately evolve to co-exist, I think there will always be a push to bring them together into a comprehensive or mutually intelligible format. For that reason, I think that a lot of people are thinking about the potential Virtual Web, seeing in the manifest crop of current simulations the promise of the most significant change to potentially impact social networking since the onset of the Web itself.

It is not hard to begin a feature list of something that is itself an extension, abstraction and recreation of an existing highly successful system. The current Web offers us proven qualities that recommend themselves by default: open distribution, platform independence, open source structure and maintenance, extendibility, indexing, interaction, anonymity, customization, security (relative), persistence, lack of censorship (relative), and free access.

I would argue that each of these aspects has led to the success of the Web and has made the Web as much a mainstay of social interaction and commerce as has the telephone for some, a growth pattern that will only continue. Yet, as we shall see in Part 3, most, if not all, of the offerings examined will be seen to have departed in one or more significant points from the model offered by the existing Web. Even if one does not accept the points model as I've presented it as being the most accurate rendition, there is still clearly a strong deviation in those simulations that preclude them from being a satisfactory extension of the Web experience in virtual form. If one accepts that these aforementioned qualities are proven, why would anyone consider deviating from them as a baseline moving forward to a new form? - Well, I have come to believe that such is the wrong question to ask.

Though there are some few virtual world products that have either aspirations or at least some small hope of their virtual world being the basis of the next Web, for the most, there seems to be no attempt to recreate or to capture the Web experience. What we are seeing in this rush to market is not the competition to recreate the success of the Web, but to stake out a market share in the virtual world collective medium. If such virtual colonies are successful, I believe that the thinking is probably that expansion can come thereafter. But for the time being, it is such a new medium, that exploration, exploitation, and engagement are the most important factors.

So the question, imho, should be not which virtual world could be the basis of a future Virtual Web, but how might a Virtual Web evolve from such competing closed systems? And then how might successful aspects of these spaces fold over into a more communal offering, preparing and raising expectations in terms of behaviors, access, persistence, and use?

I have posed that the existing Social Web can provide a clear roadmap to successful interaction on some levels and should factor in the overall goals for any standards body or intelligent vendor. But there are those aspects of the virtual experience that not only recommend themselves, they are germane to why virtualization is so much more engaging for some than the existing Web. If a Virtual Web is to come about, these newer features, some possibly that have yet to be discovered or displayed, will likely suggest themselves from the most successful of the virtual worlds that will thrive and prosper over their counterparts. To try and predict, plan and be prepared, to react to such a manifestation, I suggest it is best to start thinking outside of the box that is the web browser. Consider that a common yet mistaken assumption that all such virtual worlds are "games" still realizes a fundamental truth: that the other parent model to study is that of social gaming.

Collectively, social games are the most popular form of virtual world currently in existence. The most successful of these, in terms of revenue and active use, are fully realized three-dimensional spaces known as MMOs (MMO comes from Massive Multiplayer Online). In MMOs the game activity is paramount, but most offer varying levels of social activity as a by-product, often unplanned. These games offer us another model that deals with visual and aural manifestation: three-dimensional space, avatars, interactive physics (between avatars and the avatars and environment), inventory (items carried by and used by the avatar), group association and organization, avatar and group communication, persistence of space, both ambient and reactive sound and music, game engines and graphics rendering, and, for some, personal space and/or the customization of space and avatar.

Clearly, in trying to reimagine the Web into a visual format, we have clear working examples. Though such games might be proprietary, they still offer excellent proofs-of-concept. And since we have a large number of working examples, a list that compounds each quarter, a qualitative assessment can be done to decide on what features of each work best, which don't, and which ultimately might suggest themselves to a comprehensive solution that seeks to bridge the visual and interactive environment of social games to the broader use of the Social Web.

Mixing the models

The Web is mostly open, interlinked. It has evolved to include mechanisms and standards so that it can be managed, adapted, and transformed by the uses put to it. Growth is organic and ongoing. The Web is accessible on most levels by nearly all computers. MMOs are exclusive, closed systems. They are software applications where change must be managed, and with more limited resources, requirements assessed against many demands: user satisfaction, technology changes, time to market, and competing products' features. Growth is therefore more structured and scheduled. Because of their technology requirements, MMOs cater to select target markets, some more exclusive than others. Not everyone has satisfactory access.

So if we wish combine the extendibility, user control, and open standards of the Web with the sensory richness and sophistication of the MMOs, how might such an experience come to be, given the different requirements of each?

Probably the biggest hurdle in visualizing such a system are the requirements put forth by graphics rendering and scripted interaction. As we shall see in Part 3, most vendors choose to accommodate these by controlling the number of choices, essentially using MMOs' concepts of fixed asset libraries and animation rethought of in non-game terms, or supra-game terms when considering hybrid models. These work because these are closed systems, with all that such entails. Second Life is currently the only virtual world to offer the ability for users to interject their own creations into the environment (HiPiHi has stated its intention to offer same). There is only a limited fixed library. But though these user-created objects are not the sole cause of performance problems, they are a contributing factor and Second Life suffers for it. Second Life has much poorer performance and currently no ability to scale well for users in any numbers in a given area. Though an outdated graphics engine is partly to blame, one can see where bloated scripts and excessively complex object models can slow rendering to a crawl or even crash the server, harking back to when bloated nested tables and excessive JavaScript could slow the rendering of web pages in the early Web.

Any solution for a Virtual Web that presupposes both state of the art graphics and extensibility, if both parent models are valid conceptual ancestors, must need have the ability to at least offer the option for a rich immersive experience, and yet have the ability to allow for user-created objects and spaces as part of its makeup - and both with an acceptable level of performance. The solution I propose is to to apply an adaptive model that borrows from each parent. It is not necessarily the most likely model. I see several ways this might come about. It is simply a hypothesis that I find attractive.

First need is that a common baseline set of standards, which would govern not only behaviors, but script, visuals, rendering engines requirements, and a visual reference language, would need to be monitored and maintained by an open standards body, much as HTML/XML are by the W3C and JavaScript is by the ECMA. Such a body would provide a neutral platform for change and it is a proven concept already in use. A Virtual Web browser would need to include a graphics engine, like games do. The graphics engine might change over time, or different vendors might prefer different versions of it in their own products, but as long as the requirements are set for in open standards, everyone knows the minimum requirements that will be tasked to any such engine.

To achieve efficient quality, I suggest the solution also needs to follow one of two tracks: the markup model or the library model.

The markup model is an exception to my argument as it excludes the game ancestor and reimagines virtuality based on a markup language, something akin to VRML (virtual reality markup language), X3D, or a scripting language, like ActionScript. This would be rendered in a web browser using a plug-in and would be akin to a more robust version of the Shockwave/Flash player. There is much that is very attractive about this. One of the biggest virtual worlds existing is based on Shockwave technology. It is a closed system but it is not hard to imagine a similar product that is open to user generated content based on a rendered language. The overhead of such would be a lot less than managing user created objects amalgamated through scripts and graphic textures of various file sizes. And objects could be linked rather than uploaded. Though existing Shockwave virtual worlds have a rather cartoony look one often sees in vectored animation, that is more typical of their market (mostly teens and children) than an indication of the limits of the technology. Even if Shockwave is not the channel for this sort of effort, one can imagine something similar coming to market. And though I see much promise in this avenue of approach, the current crop seems more focused on game-like offerings which use or seem to use embedded library objects.

The library model would borrow from the methods used by games. Games achieve much of their performance by maintaining almost all of the objects, textures, and sound that comprise the visual elements on the host system, either directly on a drive or kept on a CD or DVD, to be accessed as needed. For MMO games, the game engine needs to then rerender the scene based not only on the actions of the local player, but on the actions of those around the player as well as the game AI, all transmitted via network connections. But having the bulkiest files kept locally in asset libraries means that the amount of information that need be passed through the network pipeline would be much smaller, and the time to render much faster, than it would be had everything needed to be downloaded.

Static local libraries vs dynamic linked rendering

For the library model to achieve customizable quality, we need to find a correlation that equates media elements to both HTML and XML, and that makes use of the built-in understanding of the former, along with the extensible open-ended application of the latter. HTML is preconfigured to render in such a way because it is governed by a standards body. Anyone seeking to build a browser, be it Explorer, Firefox, Opera or Safari, knows how to build their application to render the markup correctly because these standards are open and available. Hence the "understanding" for HTML is built into browsers, and even though they include references to conforming DTDs, such are not utilized for the sake of performance and speed. There's no need to when expectations have already been set.

If builders of virtual worlds know which visual and media elements have been downloaded to any user's computer via the browser, they can use such knowledge to craft their worlds. Virtual world builders would have a hopefully large and updated library of assets they know they could call upon, at minimal impact to bandwidth. So, for the sake of virtual argument, if one takes the preconfigured asset library of a game as potentially being the same as a virtual HTML, assets hosted not on the collective Web to be downloaded and rendered dynamically, but on the host systems as part of the "browser" installation, then one understands the correlation between the two models. This creates for a very rich experience, providing visual, aural, and scripted building blocks which are then reconfigured according to instructions coming in via the Web. Everyone experiences them the same because they are the same on everyone's system.

Therefore, the default or baseline Virtual Web, like a closed game system, will have a finite number of choices available. And like a closed system that seeks to keep its users engaged, textures, objects, scripts might be corrected, modified, replaced over time, and the choices extended with care. Stored assets would obviously be faster to load. But how to expand the experience to be open-ended? Two ways: optional library downloads and linked dynamic objects. These would be akin to our visual XML. The former might even have conformance instructions, like DTDs or Schema. The latter would be self-describing. For this hypothesis, assume that all objects, standard or optional, library or dynamic, have a fixed reference number to call upon.

Optional library downloads would be like the initial library installed as part of the viewer, added to the local asset files to be potentially called upon by builders, using provided documentation indicating reference calls. Such stored assets could be based on themes or uses. They could be provided by the standards body as optional files to help extend the experience of the Virtizen, or could be offered as part of product promotions or activity vendors, such as game providers who want to ensure a specific graphical look or style to their activity zone. To keep file size down, the challenge for library extensions would be to not recreate objects and textures already installed as part of another library but only include those aspects different from the baseline, including ones that might be imagined to be better. For "open" extended libraries, anyone could use the assets in their building calls, and the call details would be provided in library documentation. But some vendors might also offer "closed" libraries, where the assets are provided for download for efficiency, but which could only be used in specific contexts - say on a specific server.

Much like current Web users are sometimes prompted to download a specific font, sound file, or browser plug-in, to optimize their Web surfing experience on a specific site, users entering into activity zones that required new library assets would be notified and asked if they cared to download them. Opting out would force the objects to render to a baseline texture provided in the default library, or render certain scripted objects inoperable. Breaking libraries into specific families of use or themes would help keep the initial browser download smaller and ensure that virtizens only downloaded files that they actively needed to by way of their own use activities. And the impact of exploration could be spread out over more time. Virtizens content with the experience in the main entry zone would never need download anything further except for those files provided as updates or extensions as part of browser upgrades based on new standards. And, as standards updated and older textures and scripts were replaced or embellished by newer offerings, one could see that the more useful and popular public domain open library assets might be added to the official libraries as part of standards maintenance. Optional library sets maintained by the standards body could include highly complex and useful common objects: vehicles, avatar hair, plants and rocks, scripted animals, or theme libraries, such as science fiction, Renaissance, Moghul India, etc. Where optional libraries included the same optional elements, including more than one library would only update the object or item in question if it was older.

Not all objects would recommend themselves as candidates for installation into the local library assets. This might be because the creator did not wish the item to be installed on someone else's computer. But most of the time, user creations would not suggest themselves for such because, not coming from a "trusted" source such as a standards body or activity zone vendor, or because they are limited to only a few files, they are just not candidates for such. And in those instances, objects would be rendered dynamically, based on instructions carried by the object itself when downloaded from the objects' or owners' servers. Such objects would render somewhat slower since the information for their construction, including all baseline textures and scripts, would need to be downloaded to memory and/or cache and then rendered, much like what is currently done in Second Life. The difference between this solution and Second Life's is hopefully that by sharing the load between stored and downloaded files, with the understanding that hopefully the most graphically intensive and complex are likely to be local, helps create a more efficient render and allow for richer objects than one currently has in Second Life.

Typical dynamic objects would likely relate to avatar embellishment: clothes, hair, skins, vehicles, etc. Probably avatar or other dynamic objects acquired would include a local download copy so one can see one's own avatar render as quickly as possible. The "browser" would first check to see if the dynamic object had a local copy kept in the asset library and if it did not find such, would then proceed to follow the rendering instructions. Dynamic objects would be self-describing, carrying their own scripts, textures, and rendering instructions as part of their object package. Dynamic object creators, for the most part, would probably like to see their objects added to local libraries, not to use per se, but at least to speed up viewing. With a hopefully good metadata system in place, users might be able to right-click/ctrl-click an appealing object and download its makeup to the local library so that it rendered faster, and as well find out how to secure their own copy, if such options were possible. (I suspect though that given the desire for unique appearance, that there should be a user option to not let others view avatar or owned-object details). The most popular objects might even make their way into asset libraries at some points.

World builders or virtual site builders would not be limited to using the static library elements, but rendering efficiency, like like in the current Web, would put pressure on builders to use methods that ensured a satisfactory visit or be willing, to put up with smaller crowds. But just like when creating complex scripting or heavy structuring in the current Web, the choice is always up to the user.

Of course, packaging efficiency, graphics processing power, and transmission speeds might someday soon render such methods obsolete, in which case all objects could be rendered dynamically, just as they are in Second Life. As equipment improves and bandwidth becomes less of an issue, asset libraries could be removed over time. But until that day, in the quest to serve as many users, the final trait inherited from the games parent for this mixed model would be a graceful de-evolution of graphics intensity, so that users not blessed with cutting-edge systems could still make use and function within the Virtual Web. Either textures could be provided in differing levels of quality, such as base, midline or high. Or the graphics processor could be set to have different levels of graphics rendering, allowing for the most pleasurable experience at the cost of processing power or functional pleasing use for most systems.

Protocols and growth

Finally, we're back to the Web ancestor. How to manage an interlinked distributed system of virtual sites like the Web? Though the application I'm sure is complex, the answer is simple: grow the Web. Virtual worlds would just be another type of access point and in the spirit of convergence, having a Virtual Web browser being the same application as a Web 2.0 browser makes sense, especially given tabbed browsing now available in nearly every Web browser. The Virtual World just becomes another layer of interaction in the existing Web, not a replacement as some have posed.

What would be needed is a protocol to take the stateless experience of HTTP to a new method of bidirectional stateful communication. One's browser isn't simply a passive recipient, it actively injects you - all right, the collection of dynamic objects that constitute your avatar - into a distant server and you are able to function and effect that space just as it and other visitors effects your alter-ego.

And yet, that same protocol might give you access to sensitive personal information retained in your browser, but not allow access to same by the owners of the server you are visiting until you actively choose to offer such to enable transactions.

I cannot speak to the state of stateful Web services, but essentially that is what is required. I know that WebSphere, among others, are working on stateful applications. One can see that one of the keen benefits of a Virtual Web, as opposed to the feudal baronies of closed competing virtual fiefs, is all the rampant growth in infrastructure that a Virtual Web would create were it to take off as projected. I suspect that existing protocols wouldn't allow for a lot of avatar/packet injection resulting in a somewhat low user ceiling, ala Second Life. But that would change in time and demands for more powerful servers and new software to host and manage traffic would ramp up. Businesses poised to sell servers, software, and routers could really see a long-term windfall that would spill over to other support industries as the means to populate this new endless Virtual Web created new job opportunities.

None of this would happen to anything like the same degree if the virtual world collective remains disjointed and disconnected. That I think is both the challenge and incentive to realizing a universal Virtual Web.

Druthers in 15 points

Combining the arguments for ego, asset management, standards and extendability, my ideal for the Virtual Web would address the following points in its construction:

1. It must be distributed, allowing one's avatar to move from server to server and yet retain basic visual and functional integrity. (a)

2. It should either allow for multiple avatars or an infinitely malleable avatar whose visible identity is distinct from an absolute verification identity. (b)

3. It must be platform independent.

4. It must be based on an open-sourced, scalable, and extendable language and asset library, such as a series of common media libraries (that are download with all viewers) and user-defined (optional download or linked) media libraries. (c)

5. It must allow users to upload their own content and define their own activities and own their own creations.

6. There must be a way for all activities and content to be typed with metadata to let search and indexing function properly. (d)

7. Though governed by standards designed to regulate its structure so that everyone has a common reference when building (like the W3 to HTML or ECMA to JavaScript) – it must be unregulated in terms of content – leaving regulation to the users and to governments to enforce.

8. It must be fully linkable with existing web-based content and existing technologies, being able to direct traffic and information to web sites and web services and vice versa; as well being able to embed web-based and media content where it makes sense to do so.

9. It must integrate high-quality multi-channel voice client, allowing people to communicate in teams or groups (useful for business and games).

10. The social space should act as an umbrella through which one enters into business, activity, and educational spaces. The social space must remain distinct but linked, so that avatars can move back and forth, from activity to activity, using the social space as the bridge. (e)

11. Activity spaces should be "zoned" or demarcated in some fashion to help indexing, search, and access (or avoidance, for areas inappropriate or offensive) to certain users of the social space (e.g. children). (f)

12. There should be social controls should that extend down to the user level. (g)

13. It must be secure.

14. It must persist.

15. It must be free of cost (h)

(a) This to allow for the full growth of the system and also the ability to host one's own offering and yet have it tied into the "grid." And in this way, market forces would come to bear, allowing for cheaper alternatives and richer experiences. Some systems might require avatar changes and restrictions based on themes, for example a fantasy game space like World of Warcraft, should it be linked – but the avatar should retain it's basic form preferences and revert upon leaving that kind of space back into the common social area. One should not discount the appeal of avatar persistence and embellishment as a form of ego extension.

(b) In the former case, I suggest an unlimited amount, but that there should be a fee (nominal but enough to discourage willy-nilly avatar escalation ($15 U.S?)). Validation, though sub-surface respective to appearance, allows anyone's avatar access to methods for payment or access confirmation when needed. Yes, people can just change their avatar at will but not always their avatar name. OR – make the exposed name itself malleable to allow for those people who want to disappear into the virtual throng without being recognized. Then no need for multiple avatars (again, "true" identity being linked to the hidden validation mechanisms). Any system really needs to account for somewhat diametrically opposed needs and function of avatars: ones that require anonymity and permutation, and ones that require authentication and fixed identity link. If we disconnect the displayed name and appearance from the latter, then we can have both. – I cannot overstate this strongly enough, part of the strength and appeal of these environments is the ability to level the social field of perception and allow everyone the ability to either appear as they wish to, regardless of social, ethnic, class, gender, wealth, religious, orientation, cultural or other conventions.

(c) Common libraries installed on system as part of the application viewer will help efficiency, reduce load times, reduce bandwidth usage, help offer high-quality graphical objects for free to help encourage building and use and help maintain the appeal of the space. This is basically taking the idea of common tagging and extending it to graphical and scripting elements. A common library lets users build say a brick edifice and have comfort in knowing that it will appear as intended. One possible use for this user-defined libraries would be to let vendors who are selling a certain "look" for avatars to use in their proprietary space have access to those textures and media files only within and while the avatar is in the vendor activity area. Avatars leaving that area, if they lack the vendor's permissions to retain the look or objects, would have such become inoperable and textures would render to a default common value or the avatar would need to "change clothes" so to speak. Like any media files, library elements could be linked for download to user system (faster loading) vs linked to load off of owners' servers (helping guard ownership and restrict unauthorized reuse). Activity vendors might also use avatar embellishment as a marketing tool to encourage subscription, such as the ability to show off a hard-won item used for the activity in the social space. ("were u git kewl rabit ears?") - Another option, is as stated, to use markup solely for rendering. But I think markup married to embedded graphical elements still allows for the best experience.

(d) Such typing should be encouraged, though users will learn this necessity themselves once better search methods come to being. This is key since objects and services are unlimited.

(e) Though social spaces are just their own activity zone, and though there should be an option to enter from a "homepage" like the Web, offering a one or more likely several communal entry points helps bring a focus and discovery point for new objects. I suspect that should such a proposed Virtual Web come about, one good way to think of this is to realize search sites like Google and Yahoo as social zones. There might be many and we'd each not have the same ones, but each would provide ready access to new features. Probably many spaces might try to attract people to "home" there and therefore be exposed to other host branded offerings on the way to doing whatever one does in virtual worlds. And I think one way to help this is to require that avatar's be "homed" somewhere - be it communal social spaces hosted by the standards body or search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft), private offers that include advertising and access to fun activites (Games for Windows, Sony Home, AWOMO, Gamespot), personal worlds hosted on a home server, or even corporate or information sites (Apple, IBM, Guardian Unlimited, NY Times).

Keeping social space and its economy in real dollars distinct from activity spaces insulates the social/business space from the effects of "gold farming" and other manipulative techniques already affecting game economies. It also protects vendors doing business from dealing with inflation or devaluation of the game currency when trying to convert back to real dollars. IF game vendors want to link their game economies directly with the overall space, they will have to be the ones who pay for money taken from game to social space and account for such in their subscription fees. A good working example of games sitting within or under the social framework can be found in Second Life's Dark Life game – where "gold pieces" the game currency are tracked by the HUD given to control the game and in no way are translatable to objects or services outside the game. In other words, one cannot take gold and purchase anything outside of the game. Gold remains strictly to buy items in the game. Conversely, one cannot take Linden dollars and buy game objects – one needs gold for that. However, there is nothing to prevent people from making side deals to sell game items for minimal gold in return for a side transaction of Linden dollars, or to just sell gold themselves, all to help elevate one's game avatar abilities faster than the game designers probably would wish. But this is just the same as the issue of real money being used to purchase game items in online games, like World of Warcraft, which his the basis of the "gold farming" service industry. I suggest that game designers either decide to get into that business, as Sony did for EverQuest, make items non-transferable, instill a game tax for in-game transactions, or some other such controls.

(f) A way to enforce this "zoning" through a common media library (point 11) is to always require a "safe" baseline texture for any object so that moving back into the social space, certain types of media textures or objects would simply not render in the transition but would be replaced by a default unless the avatar user remembered to adjust. That way, there would be no way for a character to leave a game space (say a Star Wars franchise) wearing their game kit if the game vendors did not want that stuff used outside the space (or perhaps required for a separate purchase) or say, if an avatar left an adult-zoned area, there would be no danger of offensive avatar embellishments being exposed after the avatar reset to baseline (Again, all custom or user-defined textures would require or come with a default common texture, certain objects would just disappear). Also, zoning, in combination with some sort of verification, could be used to keep children out of adult-only areas and vice versa.

(g) And by inference to any and all avatar permutations. I think, borrowing from game conventions, the ability to self-edit one's own experience is key to keeping enjoyment level high. Unlike the real world, we do have the ability to filter out unwanted intrusions into our experience and I think an intelligent system should account for such. Say for example, typical of many games, if I see someone spouting nonsense that I find offensive I can simply ignore them. But is that enough? How far should it go? Let's extend that further to be more informative. Say a given decision to ignore someone is temporary and times out but a warning e-mail/IM is fired off to the person letting them know that they had some sort of social filter applied against them. That person can then decide if the action or dialogue that precipitated this is worth the cost of alienation or that the person(s) was just too thin-skinned. Or, a person can even make that ignorance of the other person permanent (reversible of course but only through the application interface). "Property" owners could use such controls to ban or warn persons abusing (in their opinion) their offerings or spaces; such is already is done in Second Life. Such social controls should permeate all the way down to the user level so that a person simply can't fashion a new avatar and then go back to the same venue or activity as if nothing had happened. I think even more powerful would be to turn off collision-detection and visibility for the mutually offended parties, and have any aspect of an unwanted user's avatars made invisible and unable to interact with the banning person or location – basically as if they weren't there. – Though I think there is a highly questionable issue of social sterility to such a solution, it would be a very powerful and appealing tool. The amount of trouble and effort it could save might justify social stagnation. Though my gut-feeling is that maybe to allow for some "in your face" "griefing" as a necessary part of any life, real or virtual. People who do not face such at some point fail to learn to the tools to maturely handle such situations. One of the strengths of virtual worlds, imho, is to be able to interact in a safer environment.

(h) ...for end users.

In the concluding third part to the original post, I will examine a number of current and future virtual worlds, organize them into types, pose them against my arguments, and conjecture what sorts of perceived strengths and weaknesses they offer.

Virtual Worlds: hype or reality for businesses?

2007-08-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

To provide a foundation for some recent and forthcoming arguments, I would like to point to Virtual Worlds: hype or reality for businesses?, an 18-minute discussion with three panel experts, hosted by Silicon.com. Imho, this video is bang-on stuff. Anyone with an interest in virtual worlds, Second Life for business, and how this technology might shape in future should take the time to watch it. This panel nails it regarding sideways scalability, the open sourcing of server hosting, dependence and fragility of single source hosting, competition, and lack of objectivity when so much focus and commitment are with one sim. This is so much more intelligent and succinct than all the fluffy hype being blown around the info-winds, imho.

Reshaping the ego for the Virtual Web

2007-08-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

This is the first part of a three-part post that examines potential aspects of a future Virtual Web experience. Part 1: Reshaping the ego for the Virtual Web makes the case for the essentials of self and a review of the current phenomena of the Social Web to conjecture what might take shape and work well in any virtual successor. Part 2: Virtual druthers: social union of games and Web discusses asset management and offers final a list of 15 salient aspects and why I feel each is something to be considered for a successful offering. Part 3: Virtual contenders is a list of some of the major virtual words, current and future, and how I feel they stack up against the former arguments.

I think if one were to boil it down to essentials, I would consider the cornerstone features of the existing Social Web to be ego, anonymity, and identification; yes, the last two are contradictory. If correct in this assessment, then many of the current crop of virtual worlds are lacking in one or more aspects.

Ego

Ego or the extension of self, I feel, is the most important consideration. Avatar creation and use as the foundation of the virtual experience is a given. But it seems that some existing purveyors of virtual worlds fail to realize the significance of the avatar, feeling that the function and use of the virtual space is paramount and what engages a user most. Many as well fail to realize that there are other aspects of self beyond the embodiment of an avatar. I think in the years to come, in the process of weeding that will decide which virtual worlds persist and which die, that a failure to engage our egos will be the significant cause of most failures.

Why do I think this? I would ask you, where have many of the recent most popular innovations in the current Web 2.0 changes taken place? Not just in the filtered personalized web experience crafted to our own tastes and needs, but in the expression of a more social Web. One sees this extension of self into the heretofore anonymous Web via mechanisms like blogs, wikis, YouTube, Myspace, Flickr, Facebook. What social experiments like Second Life, and even social games like World of Warcraft or Everquest, show us is that a significant amount of energy, time, and money can and will be expended on the personalization and embellishment of personal projection. When you couple the growth phenomena of the social aspects of the Web conjoined with the energies invested in avatar and personal space embellishment, any solution that ignores the emotional and social appeal of ego extension in virtual realms will fail to engage. Yes, such virtual worlds might be useful; they might allow for activities such as business, games, and education, yet they will fail to register on an emotional level if they lack the ability to project and maintain aspects of self. I pose that any such will fail to become the virtual equivalent of the existing Web.

People might maintain that the cited are merely examples of well-crafted activity spaces. That it is indeed the function or activity of the space that counts most. That is partly correct. As we shall see in Part 3, the lack of engaging activities is another failure of some virtual vendors. If not corrected, any space, virtual or not, that fails to engage enough users to achieve a critical mass to make it stand out amongst its competitors will ultimately fail. And, as shown by the rapidly changing lineup of leaders in the Social Web, users are quite willing and likely to abandon one purveyor for another who does the job better in their eyes. There is no loyalty to an activity. But there is loyalty to one's self and one’s community, including the virtual.

The bulk of people engaged in the spaces that comprise the Social Web and virtual worlds are drawn to the activities that these places provide. When we consider that education, business, and socialization are just activities, as much as any that can take place inside of MMO games, then we can define activity itself as the definition of both the Social Web and virtual space. Success is defined by use and subscription fees and is a result of how well the vendor provided for the needs of the users to participate in the activity. But, once again, there is no loyalty to an activity. As we have seen in chat clients, the ongoing battle between Myspace and Facebook, and with more and more MMO games coming up to challenge the market dominance and revenue of World of Warcraft, that activity itself can be outdone.

The resistance to change for users of such spaces does not come along the merits of activities but on how much of one's personal and perceived social network stays, or migrates to the new space. Consider MMO games, which are more like other virtual worlds; then add in the investment and emotional bond to one’s avatar self – nonexistent for some, but highly important for others. Both of these factors provide a sort of social glue that brings traction to the space, beyond the merits of its activity. Challenging activity spaces must bring either a much better mechanism for the activity function, or offer attractive new features to create a lot of initial interest. Since these spaces are mostly proprietary, there are no guarantees that one's existing social network will also make a conversion and very little likelihood that any avatar investment will survive the transition. And though some users do participate in multiple spaces along the same kind of activity, hoping to preserve as well as adapt, given a finite amount of time, there is usually a favorite that wins out in the end.

These transitions are very expensive. Users are faced with some sacrifice of themselves, either social contacts who are unwilling to migrate, or their own avatar investment. Businesses must constantly try to reshape their offerings to attract or retain users, or ascertain who to partner with. Process improvements are found but the energy expenditure, wasted efforts, and social dissatisfaction that results are the reason why there will be pressure to transform what are likely to be initial virtual world empires into a comprehensive virtual solution akin to the Web.

The single factor most unique to virtual worlds is the abstraction of ego into visible forms. The use of icons in forums and movies on video share sites in the current Social Web is a hint that our desire to present a form to the world at large is ever-most. Virtual world vendors who embrace and understand this need for self expression will have clear advantages over their competitors. They will enjoy a form of associative loyalty possibly, probably I would say, more powerful than the social glue provided by personal networks. Persistence and the time it takes to craft those visible forms of ego create by their very nature an investment in the space. More choices, more variety, implies more time, and hence more association with those forms, with more implied loyalty therefore to the space that houses them. Though activity will be the draw that brings the crowds, it will be the permutations and persistence of ego, as well as social networks, that will help retain them. We have already seen this in current MMO games; there is no reason not to expect the same from other virtual worlds.

When I speak of persistence of ego, I’m actually referring to two abstracts of oneself: space (static) and avatar (dynamic). Personal virtual space, be it a house, a castle, a starship, are analogous to blogs, online photo albums, and Myspace pages. Commercial virtual spaces, stores, kiosks, and vending machines have the same relation to commercial web sites with less of their actual use currently, due to lack of mechanisms and security concerns. So to say that a future virtual world should maintain persistent space is simply to ask one to rethink existing Web spaces in three-dimensional terms. Comparing Web and virtual spaces, each type of presence can have visitors; each demonstrates something about the owner in its design and contents; each can be the instigator of social or business contact and therefore contains the potential to drive interaction or commerce; each seeks to engage. The leap to understanding this concept is not hard to reach. It's only left to ask if the purveyor of the virtual world feels that that a mechanism to offer and maintain personal space is worth the overhead of maintenance and creation. I suggest that they should consider such worthwhile, if any of the success of the Social Web is valid. Where virtual worlds surpass existing Web 2.0 mechanisms is in the level of immersion.

The projection of self into a definable form is new to virtual worlds and does not have a correlation to the existing Web. Heretofore, we interacted directly with the Web via point, click and URL. Now, in virtual terms, we must craft a visible intermediary, an avatar, that represents us. On the one hand, this can be incredibly freeing in that we can rethink ourselves and present ourselves, not as how we might seem, but how we wish to be seen as. The importance of this projection to how others interact with us is not lost on anyone who has spent significant time in a world like Second Life, one that allows for infinite avatar permutation. However, most other worlds, as can be seen in Part 3, offer only limited options when crafting a concept of self. For this reason, though they might succeed on other levels of entertainment, security or ease of use, and might enjoy initial success, they will ultimately be susceptible to being supplanted by a later offering that connects more personally with the user. Furthermore, none of these worlds as yet offers the ability to translate in any way avatar, space, or any form of virtual self-expression over to another offering. They are each closed systems vying for dominance and yet unable or unwilling to register that the ultimate best use, like the current Web, is the ability to interlink and travel everywhere, in a form of one's own choosing.

Anonymity and identification

Virtual worlds present some significant challenges and differences in how we engage each other. Perception is everything, at least at first. Avatars can and will be as like or unlike to ourselves as we wish, limited only to the choices inherent in the creation system offered by the space vendor. Sometimes these choices are only offered at onset upon creation of the avatar, aspects being fixed, partly or in whole, thereafter. In other systems, they are exchangeable at will for any form anytime. A person might be represented as a single avatar or have multiple representations. The summation is that we can never be sure of whom we are dealing with when engaged with another person’s avatar. We can only see them as they wish to be seen, just as they see us for how we wish to be seen, something very new and very powerful for the virtual experience that separates it from other forms of interaction that have come before.

But as freeing as this is to some, it can be extremely frustrating to others. Harping back to that point of being social animals, we have evolved to using the appearance of others to help us understand how to engage each other. It's in the very nature of our personal dealings, whether we understand or acknowledge it or not. Studies have been shown where people tend to react to avatars as if their own avatar and the others were in fact real, using the same visual cues they would have in real life. Aspects of gender, age, attractiveness, height, or weight all carry preconceptions. But there is no guarantee any longer that any such appearances have any true foundation with the person behind the masque. Right or wrong, true or misconceived, many people feel that ethnicity, clothing, hairstyle, expressions and body language might offer them clues to such things as culture, class, nationality, or orientation and might use such clues to govern their interchanges. In the virtual setting, some of these are either missing or boiled down to very limited animations. Just as has often occurred when misreading the intention behind written text, devoid of the body cues that embellished the meaning, there is frustration and apprehension that a misreading will lead to a misunderstanding, or that one is never free to fully express oneself fully given the lack of verification and a potential for deception.

And, aside for some virtual words built around an activity or activity theme, the two most current being social and gaming, where appearance is taken in context, there is a challenge and affront to some when it comes to dealing with the more outrageous or fantastical forms that people choose to adopt. For example, except for worlds such as Club Penguin where such are the norm, some people find that interacting with an animal avatar is just too silly or disconcerting. There might be cultural issues as well. As shown in Mary Chase's play, not everyone has Elwood P. Dowd's capacity to accept and interact with a six-foot tall anthropomorphic rabbit as an equal. Perhaps it is more with the issue of equality when examined in purely social settings – and having fantastic shapes just makes this more apparent. Or perhaps it is or is also the inability to know when to say what that people really have issue with. And in virtual worlds, there is a possibility of encountering many Harveys along the way.

For certain activities, such as business, and for legal considerations in both social and business dealings, anonymity is anathema. At some point, regardless of surface anonymity, there must be a way to effectively engage the real person's identification verification and payment mechanisms to both ensure payment as well as receipt of goods and services. That usually means a name, and address, and other identifiers along the way. And when such transactions fail, to know that there are ramifications and avenues of redress available to users, helps foster economic security. Go-betweens such as PayPal and vendors such as Linden Lab help insulate the identities from the transaction, but for real commerce and use to ensue, no one doubts that there must be a way to effectively engage parties directly.

In other situations, it is equally important to know the true nature of the person behind the avatar. If a virtual world is used as a distance-negating tool for meetings and negotiations, someone who thought he was dealing with an adult for a real world auto sale would be very disconcerted if he were to find out that the adult person he thought he was making a case to was actually a precocious seven year old, wasting his valuable time. Conversely, a young child who found a friend elsewhere in the world to share thoughts and personal confidences with might be shocked, as would their horrified parents, to find out that the child avatar on the other end was in reality an adult pedophile milking the child for information. So used are we to judging people in the context of how they appear, that there is a real danger for misuse beyond the extent of embarrassment.

These are all valid and compelling arguments, along with so many others, for the need for transparency. But there are others just as valid and compelling for the need for anonymity. Anonymity is one of the reasons why the Web and Social Web have seen such success to date. Anonymity allows for safe socialization and exploration. Many women for instance like the safer nature of virtual social interaction in going to new scenes and not having to deal with the repercussions of aggressive or unwanted attention; it has given them more control. People like to sometimes go shopping or check out trade shows without having to worry about being pestered in their real life with annoying offers. Children are finding that they can be team leaders in some activity spaces, even directing unknowing adults, something that would never happen in real world groups, and thus fostering confidence in their own abilities and leadership. People with disabilities can have others not focus on the first thing that comes to mind when seeing them in real life and can sometimes find more acceptance in online worlds where all looks are equal essentially. And for some activities, such as games and roleplaying, some people just like to keep that aspect of their lives private without perceived repercussions of others knowing that they cavort as an elf archer in a fantasy game some eves – all of which helps drive business for vendors of such.

Granted, there are serious negative aspects to these as well. Social stagnation, excessive distraction and dependence on virtual worlds, failure in general to engage the real world are all real concerns that people need address. But my issue is not to judge the validity and use of virtual worlds but to offer thoughts on how to best apply them. Change is a constant and all socially impacting technologies are going to require people to reassess their values and try to reapply these to the new challenges faced by work and interaction with these tools.

One of the ways we can and should think about how to best apply the uses of the virtual world in relation to anonymous versus identified/verified is to consider that any Virtual Web is just an extension of the Web, which itself is just an extension of the real world, encapsulated and drawn together by this new electronic phenomena. I'll make more of a case for this in Part 2, but appearance and identity should be thought of as two aspects, linked, but distinct. Just as we walk around the world dressed how we wish to be, our identities aren't (hopefully) demanded of us on every turn of the corner. But when we wish to engage our environment, say to purchase something or prove our qualifications to enter a space or engage an activity, then we must provide corroborating identification and means. The same is true of the Web. We are essentially anonymous and we can even represent ourselves as something other than the truth to some extent, but when presented with the need to function, we must present the validated means of access or payment. And function is the key word here. The function of engaging a virtual space in a social or social activity context is not the same as conducting business. They are two distinct uses of a virtual space. And when such a space contains both or all types of activity, such as a projected Virtual Web, then it must allow for all uses of that space.

Therefore, when conducting business or verification for access, I argue that there should be mechanisms for validating an identity that would not be tied to displayed name or surface appearance of an avatar. There is just no need for it. Validation, identity, payment, should all be "subcutaneous" aspects of an avatar account, accessible when needed, but unseen and inaccessible to others when not. It’s not much different than my changing clothes (going to a costume party or fishing even) but always carrying my wallet. Or in a Web sense, just shopping the Web but when I see something that strikes my fancy, I either have my credit card or I make use of the handy PayPal button. Until that point, they shouldn't know or care who I am (sorry to the marketing folks but I’m on the side of anonymity) until the point that I decide to buy.

The most likely aspect I see is that, unless a governing body, like the Web 3D Consortium, is able to shepherd all venues to a universal and interchangeable linked standard, that there will likely be many successful but mutually exclusive virtual worlds, each governed around an activity or set of activities. If there is to be a future encompassing Virtual Web, it will be more likely drawn from the most successful aspects of these offerings. Or, less likely, it will be a single offering that has captured the market. I'll examine some of these in Part 3. The sooner we can see the realization of a universal Virtual Web, the sooner we can realize the advantages that such a space will engender, as well as confront the challenges that it will bring. I'll go over the 15 core aspects that I would like to see included in Part 2.

Dark and Stormy Night 2007

2007-08-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

San Jose State University, sponsors for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, aka Dark and Stormy Night Contest, aka Where WWW means Wretched Writers Welcome, has posted the results for the 2007 winners.

This annual contest run by the English Department requires entrants to write the very first line of a really bad novel. You can get a hint of what to expect by reviewing, in descending order, the winners from 2004, a banner year whose pungent prose will be forever savored for its overbearing ripeness ;-) - Other past winners from this twenty-five year old effort can be read in the book, It was a Dark and Stormy Night, published by The Friday Project.

10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."

9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."

8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description."

7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"

6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."

5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store."

4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do."

3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."

2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."

1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!"

SL Spotlight: Coldwell Banker

2007-08-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

RANCHERO 198, 244, 34

Last Sunday, I took some time to explore the Coldwell Banker site in Second Life (SL). Thinking that the recreation of a showcase home was an almost obvious brilliant use of virtual worlds (similar to taking VRML photographs), I wanted to see how they pulled it off. Well, I wasn't so impressed with the home (the recreation was good, just not my taste), but I was really impressed with the simulation.

This is one of the best business uses of SL and a virtual world, if not the best, that I’ve come across to date. This simulation is worth looking at in detail because of its multi-faceted nature in terms of use, attraction, and as a bridge to areas outside of the simulation. Let’s examine it in terms of my eight-point list from my report for what constitutes a good business plan for a sim-space.

The main headquarter building you first come to is nicely done but typically boring and offers prominent branding done in an obvious though not too over-the-top presentation throughout (#2). When one first enters the space, one is presented with a number of interesting offers. One is for free nice-quality animated furniture and other freebies. People in SL love freebies – especially those they can use to dress up themselves or their personal spaces (#5). Word gets around; people come and expose themselves to branding (#2), if only to get the freebie. Can they be lured to see more? The answer is yes, judging by the fact that this was one business sim that obviously had traffic. I could see many people there, more arriving all the time. This space is clever enough to present interesting offers directly up front, but as well reward exploration by hinting at more rewards (#5) lying within, each discovery precipitating a desire to see what else there might be.

About those "interesting offers": one is an information and teleport terminal to a recreation of an actual showcase multi-million dollar home that is for sale IRL (#4). Interested parties can read the fact sheet, walk through the reproduction, including bathroom and kitchen fixtures; if they want to take it the next step, they can leave a message on the for-sale sign in front of the house that will generate an e-mail to the real estate agent for more information or possibly to tour the real home (which is in Seattle). This larger than it would be IRL for-sale sign in front of the house included agent photo and name, photo links, and more information. Its larger size both helped it contain more information but also to help it stand out as something special from the rental homes around it. The other offer is an invitation to simply "touch" the board to enter a contest to get $15,000 U.S. for a home makeover (#4). Either of these will generate real contacts that can be investigated IRL and as well, draw and keep interest in other offers. Offering a tour of a home replica is a brilliant, obvious I would say, use of SL. Just one sale generated from such a use could offset the development costs for the sim and such models for years to come (#1).

Off to the right, is a timeline display (#3), which offers information about news and about the world featuring top stories from decades past, encouraging visitors to not only learn, but possibly enticing them to see what else the sim has to offer (#5).

Within this simulation, Coldwell Banker offers a number of rentals. There is a large area with a variety of homes, broken up to three neighborhoods organized and named according to themes. Which homes are for rent are displayed on models of the three neighborhoods in the area just past the entrance in the interior of the first floor. These models aren't explained at first but they offer a fun chance to see what is available (#5). These homes are being offered to SL residents to rent as personal space for a fee that is very low compared to other offerings (a bit less than $1 U.S. per week), with a very generous prim allotment to allow for customization and with a selection of home styles enough to suit just about any taste. This is genius on many levels: it provides a service that people will bring people to the simulation to rent space (#5); the pricing and prim allotment are very generous (#3); that makes people happy with the good service and cheap cost (#2); the fact that people are homed in the simulation means that they will constantly pass through the area, bring visitors and friends to their home space, who might be exposed to branding (#2), as well new offers for real services, such as the showcase home (the first of many I’ve no doubt), parked right in the middle of the residential area (#4); being homed adds to the traffic of the sim and since sim popularity is assessed by traffic, this will keep Coldwell Banker higher in the sim traffic index, making its relative popularity more obvious, which again attracts more visitors (#2); finally, the rentals, though generous, are quite extensive. They not only add to the neighborhood theme, which is itself clever branding and ties in very well with Coldwell Banker’s business, but they generate real albeit modest revenue, enough to subsidize Coldwell Banker’s sim costs (#6) for their presence in SL.

And it doesn’t end there: there is even a further tie-in to this rental offering. Next to the model of the neighborhoods, showing which homes are available for rent, there is card with a large key on the floor below it. Find three such keys spread through the sim, and one will receive a free week’s rental in a home. Again, genius: fun activity (#5), encourages exploration of the sim (#2), more exposure to real services (#2 & #4), and possibly even encouraging a new tenant to settle down in the sim, lured by the free week’s rental, and all attendant advantages as described above (#2, #4-6). Who knows - maybe even the one contact that leads to a successful home sale from being exposed to one of the real showcase homes recreated in-sim (#1)!

Just inside, there is a contact point where either a real person is staffed to answer questions (#3) and if not, the chance to leave a message, which will generate an e-mail and response for your avatar later, whether it is online or not. Given the stored messaging capability of SL, knowing that there is an interested warm body waiting, Coldwell Bank staffers can make arrangements to meet the prospective avatar(s) at a convenient time, possibly even offering fun activities like a helicopter ride (see below).

On the floors above the main reception floor on the first level, There is plenty of conferencing space upstairs (#1). Obviously one can’t discuss sensitive information but this space also provides a great place to meet potential clients and answer general business information on a 1:1 basis (#3). As well, there are two functional helicopters on the roof. Though there was no information provided, my guess is that these are there for Coldwell Banker staff members to take visitors on tours of the sim (#2 & #5), including rentals (#6), real offers, possibly even to add members to an existing list of contacts for future offers or events (#4-6).

So Coldwell Banker has done a brilliant job and to say that they obviously have addressed points #7 & #8 is a gross understatement. Whoever thought up this model not only understood how to engage the population of the sim, use the strengths of virtual worlds over other contact points, but even to generate real revenue, either sim support revenue in the form of virtual rentals (which themselves fit so well into the theme of a business selling homes) to contacts for real world sales. All of this, will of course, once more people visit it, not only make Coldwell Banker’s island a success, but bring people to look at a business that might have never done so before because they intelligently and competently assessed, served, and engaged their market (#2).

Eight points to ponder

2007-08-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

What came first? The prim or the plan?

The following is an excerpt from a team report I did investigating Second Life as a possible solution for some business needs. It represents my thoughts (concerns even) about what needs to be considered first before making the leap into a virtual presence. There is so much that is shiny and sexy about virtual worlds in all the attention they are receiving that the desire to participate can sometimes be premature, imho. And not wanting to add another empty presence to the virtual landscape, these are the points I feel should be considered prior to any construction. Not all might be answered in a satisfactory way, but it wont' be a wasted effort for trying.

The reason I posted this here is that I'll be addressing these points in a case study post later for what I consider to be a very successful and well-thought out implementation for Second Life: Coldwell Banker's sim island. That particular adaptation does not address the particulars of my team's needs but it does represent a successful adaptation into virtual scope. And it does meet all of the points below.

1. Try to find a realistic business use for one’s own employees to function in the simulation. (a)

2. Establish a handsome presence with prominent branding. Advertise your sim and its location.

3. Offer a contribution to the simulation’s community and function (b)

4. Offer unique goods or services that customers can only get within the simulation but which are used in the real world. (c)

5. (optional) Offer an activity or goods that are useful or entertaining, but which can only be used within the simulation (d)

6. Offer an in-sim business activity, viable goods and services that reflect the services or products you sell. Make any such apparent along with contact information and methods of access and payment. (e)

7. Don’t be lured by hype but don’t be slow to adopt, if such seems to make business sense.

8. Really should be the first step, but everyone seems to leave this last so it appears last here. Plan and architect all of the above on paper and make sure it’s viable before laying down a single prim. Otherwise, consider coming back later when better uses and functions suggest themselves. (f)

(a) This will help traffic flow while your sim is still waiting to be discovered, and provides a baseline value in and of itself, regardless of how much revenue traffic is generated.

(b) Perhaps it were best if this has nothing to do with the company services in the pursuit of altruism? – With tasteful branding nearby, the benefits will happen in due course. IBM’s sandboxes are a good example of such.

(c) Continue to refresh this service over time adding to it or revolving the material for something else. This might be something like free expert tech support during certain hours, or as Apple does, offering desktop pictures – or even revolving coupons or offers.

(d) (since these currently are what draws in visitors). Just like offers for real goods or services, keep this content fresh by either adding to it or revolving it over time. An example of such might be cosmetic social embellishments that people actually want to buy (such as Mercedes’ virtual cars, which are fun to drive and help keep the brand name prominent). Suggest that you also sell these, for a modest cost, as it helps offset the cost of the simulation.

(e) Education, recruitment, demo evaluation, user testing are all areas that have found adapted uses for virtual worlds. New uses are being discovered and learning how to effectively use virtual space is part of the function and value of being there.

(f) The words user-testing seem to have fallen out of favor. Don’t assume you know best. Run it past some people, hopefully with some different backgrounds. A mature plan can stand a few questions and challenges as a test of how solid it is. And the questions raised can help you plug some concept holes or fill needs you hadn’t considered.

Crime & Pixelation

2007-08-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

Picture Crime Scene Investigators, a popular television show watched by millions. Picture Gary Sinise on the heels of a criminal, using his arsenal of clue-tracking tricks to bring a murderer to justice. Now imagine the whole thing in pixels, taking place in the virtual reality world of Second Life.

Meet CSI: SL

Yes, you heard correctly, Crime Scene Investigators: NY is coming to Second Life. It will be a multipart show that is going to involve some of the citizens of Second Life during the break. I’m not sure of the details but apparently it’s going to involve investigations to take place in Second Life’s virtual world before the murderer resurfaces in the real world in the concluding episode the following season – potentially to be influenced by what takes place in Second Life.

Why? Apparently this brainstorm is the result of C.B.S. having purchased a stake in one of the design firms specializing in virtual worlds, Electric Sheep.

I’m not a CSI fan but I’ll have to make plans to try and catch this one. If someone who watches the show could give me a heads up as to when it’s going to be on, that would be much appreciated.

Virtual reality crime solving in fiction or television is one thing. But virtual reality has been used in trying to solve crimes and in court rooms for reenactments for some time now. These are closed systems, not part of a Multiverse or virtual world. But there’s no reason not to think of some future distributed virtual world akin to the Web where court room attendees might be able to access, with permissions, a server linked to the grid in order to view recreations. Such tools and the distance dissolving aspect of virtual worlds could even be used in future law enforcement enactments, allowing students to walk around and examine crime scenes from cases in detail. Who knows, as tools and methods are built up over time, recreations of fresh crime scenes might give lawmakers the in-depth understanding of distant crimes that no blotter or film footage can convey, to help them better participate in multi-regional efforts.

AV it your way

2007-08-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

Avatars, AVs, Toons, Monsters from the Id - call them what you will, these ego extensions we fabricate and launch into virtual universes project our curiosity, playfulness, needs, and desires for how we might wish to seem or be seen as. But how much of the person behind the avatar comes through? Is it always a case self made over: bigger, badder, blonder, or leaner? Or do we rather project ourselves into a famous icon or assume mythical proportions?

If you've never found yourself wondering who the person is behind the masque, I would say you're in the minority. For those of us who don't mind a peek behind the pixels, HERE is said peek, briefly done, courtesy of the New York Times. For myself, I found the image of the 80-hour hero particularly touching. It is a good reminder why the ability to leave self behind and be judged for who we wish to be rather than how others might see us is one of the great equalizing benefits of these new virtual realms. Why not fly where our dreams dare take us?

The above photos are part of Alter Ego: Avatars and Their Creators, a book by Robbie Cooper and Tracy Spaight, published just this June. Cooper and Spaight were interviewed by the Wall Street Journal about the book, providing a few more shots in that piece as well.

Pottering

2007-08-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

For you Harry Potter fans, fancy finding out which Hogwarts house the Sorting Hat might have placed you in? Or perhaps you'd rather chat a bit with Olivander and see what sort of wand he could have in mind for you?

Me? I was hoping for Ravenclaw but ended up a Gryffindor. My wand: "Oak signifies wisdom, endurance, protection, and authority. The veela hair as a wand core means that you are slightly unpredictable but very powerful."

And finally, with the caveat of THIS IS A SPOILER, some interesting thoughts about the future of some of the surviving Potter series characters years after the events in the final book have ended, by none other than J.K. Rowling herself (and who would know better than she?). (And again, please don't click unless you've finished the final book or you just don't mind having the end spoiled for you).