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.
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