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December 2007
The Archives
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12.29.07Battle for Virtual Worlds 2008: Microsoft takes shot at GoogleWith all the attention on whether Google will launch a virtual worlds version of Google Earth (possibly connected in some way to SketchUp), two moves by Microsoft into the Serious Games and in response to SketchUp market further demonstrates that 2008 will be the Year of the Virtual World. ESP Reworking code and experience from MS Flight Simulator, ESP is targeted to the corporate training and simulations market - the so-called Serious Games market that Microsoft conservatively estimates is a $9 billion market. While nothing close to a virtual world - the ESP site promises that it can connect up to 30 ...
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12.29.07Open Ended Virtual Worlds: What do you like to DO?Our friends at Not Possible in Real Life have posted 2 brilliant overviews meant to guide newcomers to virtual worlds, Second Life in particular, and it's a combination of almost tactical advice but also opens up the much larger question - what do you want to DO? It's my personality type - I just don't LIKE being told what to do - to me, a well-designed GAME is one where there's enough flexibility to chart your own path, which is why simulator games like SimCity and broader strategy games like Civilization always appealed to me. You have CHOICE, and those choices ...
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12.22.07Lessons from Second Life: Imagination, Discovery and Negative ConsequencesA long and thought-provoking post on the dangerous lessons of Second Life reminds me again of the "strange loop" and offers insight into how the issues of identity, emotion, trust, and immersion will shape issues in the years to come: years when more and more people will migrate to increasingly "real" synthetic worlds. Dave Pollard summarizes the negatives of his immersion in Second Life with two observations: On Appearance In Second Life we can have both. Everyone in Second Life appears lovable, aesthetically and erotically. So from the safety of our lovely avatars we can afford, and have a platform, to put our ...
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12.21.07Virtual World Growth ForecastNot sure if this is an update from my previous post of this chart, but Massively reports the latest KZero forecast for virtual world growth: Interesting, anyways, and visual. Mind you, KZero is also the company that charges 117 pounds for a report on SL statistics that includes stats you can practically get entirely from SL itself (but hey, they took the time to put it into slides): Registered accounts Unique accounts User account metrics Growth rates Gender splits Total and average hours Age ranges Accounts by region/country Usage types by region/country Demographic state of play Qualitative research
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12.21.07Virtual Worlds and Social Science ConferenceForthcoming in February at Emory, for all you thunking types out there, the press release states: On Monday, 11 February 2008 Emory University will host a public forum discussing both research and long-term implications of virtual and real-world interactions with regard to commerce, politics, and society. Castranova positions the conference as the first gathering of the growing community of academics examining virtual worlds: These possibilities have now been thrust into the spotlight by the publication, in Lancet and Epidemiology, of research on the Corrupted Blood plague in World of Warcraft. A trickle of virtual world social science papers is appearing. It appears we are now ...
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12.19.07Second Life: There are NO Unique Users...or, at least, unique users are no longer being tracked by the Lindens for 'algorithmic reasons'. The latest economic statistics were posted by Linden and although trends were stable, it doesn't feel like a way to head out of 2007 on an upbeat note. First, the stats were late - and for corporations or agencies looking to keep an eye on traffic stats towards deciding tactical projects to kick of 2008, it must be irritating to read that the latest statistics were delayed: Apologies for the delays in getting these out, folks, we’ve been busy behind the scenes trying to focus on some ...
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12.19.07Games Everywhere – and the ubiquitous metaverseLivegamer's move into a "free economy" of sorts is the topic of an insightful blog posting by Wayne Porter, and I'm hesitant to comment much because I'm such an amateur at this stuff. Porter points out that the trading of virtual goods is brought repectibility by LiveGamer and its significant venture capital backing. The broadening of economic trade outside the magic circle of games is further evidence of not only a migration of people to virtual worlds but wealth and economic production as well. From my amateur's armchair, I've given my take before on the economies of virtual worlds, riffing off the ...
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12.18.07Knock Knock Metaplace: Let Me In!Not being one of the super-elite (or lucky registrants) currently beta testing Metaplace, my curiosity is, of course, insatiable. Being in the alpha group on other worlds just tends to disappoint - I suppose I'm more of a beta man. But I'm mostly curious because I'm interested in knowing whether Metaplace will tend towards being a gaming platform or will be broad enough to entertain other approaches. Well...it's not much, but a few screen grabs from projects of Raph Koster are at least crumbs to the starving.
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12.18.07How Virtual Worlds will EvolveA wonderful summary by Wayne Porter attempts to predict the use of different virtual world platforms, focusing on Metaplace, VastPark and Second Life. To wit: Second Life I believe the struggles with Second Life have been based around its hyper-freedom. You cannot fit square pegs into round holes. This does not mean it does not have value, only that its value is misunderstood or misused....it will continue to serve niche and fringe markets and attract hyper creatives. I think new worlds or platforms like VastPark will fill the gaps that Second Life cannot due to the nature of the platform. VastPark From what I gather ...
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12.18.07PaperVision Public Beta Show ReelI'm in love with Papervision, partly because I'm in love with Flash, and love the fact that Papervision: a) Allows users to interact with 3D content using the Flash player. No client downloads. No clutzy clients. b) It's open source. The community of developers and coders have already made great strides in retooling and improving Papervision, including well-rendered virtual environments and rudimentary first-person avatar movement. c) You can do cool, hot, controlled things with it. We all know what a talented designer can do with Flash - now turn that into real-time rendered 3D objects and you get the idea. And if pictures are ...
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