The 3DTLC track at the Engage Expo in San Jose featured some of the usual suspects, Metanomics among them, and an overall sense that we’re nearing the finish line – the chasm is about to be crossed, and with the help of ThinkBalm’s handy but dense guide to overcoming objectives, we’ll all be deploying, well, something 3D, something cool, although we’re not really sure yet what the killer app will be.
Among the presenters was chief sponsor of the 3DTLC track, Proton Media and they had some pretty impressive business-friendly stuff to show off, including integration with Microsoft’s Sharepoint. I was in love with how you could access document archives in their 3D conference hall or whatever that build was…it was a sort of carousel of files, and it had me drooling over the day when Linden Lab’s Media API hits the Grid – I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again now….it’s going to be game changing stuff when it comes.
But Ron Burns, ProtoPrez, lay part of the blame for a lag in industry adoption of virtual worlds at the feet of Second Life, saying that virtual worlds have a reputation for being a place to ‘goof off’, and this fit into the broader meme that we need to stop CALLING them virtual worlds at all, which Erica Driver was of course all over with robust Twitter nods, preferring her term Immersive Internet which is meant to paint a broader picture to include – well, to include what I’m not sure, because ThinkBalm doesn’t often look at things like PaperVision or augmented reality or, dread term….games.
During my own presentation, I talked about selling to the strategic priorities of companies who are struggling in both a down economy and a rapidly changing world shaped by the forces of social media and Wikis and Facebook and the constant challenge of trying to find out where their customers actually ARE….who can keep track of them anymore, and how come the brand message keeps getting lost in the back channels of Facebook or user-generated videos on youTube?
And I threw a few slides in at the end which were purposefully meant to be provocative, although who knows – maybe everyone just ignored my point or thought I was a nut case. One of the slides was a photo of Immersiva, the sim we sponsor by Bryn Oh. And the other was a slide of MadPea Productions, who we also sponsor and partner with. Which led to someone in the audience asking: “Do you really show GAMES to corporate clients? Because if you use the G-word you’re pretty much booted out of the company”.
You see, I’m starting to think I’m totally out-to-lunch. There’s this growing consensus of a few hard truths about virtual worlds for business:
- We can’t call them virtual worlds anymore, it sounds frivolous, it reminds everyone of furries and ‘goofing off’.
- We can’t ever ever use the “game” word. Talking about games or play is like giving a corporate mandate to employees that they can play solitaire all afternoon (or, the modern equivalent, watch youTube videos when the boss isn’t looking).
- We need to scrub our language of terms like ‘creative cacophony’ or ‘fun’ and use things like ‘increase ROI’ or ‘improve learning retention’ and we need to be talking about things like enterprise-level integration with Sametime or SCORM-compliant LMS systems or other blah blahs.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a firm believer that virtual worlds don’t stand alone. They succeed when they’re aligned to a broader CEO-level strategy – of innovation, say, or design thinking. They also succeed when, at a program or tactical level, they integrate well with others – with your Web site strategy, say, or your internal team collaboration tools.
But listening to how people in San Jose talk about virtual worlds they all sound like Microsoft pitching the Zune when it first came out: “hey, we can speak your language, we have better specs than the next guy, we may not LOOK that great but don’t let THAT fool you, we’re a PLAYER man, and to prove it, I’m not even wearing a tie!!!”
But contrast that to Steve Jobs, say. Or even better – to Philip Rosedale on Metanomics, who said:
Second Life is something that genuinely enables people to create value whether monetary or not. Some of these virtual objects are things that people are selling to make their living and others of them are purely expressions of art. The fact that those two things can happen side by side in a virtual world is delightful…. Second Life is a platform for people creating content and the more complicated and interesting content you allow people to create the more they tend to do it. The upper end of how creative we as humans want to be is apparently not found yet. We seem to be almost infinitely creative.
But here’s the strange thing: when you talk to many of these same people who are worried about making virtual worlds (um, the immersive Internet) palatable for business, over dinner say, or in the hall of the conference – more often than not you get into a discussion of their OWN experiences in finding virtual worlds. And there’s usually a story in there about rezzing a prim. Or about their first social experience. Or about attending a discussion or a Metanomics event or meeting someone, quite by chance, who took them on a tour somewhere.
It’s not unlike Chris Abraham’s post – Second Life was a non-starter for him, but somehow he managed to get a better sense of possibility because he saw a couple of cool things and, more important, he got himself kitted out with decent hair and clothes.
But in the language of “selling to enterprise” the idea that an employee would write something like what Chris wrote would probably be, well, horrifying. You log in to Protosphere and you might have a few choices of business friendly avatars, but you’re using your real name, and the range of self expression is limited. And more important – you can’t rez a prim. And if you want to move your conference chair around or goof off by sitting on the ceiling or something then send a purchase order in.
There’s a paradox, I suppose: we are here, in virtual worlds, because something about them sparked a passion. They opened our eyes, our minds and maybe even our hearts to something larger, something filled with some other potential, and maybe that ‘thing’ was creativity.
These are new WORLDS as much as we might label them applications or platforms. And these new worlds hold a key, although not the ONLY key, to how our collective futures might unfold: with companies who succeed not because they launch a Zune, but because they launch an iPod. Where we might be able to go to work and find that we have the tools to liberate our creative impulse, where the word ‘play’ or ‘game’ is part of a broader value proposition which includes innovation and design thinking and human-centered product development. Where goofing off is a REQUIREMENT for remaining flexible in our thinking, transparent and trustworthy in our actions, and resistant to dogma.
Play is not contradictory to performance. Goofing off is not decoupled from discipline – whether it’s design discipline or the discipline of radical innovation. Personal creativity may be a threat to the corporate order, but it’s not a threat to corporate results.
And look – if you don’t want to join me on a journey into goofing off, into exploration, into the odd frontier where we just let things run a little wild for a while – that’s OK too. Maybe your competitor will get it. Or that little scrappy company being run out of a basement somewhere where they understand that goofing off may well be their ticket to a future in which we keep striving to find the upper limits of our dreams.
[...] – via Dusan Writer’s Metaverse » Has Second Life Poisoned the Well for Business? Thoughts from 3DTLC. [...]
Being a furry, I was going to take you to task about “- We can’t call them virtual worlds anymore, it sounds frivolous, it reminds everyone of furries and ‘goofing off’.”
Patience stayed my paw, and I read on to discover that “goofing off” is your purpose for writing this. Bravo!
In light of recent developments in-world, I’m afraid that turning your title around — “Has business poisoned Second Life?” — has equal validity. Not the business themselves, but LL’s fumbling pursuit of real-world business combined with their cavalier attitude about in-world commerce.
Yanno, I suppose “immersive internet” is OK, since we already used up “3D web” over VRML.
Oh, wait…maybe nobody remebers VRML, ya think? We could reuse the name, just like Remco and Ideal used to bring back the same toys every five years for a new batch of kids?
I miss VRML. Too bad we never finished it. I’m just sayin’…
[...] – via Dusan Writer’s Metaverse » Has Second Life Poisoned the Well for Business? Thoughts from 3DTLC. [...]
You know what? These business types don’t get it. They see virtual worlds as nothing more than a replacement for Go To Meeting or something, rather than the fact that they are multidimensional (no pun intended) and meet a variety of needs and use cases.
I hate everyone who wants a 3d powerpoint. Screw them, and the horse they rode in on, if that’s all the imagination and thought that they bring to the table when discussing virtual worlds.
OTOH, I do have to say that sometimes I also understand why people think SL is nothing but sex and goofing off. There’s certainly plenty of time wasting in SL, there’s no doubt about that. Personally I’d be fine without most of it, but I also wouldn’t go to the extreme of total lack of creativity and business brain think that these boneheads are thinking along the lines of.
Leave it to corporate and business culture to see everything through the megafilters of “how can we take this new and exciting thing and neuter it so that it fits what we already do now?”
well, some of us called it “immersive media” a decade ago in our marketing papers too…
what one called it didnt help then either.
its what one understands it can and cannot do that ends up the ONLY factor of a media type. note maxping.com for some articles new and old.
as i said, youve all entered the 1999 phase again, yes VRML led as a tech option for web3d in that 3 year phase, BUT there were others, other tech, other “visions” of unsettling 2d media on the web, etc.all built as technology solutions, very very few- built for business or human desire solutions.
This is now the 3rd edition of “what do we call it or waiting for the killer app”
i see the eyes rolling, it’s ok.
Next up-
Vertical markets: immersive solutions for the big 6 industries of the 20th century.
though the break up the the engage/vr/ new name next year show has already begun to make this obvious.
Actually I rather agree with radar. The ultimate failure of Second Life is powerpoint-on-a-prim (I have actually put powerpoint slides on a streaming media prim, but did feel soiled afterwards).
I am simply not concerned whether Dinosaur Industry understands virtual worlds or not. It took long enough before they even knew what YouTube was, and in the majority of cases it is still not understood. I have no interest in spending solids months convincing Dinosaur Industry of the obvious (or, more likely, a few people who want to make a name for themselves and have internal push). Honestly, I remember trying to convince companies that they should perhaps have, you know, reports on a website.
Somebody else can do the convincing; some people are more natural diplomats and communicators. I would rather deal with people who understand the sector, so that I do not feel the need to drill through my skull every day.
Is mainstream business acceptance that important? I don’t see a need for it as long as individual consumers can keep LL afloat.
When I read this blog entry I could not help but feel frustrated (as I am sure Dusan felt) about the narrow minded way business professionals tend to think. Of course this often comes from a sense of self-preservation. In these hard times by rocking the boat with creative and expansive visions an employee risks being written off as ‘non-productive’, frivolous and a ‘goof-off’. I too have found that many folks who hear about SL or see it for the first time see it as just a game or a way to play “dress up”.
To which I say SL is not a game… but it can be Playful… and that is very healthy for our brain development and for enhancing the plasticity of our brains. Not a bad thing as we age. Clearly our business culture does not value play in adults. However as Dusan pointed out play enhances creativity; which is critical to an innovative entrepreneurial consumer oriented business environment.
Some resources I share with folks are:
The National Institute for Play, believe it or not there is substantial brain research being conducted in around the science of play. http://nifplay.org/science_intro.html If you are frightened of the use of the word play try NIFP
There is information at The Brain Science Podcast Archive, including good research and information links regarding brain health and brain plasticity. http://brainsciencpodcast.wordpress.com/
Perhaps with a ‘harder’ science approach to creativity and play we can make more headway in breaking down the stogy stereotype that play is a waste of our time. Perhaps we will begin to see play as indispensible to a healthy brain. Clearly not all businesses need a fully immersive world to operate in, but they just might find they have healthier, happier and dare I say more creative employees.
I know one way my life and brain is happier and healthier is when I add some unstructured evening play time in second life building, creating and meeting interesting people. It beats the hell out of passively watching TV… well except for watching baseball.
Just some food for thought… enjoy – Robert Elder
Thank you for an insightful bead on the conference Dusan. As you know, we’re one of the few folks focusing on making Virtual Environs, or ‘Web Spaces(TM)’, a mainstream product. I hear your angst over this tendency to steer things to something less gamish. Maybe I can help qualify the reasons why this backlash of names and such has happened.
Having been in the development of virtual environs since 1995, I’ve seen a lot go down. Active Worlds, with the owners opening spouting about being ‘GOD’ in business forums and seemingly cannibalizing ideas from their business contributors, to VRML worlds that were all about facades but had not depth – you literally could not enter a building or see into windows, to talking heads and cartoon avatars stuck in black abyss rooms. They all felt a bit like a puppeteer stage, with and one who held the technology orchestrating everyone’s futures by their whims of fancy.
While Second Life(r) certainly had the technology to take us to a whole new level, the management didn’t. With each decision made they disenfranchise a new segment of their audience, and seemed to shrug in indifference over their outcry. They aren’t the first to make this mistake. I’ve seen it over and over and at the risk of being politically incorrect, it seems their male ego gets in the way as they literally get a God complex and thinking they can do no wrong. I’m the first female I think to head up the creation of a grid platform of a corporate level and I am fighting the same mentality. Its a very sexy and alluring metal state, but one that can only lead to failure in the end.
Bottom line is big business is what propels new industry forward. To think LL or anyone in this industry doesn’t need business to move forward is like just naive. They have the money needed to fund the expensive and labor intensive work needed to get to the next level. And honestly, if we want this technology to truly affect our lives then how can we think to exclude business in that equation? Even if its only for the way it can help reduce businesses carbon foot print that alone should be motivation enough.
As a community we just have to stop thinking everything has to be crammed it on into one place. SpotON3D’s vision is to offer affordable turn key grid packages, creating a trusted chain of grids to interconnect. We will be rolling out the software in the next 30 days that will enable creators to choose which grids to allow their products to rez onto. In this way we can bring the grid owners and content creators together to in a collaborative way, rather then them being adversaries. This means they can service corporate, player, academic, training and conference grids with a reasonable reassurance their content is protected as much as possible.
Tessa, I just re registered on spoton3d, please drop me an email…larryr@cube3.com
btw dusan- i was using google to find an old cube3 link, and found this….
http://www.cube3.com/sfweb3d/beyond.html
its a recapp of the “round 2″ web3d meeting/confernces that preceeded the SL class of 2006. I had written it up as a “journalism guest” at the conference…
might be of interest to some, it was from the beginning of the “vertical lets get real buisness” phase of web3d in 2001.
A time of a dozen VC funded companies, all trying to make “their web3d” the “worlds web3d”.. needless to say, how they did is duly recorded:)
c3
Well said Dusan, and such an understandable frustration about, as someone above here called it, Dinosaur Industry.
Maybe that is a lesson of virtual worlds and of Second Life in particular: it helps us exploring the future, or at least possible scenarios of how the future might look like.
Maybe Dinosaur Industry is a dying species, not compatible with the Second Life experience. All this talk about bosses wanting to avoid their employees waste time… it is real but it sounds so Industrial Era, the Age of the Factory…
This is the 21st century,and the age of the Factory is behind us. The crisis we experience is one of the unpleasant manifestations of this transition. Second Life is one of the pleasant surprises, making us feel upbeat about the future. It is only understandable that a Dinosaur corporate culture cannot thrive in such a future.
I have a lot to say about this, which I will save for Wednesday. But for now, a multiple choice quiz:
Which of the following corporations that fail to embrace Second Life (and VWs in general) are dinosaurs?
a) Apple
b) Twitter
c) Google
d) Amazon