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Alter Ego – SBS covers Second Life (again)

January 23, 2009 By

Over the past nine months or so, writer / director Shelley Matulick has been making a documentary about Second Life. Its working title was CyberStars but the final product has a much improved title of Alter Ego. SBS and Matulick have previously released Our Brilliant Second Life, but the latest production is a significant step up in scope.

The final promo poster for Alter Ego looks like this:

alter-ego-poster-small

Stalwart ABC Island admin, Wolfie Rankin, is one of the subjects of Alter Ego and he gives his thoughts on the finished product on his blog. There’s no confirmed release date as yet. This is a documentary that should garner quite a bit of interest, particularly if its portrayals have depth, which seems to be the case on initial impressions.

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Filed Under: Australian News Tagged With: , , ,

Virtual Worlds: 2009 industry forecast

January 23, 2009 By

US-based Virtual Worlds Management have released their Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2009 . It features commentary from more than 60 executives across the virtual worlds industry, including Australia’s Santosh Kulkarni (NICTA), Danny Stefanic (ExitReality), Bruce Joy (VastPark), and Bob Quodling (Mycosm).

vw-forecast-2009

Condensing a report of this size into a few paragraphs is always fraught with difficulty, but the main messages standing out for me were:

1. There’s not surprisingly very different estimates put forward on the level of growth this year, given the current economic circumstances;

2. There’s significant confidence that advertising models are evolving that make virtual worlds competitive with social networks like Facebook, particularly given the growth in virtual goods on those platforms;

3. Web-driven worlds are seen as having the most momentum for 2009;

4. Enterprise use of virtual worlds remains unclear, with a split between those who believe the economic climate provides opportunities to demonstrate cost savings versus those who believe any IT expenditure will be under significant scrutiny.

From the Aussie contingent, one of the more amusing comments came from VastPark’s Bruce Joy:

3D on the Web will continue to be a bit disappointing, but will become far more commonplace through Unity and Flash based engines like Papervision. This suggests 2010 may be the watershed year where 3D on the Web goes mainstream. That’s when we all become rock stars and live large, right?

Mycosm’s Bob Quodling claims “Wireless mobile will be the biggest play” – is that as opposed to ‘Wired Mobile’?

Danny Stefanic from ExitReality sees much clearer ROI cases coming forward for business, whilst Santosh Kulkarni from NICTA cites the developments in interoperability between worlds a key issue.

If you’re interested in some comprehensive thoughts from the virtual worlds industry itself, then have a read of the full report. We’d love to hear your thoughts – is the report a realistic assessment of 2009 prospects, a group of insular assertions from an industry desperate to gain mainstream relevance, or something else altogether?

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Filed Under: Australian News, Business Tagged With: , , , ,

Emergency Maintenance – Second Life

January 23, 2009 By

At 12.30am Friday morning Australian time (AEDT), the SL grid will be down for more urgent maintenance. Read all the details here.

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Filed Under: General News, Grid glitches Tagged With:

Second Life: a monopolistic marketplace?

January 22, 2009 By

Today, Linden Lab announced that they’ve acquired two third-party, web-based marketplaces, Xstreet SL and OnRez. On the face of it, such an acquisition is likely to appeal to current Second Life residents and provide a more intuitive virtual goods purchasing option for new users when they register. What caught my eye however, was this statement:

As we go forward towards a single, unified Second Life marketplace, we are excited to build on the work that you, along with Xstreet SL and OnRez teams, have done.

Is a single, unified marketplace a totally desirable thing? It’s not usually and it’s hard to get excited about the prospect of a lack of competition. Other competitors may pop up, but the likely dominance of the now Linden Lab driven marketplace is going to make alternatives difficult.

With the burgeoning interest in virtual goods, Linden Lab’s move makes good business sense. That doesn’t mean it will benefit the wider populace of Second Life beyond simplicity and arguably greater security. It’ll be fascinating to see if this development increases what is already a healthy virtual goods throughput, and if so, whether prices are impacted adversely by the lack of larger, organised competition.

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Filed Under: Business, General News Tagged With:

Therapy and the metaverse

January 21, 2009 By

Mark Kizelshteyn (SL: Chronos Laval) is a virtual world researcher and one of two principals at virtual worlds developer Popcha!. As part of his recent university studies he completed a paper called Therapy and The Metaverse: Second Life and The Changing Conditions of Therapy For Convalescent and Chronically Ill Users, which will be published in Washington University’s Undergraduate Research Digest – you can download the full article here.

popcha

Kizelshteyn will be discussing his work in Second Life on January 22nd between 1 and 2 pm SLT / PST (8am Friday 23rd January AEDST), with John Lester (Pathfinder Linden) launching proceedings. The venue will Popcha! headquarters. If you’d like to attend you’ll need to RSVP to Chronos Laval in Second Life. The paper itself is a useful overview of what virtual worlds like Second Life offer in regards to engagement, a sense of community and the ability to experience presence in ways that may not be feasible in real-life for people with chronic illnesses. The case study in the article (Amy the DJ) is well encapsulated and illustrates the power of the interaction in Second Life really well.

There’s no dearth of health research going on and even broad articles like this illustrate the depth of work going on. With virtual world development businesses realising the potential in the market, there’s also a growing realisation whilst that rigour in approach to development for health presences needs to mirror the discipline applied to health endeavours themselves.

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Filed Under: General News, Health Tagged With: ,

Recession and virtual worlds: go real-world

January 20, 2009 By

Nic Mitham at Kzero has written a interesting piece on virtual worlds and the challenges they face in the current economic climate. He pays particular attention to ‘pure-play’ worlds, which are those that aren’t linked to a real-world brand.

kzero-tweens

Pure-play worlds don’t have the relative security of a more widely known brand to leverage from and Kzero’s view is that a foray into the real-world marketing space will assist in surviving the current challenges. It’s a claim that’s hard to refute given the ever-increasing competition in the space – the paying customers (mostly parents) are more likely to feel engaged with a product they’ve eyeballed beyond the computer screen. Of course, a lot of pure-play worlds are hard pushed to maintain their cash flow for development, let alone funding real-world marketing pushes with product to back it up.

In the Australian context, Mycosm, VastPark and MyCyberTwin all fall into the category of worlds with no real-world brand awareness beyond the products they’re developing. To date, Australia has escaped the worst of the worldwide economic conditions – that’s not going to continue forever and these three platforms face some nail-biting times ahead.

Read the full Kzero piece here.

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Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , ,

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

January 18, 2009 By

1. CNET (USA) – American Idol shows how to extend brand with Habbo virtual world alliance. “As reported earlier on Webware, FremantleMedia, co-producer of American Idol, announced it has teamed up with Habbo to create an Idol-branded community within the Habbo virtual world.
Habbo claims 11.5 million unique users on a worldwide basis and more than 121 million characters have been created. VentureBeat reports “about 90 percent of its users are 13 to 18. They spend an average of 45 minutes on the site per visit.”American Idol and its show sponsors will post their signs and merchandise throughout the Habbo environment. They will hold events on stages and use spaces that resemble those in the show.”

2. AppScout (USA) – Girl Ambition: Virtual World for Tweens. “Girlambition.com, a new site for tween girls, debuted yesterday, opening up a new world of online possibilities to the age group. Girl Ambition was created to help both parents and girls, ages 7 to 13, in learning how to safely use the Internet. The site is two-fold: both parents and daughters have their own logins, and access different sites. The main site gives girls a safe place to e-mail, chat, blog, watch videos, and play games. Girl Ambition aims to educate, but also increases self-esteem. The content on the site helps girls raise their self-esteem through fun games and videos. ”

3. Radar Online (USA) – First virtual world school. “A school in North Yorkshire, England has become the first to use the virtual world to educate students. According to the Evening Gazette, students use the Second Life virtual world to populate their ‘Acklam Grange’ classroom with characters which can walk around, interact with classmates, and engage in virtual lessons. (Ed: Am I the only one that finds the ‘first’ claim to be nonsensical to the extreme?)

4. Massively (USA) – Openspaces: Linden Lab short on answers. “The fifth of January has come and gone, and the Second Life Openspaces 2.0 product has passed into history, to be replaced with the lower-value Openspaces 4.0 and Homesteads 1.0 products. In the couple of months since the initial announcement, we’ve been inundated with reader-requests asking us to get some sort of explanation of the reasoning from Linden Lab, and render it into comprehensible form. Unfortunately, despite repeated promises over the last ten weeks or so to provide us with that information, Linden Lab has been unable to actually provide us with any explanation or reasoning behind the changes in pricing and specification.”

5. Softpedia (Romania) – IBM Thinks World of Warcraft Players Make Good Employees. “Online games are starting to become one of the most popular types of entertainment out there. We all play or have played various online titles like MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) in order to relax and enjoy ourselves, but it seems that some people become very addicted to them and start neglecting real-life tasks in favor of the virtual ones. This trend was observed by various employers across the United States, which have revealed that companies are now starting to dislike job applicants who reveal that they play various online games, especially World of Warcraft, one of the most popular MMORPGs out there, with over 11,5 million subscribers every month. They reveal that, although the game does teach you leadership skills, it becomes very distractive and, as such, people can’t really focus on their jobs.”

6. Innovations Report (Germany) – Virtual World users to get their own dedicated search engine. “The Meta-Mole, created by the Centre for Design in the Digital Economy (D-LAB) based within the University’s Institute of Digital Innovation, will ultimately be a dedicated searchable online resource for the 350 plus virtual worlds currently existing on the Internet. Philip McClenaghan, Deputy Director of D-LAB explains: “We were analysing virtual world platforms and realised that there doesn’t appear to be a comprehensive service offering to list and compare key data for major 2D and 3D environments. This surprised us considering the current popularity of virtual worlds. We intend to fill the gap with the Meta-Mole.”

7. Ars Technica (USA) – Online gamers in China must soon register with real names. “The addictive nature of online gaming has been proven, at least anecdotally, time and time again. While not everyone who jumps into the digital realms of World of Warcraft or the various other massively-multiplayer online role-playing games is liable to get endlessly sucked in, those with addictive personalities certainly run the risk. In fact, in the East, the problem has gotten so severe that the government of China will soon require MMO players to register their real names when creating online accounts as an anti-addiction measure.”

8. The Daily Mail (UK) – What happened when we took Mandy’s avatar to Second Life. “Lord Mandelson is creating an alter ego on a virtual reality website to drum up support for Labour…but the Mail has beaten him to it. What WILL Gordon say about that tattoo? Peter Mandelson, it can be said with some confidence, is the sort of chap who always has the right clothes for every occasion. Deck shoes, casual slacks and a blazer for swapping small talk with Russian billionaires on board a yacht in the Med. How about something fur-trimmed to impress the crowds down at the House of Lords? You can bet your bottom dollar that Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham has them all. ”

9. Digital Journal (Canada) – Sexy Job on Internet, Prostitute as Avatar. “Second Life is one of those Internet sites that allows people to become anyone or anything they want. On this particular site an individual can assume a new identity, a dream image, as a way of escaping perhaps a humdrum world or becoming a fantasy that has been wished for. This particular transformation to prostitute on “Second Life” is certainly creative. But will it pay like the real thing? ”

10. WebCPA (USA) – Taxing Virtual Worlds. “The IRS could start taxing virtual environments like Second Life and World of Warcraft to get a cut of the real dollars that are spent on potions, armor and weapons in the online gaming world. National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson suggested the IRS should proactively look into issuing guidance for taxpayers who are already concerned the taxman might one day audit these transactions.”

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Filed Under: General News, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:
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