The Metaverse Journal - Virtual World News

1. Mashable (USA) – What’s Up With Virtual Worlds? “From 2005 up through 2008, virtual worlds seemed like the hottest ticket in tech, but we’ve heard less about them in recent months. We imagined the people of Earth leading double lives in alternate realities. It was the stuff of science fiction, like flying cars and robot butlers, and unlike those things, it actually looked like it could become reality. Except it hasn’t. What happened? Are people still using virtual worlds? Let’s look at the latest developments in two of the most hyped virtual world platforms for insights into where (if anywhere) the alternate reality trend is headed.”

2. Business Daily (Kenya) – The benefits of a virtual world. “Slowly, companies are leaving the physical world behind to cut costs, improve communication, and find new ways to collaborate. Scores of virtual platforms exist on the Internet and are used for everything from entertainment to business to socialising. An estimated 300 million people worldwide have registered for participation in some form of this activity, according to Kzero, a virtual world marketing and development company. In 2008, according to trade group Virtual Worlds Management, venture capitalists and other investors bet nearly US$600 million on more than 60 software producers involved in this fledgling technology.”

3. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Four Youth Virtual Worlds Raise Money For Haiti Relief. “In addition to previously covered the efforts by Sony Online Entertainment and MyYearbook to raise money for survivors of the Haitian earthquake through sales of virtual goods, Sanrio Digital, Gaia Online, Wiglington and Wenks, and Xeko (formerly Elf Island) have launched their own campaigns.”

4. VentureBeat (USA) – Rixty lets young users without credit cards make buys online. “Rixty, maker of a payment app that lets people buy entertainment online even if they don’t have credit cards, has brought in $1.24 million in a seed round of funding. The San Francisco company, which lets people turn cash into online currency, is part of a slew of companies expanding the customer base for virtual goods, virtual worlds, and social networking purchases — particularly adding many younger users who don’t have bank accounts yet.”

5. Escapist Magazine (USA) – A Look Back at Metaplace. “Raph Koster’s Metaplace was an original idea to tie user-created content together – but as it closed down at the turn of the New Year, was it ahead of its time? It’s hard to say that Raph Koster didn’t have a vision when he created Metaplace back in the distant wilds of 2007. One of the original architects of games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, Koster championed the cause of user-created content in his games, and he envisioned Metaplace as a glorious utopia of user content that could be linked together – a network of virtual worlds. In a way, it was Koster’s Meta-MMOG. But sadly, it did not connect with people in the way that Koster and his employees had hoped, and the service shut down at the beginning of the year. But what had the aim been in the first place?”

6. Metro News (Canada) – ‘Real life’ avatars moving into the workplace. “In real life Byron Reeves is a bald academic. But Reeves also conducts research using his avatar, a strapping man with hair. “Lots of companies already use avatars,” explains Reeves, a psychology professor at Stanford University. “Using avatars, you can conduct meetings, meet clients and have brainstorming sessions without having to travel. In fact, you don’t even have to leave the building. And you don’t risk getting swine flu from shaking hands with an avatar.” Reeves, who specializes in human interaction with avatars, is the author of Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete.”

7. The Guardian (UK) – What I can’t find on zubworld, FourSquare or Gowalla: any point in taking part. “Every so often a story pops up in the national press about a company or person selling plots of land on the moon (here’s one from 2006). Or, sometimes, on Mars. I’ve written about it enough times that it’s wearily familiar: the people involved say that they’ve got a perfect right to sell the land, which is true enough if you can find someone stup… eager enough to buy it. Sometimes it’s “buying” stars and naming them, which is the sort of thing that’s not going to sit well in astronomers’ tables – which is why astronomers ignore them. (And who knows what astrologers feel about them?) I realised today, when the PR on behalf of a company called zubworld got in touch, that it’s this “let’s make money from something that’s not got any implicit or explicit value to the people handing over the cash” approach which turns me off location-based “games” such as Foursquare and Gowalla. And particularly zubworld, who won’t of course be happy to hear that.”

8. East Bay Business Times (USA) – ‘Second Life’ creator Linden Lab hires new CFO. “Linden Lab, the business that runs virtual world Second Life, hired Bob Komin as chief financial officer. John Zdanowski, the company’s previous CFO, left in March 2009. In December, he was reported to be working for Avatar Reality Inc. in Honolulu, another business developing a virtual world.”

9. Massively (USA) – That’s not the Second Life economy! “This week Linden Lab published a set of economic data for Q4 2009, and for 2009 as a whole. After going through the data in detail, and discovering at least one important typo and one important calculation error, it looked like we were going to have to recheck every figure before presenting them. That’s a lot of work, especially as the data published in the quarterly/annual reports doesn’t follow the same definitions as the ongoing statistical feeds or is not represented in them.”

10. CrunchGear (USA) – The World of Warcraft movie is *so* early in development. “More white-hot World of Warcraft movie news to share with y’all. Did you know that it’s in production? Of course you did; you have a pulse. But did you know what stage of production it’s in? Hmm, did ya, smart guy? Eh, you probably knew that, too. For you see, the World of Warcraft movie is in the earliest stage of development, the part where the writers are still coming up with a basic story.”

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1. Macworld (UK) – CES: Money for nothing? Virtual goods market takes off. “Social networking and multiplayer online games are fueling dramatic growth in hard cash earned from goods that exist only in the world of online make-believe, according to companies in that market gathered at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. For mainstream consumer electronics vendors, last year may have been “a year none of us would wish to repeat,” as Consumer Electronics Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro put it in a speech opening CES Thursday. Industry revenue dropped 7 percent in 2009, he said.”

2. TechCrunch (USA) – PlaySpan: $30 Million Spent On Virtual Gifts Over Holiday Season. “Should we be considering virtual goods when evaluating online holiday spending? We’ve seen that e-commerce spending over the holidays was strong, with consumers shelling out nearly $30 billion over a period of a few months. Now, virtual goods platform PlaySpan reports that digital goods have seen a similar, if smaller trend, with Americans spending $30 million on virtual gifts in November and December of 2009. It’s no surprise that the digital goods world saw strong sales over the past year; the business was projected to make $1 billion in 2009. And as virtual goods are booming, various startups have emerged to capitalize on this growth by facilitating the exchange around these goods.”

3. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Intel: OpenSim supports hundreds of thousands of objects. “While most virtual worlds are limited to “thousands” of objects in a single location, OpenSim can support hundreds of thousands, according to a white paper published by Intel this month. As a result, OpenSim-based virtual worlds — like the Intel-backed ScienceSim grid — can be used to simulate complex environments for training, education, physics and chemistry, natural resources and urban planning. “The potential for other types of applications is far-reaching,” the company said. “In the health care arena, for instance, physicians might use ScienceSim to simulate the outcome of reconstructive surgery or visualize medical concepts, such as the impact of asthma or smoking on lung function, or how diet affects the circulatory system.”

4. VentureBeat (USA) – Venture capitalists are bullish on the future of game funding. “Game investing is still going strong, even though it did take a hit during the recession. We calculated that game companies raised $600.5 million in 2009, down 36 percent from the year before. But game-savvy venture capitalists are still bullish on games. We did a roundtable Q&A with some of the best-known investors, in conjunction with the launch of Interactive Age, a new magazine focused on the business of games. The magazine is edited by N. Evan Van Zelfden, who has written for us, and will debut around the time of the Game Developers Conference in March.”

5. News.com.au (Australia) – Avatar perfection causing depression. “AN IDYLLIC planet populated by blue aliens is an ideal setting for cinematic escapism. But the world of the sci-fi epic Avatar is so perfect people have admitted being plagued by depression and suicidal thoughts at not being able to visit the planet. Set in the future when Earth’s resources have been depleted, director James Cameron’s film tells the story of a corporation trying to mine a rare mineral. The humans clash with the natives – a peace-loving race of 7ft tall, blue-skinned creatures called the Na’vi, who exist in perfect harmony with nature.”

6. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Caught in the Web. “Ever since the Internet began to make its way into everyday life—beginning roughly in the early 1990s—commentators have worried over its cultural effects, fearing isolation, regimentation, a loss of privacy or a loss of sustained thought. Back then, Jaron Lanier was one of the pioneers of immersive virtual worlds and helped to popularize the term “virtual reality.” Those were the days when the Web’s promise seemed bright and limitless. Mr. Lanier was one of its champions. Now, as experience has set in, his outlook is decidedly gloomier. In “You Are Not a Gadget,” he sounds an alarm about the social-media technologies of the so-called Web 2.0, arguing that they reduce individuals to mere cogs in a mob-based, crowd-sourced apparatus. “Technology criticism,” he says in defense of his own role in this debate, “shouldn’t be left to the Luddites.”

7. Mashable (USA) – Star Trek Moves into WoW Territory With New Online Game. “he Star Trek fan’s equivalent of World of Warcraft is now playable thanks to an open beta test — and you don’t even have to spend $60 to buy the game as long as you can put up with a few bugs. While Star Trek had become a struggling franchise in recent years, the blockbuster movie reboot from J.J. Abrams that hit last May renewed interest online and elsewhere. Right now the easiest way to get a key to play Star Trek Online is to sign up for an account at gamer download mecca FilePlanet, but more choices will come.”

8. Science Daily (USA) – New Computer Vision System for the Analysis of Human Behavior. “A consortium of European researchers, coordinated by the Computer Vision Centre (CVC) of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has developed HERMES, a cognitive computational system consisting of video cameras and software able to recognise and predict human behaviour, as well as describe it in natural language. The applications of the Hermes project are numerous and can be used in the fields of intelligent surveillance, protection of accidents, marketing, psychology, etc.”

9. VizWorld (USA) – State Of The Second Union: VizWorld on Second Life. “Ever since I first read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of the Metaverse. A virtual world that completely destroys physical boundaries, allowing us to interact and mingle in a virtual space across vast distances with similar realism as being physically there. I’ve seen several virtual worlds rise and crumble, but none as persistent as Second Life. I first tried Second Life back in February of 2006, and after a single day I never returned. It was interesting, but almost overwhelming in its potential so I left it for a “later date”, which never arose.”

10. VentureBeat (USA) – Saints Capital takes stake in Second Life owner Linden Lab. “Secondary investment firm Saints Capital has acquired a stake in virtual world startup Linden Lab, the owner of Second Life. Venturewire reported that Saints Capital acquired the stake from an existing investor, and that Linden Lab was not involved in the transaction. That means that one of Linden Labs’ current investors or employee stakeholders sold the shares to Saints. Linden Lab declined comment.”

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