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Most Business-Launched Virtual Worlds Fail
bughunter writes "Internet consultant firm Gartner claims that only 1 in 10 commercial virtual worlds succeeds, and most fail within 18 months: 'Businesses have learned some hard lessons," Gartner analyst Steve Prentice said in a statement released Thursday. "They need to realize that virtual worlds mark the transition from Web pages to Web places and a successful virtual presence starts with people, not physics. Realistic graphics and physical behavior count for little unless the presence is valued by and engaging to a large audience."'" Hard to believe it's even as high as one in ten -- most "virtual worlds" with obvious commercial trappings certainly don't inspire much besides mockery.
The average success rates for most businesses is also about 1 in 10.
Not a typewriter
90% of everything is crap
Just because you can do something doesn't make it great idea for anything, let alone a business.
While it isn't business, it is life. My virtual world has never failed me. Especially six. I live in it now. I deviate and fork when I dream. Dream I do. If I don't like things, I change it. I live two instances of virtuality, my dreams state and my outwardly facing persona.
Best part, it works without a computer. Requires no electricity, although a few beers helps.
Miller time!
"...most "virtual worlds" with obvious commercial trappings certainly don't inspire much besides mockery."
Especially here.
I've got your sig, right here.
Any notable failures?
Manager: Does your avatar make actual money?
Employee: He doesn't know how to do that.
Manager: The whole point of innovation is to make money.
Why would I want to use a low value virtual world?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Web pages to Web places" Really? What does this distinction even mean? Could someone translate the corporate doubletalk for me?
Does making a stupid 3D game your employees can wander about in really count as a virtual world? What if I run a Halflife server but we just wander about a map shaped like an office and chat? Can I tell all my rivals that our company has it's own virtual world?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
The online game companies imagine that since there are millions of Internet users, it means that they'll have instantly a lot of users.
It's also because they need financial partners, so they tend to inflate their numbers to attract money.
Investors like to hear about attracting 0.01% of the Internet users, even if they have nothing new, or even worse, nothing to sell !
Hint: I worked in 2 such game companies, and they both failed !
Transition from web pages to places? No thanks! I want a clean, simple web page that delivers the information I need in an organized and intuitive manner, not a fucking video game time sink. It shouldn't take up lots of memory and it shouldn't require much navigation, which is what web pages do and it is not what "virtual worlds" do.
First, Gartner is pathetic.
Second, there are some virtual worlds launched by businesses that have been astoundingly successful. They're called MMORPGs.
Advice: on VPS providers
What virtual worlds? I haven't heard of any new ones to troll in a while.
This is hardly surprising. Look at the multitude of MMOs that have started development, and been left by the roadside due to lack of funding for the craptastic product. Then look at all the MMOs that have died within 2yrs of launch due to lack of players.
Heck, even some of the ones that are still going today would have died if they hadn't gotten lucky. Vanguard is only around because SOE bailed out Sigil, and the product is still not very good a full year after release. It should have never gone gold when it did, as it's now a "paid beta".
The only thing that keeps the full numbers from looking so bad is the various "free to play but with an item mall" MMOs that come out of the Asian Pacific market. They can all call themselves successful, but they have no recurring income due to subscriptions, so they have little to no future development, and are basically "how many potions can you carry and use" games with no strategy outside of that.
Don't think so many have gone belly up? Check this site out, and look at the number of games that were cancelled either pre-beta or during beta, or after launch. It's a lot. BetaWatcher
A fun way to look at businesses is "every action someone can do has a market... the only question is whether the market pays enough".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Sure.
You posted to a Web Page at 8:23 PM. You don't feel it's necessary to hang around for 2 hours for me to post my reply at 10:30.
The problem with "web places" is that no one has quite mastered how to "hang" at web places without spending first tier time at a computer. As a few SF books have shown, web places will take off when you can visit for 17 minutes in the line at a restaurant.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Once you get past the Snarking, sometimes the buzzwords actually have a point.
A Web Place requires the user to spend tangible amounts of time physically present at the place, preferably with greater than 25% attentiveness. IRC is the case study to "online in absentia".
AOL's legions of Septemberites learned their first wee steps of the web because they responded in raucous rapid-fire quantities to each other.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
most "virtual worlds" with obvious commercial trappings certainly don't inspire much besides mockery
That might be true of a lot of B-list games and such, but "virtual worlds" like World of Warcraft, EVE Online, and Second Life have more fans than detractors.
Keep up the good work, Slashdot needs more committed members like you.
P.S.
This article has NOTHING to do with games. Also, your Cringely link, with juicy lines such as The truth is that there is no IT "profession." makes me want to throw up.
Jesus, tap dancing, Christ...
1 in 10 is better than the chances a sourceforge.net project has.
MMOs [and other MM games] often get a huge amount of coverage, before they eventually disappear off the face of the web.
A spectacular failure with promising starts is of course, The Sims Online.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
I just started reading Snow Crash today, incidentally. I'm not that far in, but it would make sense that for a virtual world to really take off, it would have to be the only game in town.
> his is hardly surprising. Look at the multitude of MMOs that have started development, and been left by the roadside due to /* lack of funding for */ the craptastic product.
Fixed that for you. And I'm quite serious: many of the exciting new products in many fields are proposed by people who have no idea of what the market will actually support, misled by their own hopes and the VC marketer who took the commission for finding them the money and is long gone by the time the product finishes failing. Far too many companies are producing far, far too many big projects to create a new future, rather than filling a real need. And it's easy to poison such a project with a single mistake from a single developer or manager, or a market change.
the most practical way to make a virtual world actually "useful" is to make a virtual office.
:)
no, not a virtual desktop, because that would imply that placing every single item - like a 3D filing cabinet - onto the 3D rendition of the "desk top" - is something that people would find "useful".
the "desk top" metaphor has been overused and overburdened, and, after several decades of pain, i think it's clear that it's no longer "useful".
a 600mhz ULV pentium M, in combination with the older 815 extreme graphics chipset, is perfectly capable of fast 3D work - certainly such 600mhz ULV pentiums cannot be made to go more than 450mhz when running the "default" features of compiz / beryl desktop.
so it's not like the technology isn't up-to-standard or anything.
so - imagine a 3D virtual environment where you have a desk (with four legs). on the top surface is two, three or four monitors - as many as you want - representing your "application spaces". there's a telephone (bakerlite, of course). when you get a skype call or an IM, it grabs your attention by vibrating. there's a clock on the wall (not on the top of the desk). it tells the time. there's a calendar on the wall (not on the top of the desk). you click on it and it takes you to google apps or to evolution or to outlook. from a distance, panning back, you can clearly see some scheduled events on it.
the list goes on - of things that aren't on "the desktop".
my favourite is a "filing cabinet" which is really a filing cabinet, with drawers that open and bring up real "folders" with A-E F-K etc. on them.
why am i mentioning this? well, against this background, taking it a step further, you might want to "meet" someone - in 3D. you might want to collaborate on a document, or show them a presentation, which will be on a virtual "easel" or in a 3D "room" with a virtual rendition of a projector. if you want to pause the presentation and go to discussing or editing a document, collaboratively, you can, with very little to distrupt the conceptual continuity.
this is a _useful_ 3D "virtual world".
one which you could conceivably work in on a day-to-day basis. which i think is a _great_ excuse to get stonking games machines.
now all we need is a 3D version of mine-sweeper ha ha
It's called a 'smart phone'. They will be invented in about the year 2000. Furthermore I predict that a well-known upmarket vendor of digital appliances will come out with a very elegant one in about the year 2007, and that it will rapidly become popular.
Great, this predictions business!
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
My employers will sell you this. Indeed, they'll be delighted to sell you this, since we developed it three years ago and so far have no real customers. It's a great idea... on paper.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
There are a bunch of reasons why RL businesses fail in Second Life, and I've written about them here, hereand here. The issue seems to be that many people have a different identity when in virtual, and that other identity has little use for RL products and services. Instead, success is found by directly addressing their virtual needs, like I have done at my virtual store, Electric Pixels. Unfortunately, the size of the market is still quite small. It's like running a business in a town, not the world.
-- ArminasX
Just a little background on myself.. I run a virtual world business. Skidz Partz in second life, and while.. I understand all the laughter and criticisms, I have made my living from it making tools other gadgets. So I guess I am one out of the ten.
One of the reason 9 out of 10 businesses fail in virtual worlds, is they are so easy to start. Its nothing to buy land (rent server space) and set up shop. You don't even have to have a product of your own. The hard part, is taking it seriously, customer support, having events and such.
The second reason is most people open the store and think its like a web page, place things for sale and people buy.. completely automated.. no work at all.. I find, in virtual worlds the community factor is something that those 9 don't take into consideration. When coke put up there sim, it was empty of anyone that works there. People come to virtual worlds to communicate, explore, and create, and it defeats the whole purpose of the virtual world not to have a staff on hand to communicate and reach out to the audience.
And, as far as the fancy ligth show, and physics, I would agree that the core business user of a virtual world would not care about those things, but I believe the base users do. They want a great experience with great graphics. Most people that come into second life just want to escape reality for a bit, roll play, chat with friends and those thing add to the experience. And if you have not seen the wind light version of secondlife, I recommend you take a look, its stunning.
And now time to defend virtual worlds a bit... Last night I was searching the net high and low for a mathematical solution, but could not find it anywhere. I join the mathematics group in second life and had the answer I was looking for in just seconds. This is a great example of how the community is very powerful function in virtual worlds. In the future, I do believe virtual worlds will increase in popularity. I know IBM, Google, and Second life are working together now on something even bigger and better. While, right now, I would never suggest using second life as a work at home but in a virtual office, with the price of gas I believe something like that will become even more popular or more likely in the future.
Well.. just my 2 cents.
A Currency that Pays a Divident The OpenSim project should have a currency that pays a divident. If users earn a divident just by using the game currency this will be a great incentive not only to participate in the game but also to use the currency in real life. Thus this increases the possibility that a market of things of value will develop in the game and maybe the currency will be used for real life transactions as well. A currency that pays a divident will prevail over any other form of virtual currency by means of the strategic advantage of directly benefiting the user. Convertibility to real currencies will depend solely on free market ability of the currency to provide goods and services and not some convertibility obligation undertaken by the company that hosts the server. Implementing a currency that produces a divident would require suitable financial institutions, capital markets, and a mechanism to liquidate a part of current value of financial instruments. Through liquidating a sustainable part of current value of financial instruments the company that hosts the server would earn the game money funds which when converted to real currency would pay for its operational costs plus the funds needed to pay a divident. It would be in the best interest of the company that hosts the server to ensure that the financial structure operates efficiently for the benefit of the users so that the game currency has maximum value of convertibility to real life currencies. Retrieved from "http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Money" there you can find more details on how it is possible
Corporations came (and still come) into Second Life with fanfare and crowds on opening day. Then you visit their locale a few weeks later, only to hear the wind blowing and see the tumbleweeds rolling (and the grass growing up to here).
If you want to engage people and get them interested in your products/services in an online world, and/or engage your workforce in collaboration in such an environment, then you need the following:
For a public facing site:
1. Hire/assign a workforce of at least 4 people (ideally more) to man the locale 24/7. Their job is to engage the public, and manage the location. Remember your public is world-wide on these sites.
2. Continually upgrade the content to provide interest. The people who visit will decide whether to stay or return another time in the matter of a few seconds. They have to find value or you won't see them again.
3. Remember - this is not TV, and the people in these worlds are not a passive audience. They vote with their feet.
For an internal site:
1. Make sure your work is suitable for such an undertaking. e.g. if you have a factory - you don't want your assembly line workers spending all day in the virtual world, unless the interfaces in that world somehow tie back directly to the machines on the floor; some value add might be to have 3D models of your products in the virtual world that can be exploded by engineers when a question arises. On the other hand, a better fit might be a software development firm - in fact you wouldn't need any offices at all - telecommuting raised to a new level. All employees could work from home, using the virtual world as the 'office space' - and a central collaboration point.
2. If the site is your main office space then do what you would do in a normal office - recognize achievement, have meetings, collaborate with your peers, and have fun while doing it.
3. Probably most importantly: if the culture, product or other aspects of your business do not lend themselves to a virtual presence, then don't do it. The 2ndLife map is littered with empty business venues that are just a money drain - with no value either to the community or the companies involved.