Are We Headed for a Virtual Winter?

Elixir creator and digital avatar evangelist, Bruce Damer, believes that a downturn in Virtual Worlds may be leading to a "winter" in the near future. "Is the coming of several new VW platforms going to balkanize a limited usership or grow the user base? In looking at broader scope of user interactivity demographics, will the move of more people to do their primary computing on mobile platforms reduce the number of people using VWs on big screens or put a cap on the growth of the VW market? Is the fact that there are now so many options for real-time representation of people online (Skype, Twitter, etc) means that VWs are always going to struggle for visibility? Is interaction in a VW that much more enriching and valuable than the simpler modalities available in other platforms? Will VWs ever really go mainstream? I continuously hear complaints about VWs not being worth the trouble, especially from people much younger and hipper than me (I am 46) who prefer much lighter weight forms of interaction. What does this portend?"

Comments

Integrate VW with RW?

[2nd Post!]

Why shouldn't WoW or SL be able to integrate directly with Skype, AIM, email, Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter?

It's probably the next step of increasing MMO/VW usage.

Re:Integrate VW with RW?

[2nd Post!]

You mean you would rather do this:
Take a screenshot
Alt-tab to an editor
Save picture
Select picture
Upload picture to a website

Over
Take a screenshot
Select in-game photo app
Upload picture to a website

This applies to everything: LiveJournal, WordPress, Twitter, Flikr, .Mac, YouTube, GMail, etc.

Re:Integrate VW with RW?

[Bieeanda]

Yes, actually. Second Life's snapshot function is shit, EVE Online's internal web browser has (or at least had) a gigantic security hole in it, and most games' internal screenshot functions don't have the ability to crop, adjust colours for proper contrast, or anything else that I habitually use Photoshop for when showing in-game stuff off to friends.

Virtual World developers can barely be expected to get their core code right. Tacking web browsers, photo editing software and the like on is reinventing the wheel at best, and inviting novel intrusion schemes at worst. I can alt-tab and fiddle with a picture in an editor a lot faster and a lot more cleanly than some underpaid coder can hack a gimped Gimp together.

Re:Integrate VW with RW?

[Hatta]

Yes of course. Remember the UNIX philosophy, tools should do one job and do it well. Complex tasks are accomplished by chaining these tools together.

We have high quality applications for just about any task on the desktop. Do you really expect Second Life or whoever to reimplement these functions as well as real world application programmers? Do we really need a virtual OS inside our virtual world running on a real OS?

Yes

[Hatta]

Rich virtual worlds are one of those things that sound good in theory, but don't work out so well in real life. I spend a lot of time on IRC, and I just don't see the need for anything more than a nickname and a topic to have meaningful interactions with others online. And even the topic is optional.

Is there really a point to having a 3d avatar?

What?

[TheSpoom]

To reiterate: What?