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The Second Coming of Virtual Worlds
An anonymous reader writes "Things have been a bit quiet on the virtual world front recently, but according to an article in Silicon.com, things are about to change. Apparently it's only now that virtual worlds are really going to become a force to be reckoned with. 'Now experts predict the virtual world phenomenon is entering a second phase in which businesses will become shrewder about their involvement in such environments and look more carefully at the tangible benefits they can realize. Emerging technology specialist at IBM, Robert Smart, is confident virtual worlds will become more important to businesses in the coming years.'"
There's nothing to sell in virtual worlds
Wow. So all those people in Second Life are selling what? They've got a bigger economy then some small countries.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's just that the real virtual worlds are facebook, google docs, myspace, amazon, craigslist, and so on... These don't attempt to copy "real life", they perform new functions that "real life" just couldn't perform.
Someday, we will have much better virtual reality, and then avatar-based virtual worlds will become feasible - because, by then, it won't be about the avatar. But tell me how Second Life will help me collaborate with our team member over in Colorado? Let me tell you, the problem is not that we don't have an avatar to talk to. The problem is that we don't have the rich intersubjectivity, easy transitions between whiteboard, sketchpad, powerpoint, the subtextual awareness of people's available time/attention, the spontaneous conversations that everybody can listen to with half an ear or close their door to, and so on.
Today's virtual worlds simply don't offer that. We're going to need a lot of new tech and interface development. Somehow I don't think exploiting Second Life as an e-commerce channel is going to be a game-changer.
Real translation: some guy at IBM figured out there's money to be made from those who _haven't_ realized that yet. So, in keeping with the tradition of hyping technologies to people who don't actually need them, next you'll see IBM and a few others pitching something along the lines of WebSphere Virtual World Server 7.1 as the second cumming of Christ. To CIOs whose idea of staying on top of their branch is reading lists of buzzwords, from paid-for-PR articles disguised as technology news.
See, there's this funny thing about gold rushes. Almost invariably the only ones who made money are not the miners. It's those who sold equipment and food to them.
A lot of business in the IT world lately is creating your own fake gold rush by PR, and trying to sell picks to some people who won't strike gold because there is none. And this reads like yet another bubble trying to get started. The message is, basically, "OMG, there's so much money to be made from virtual worlds, and there are all these people who'd take you more seriously and give you more money if they could walk into your 3D virtual shop dressed as a furry. But you have to be careful about what virtual world and business kit you get, you know? Get ours." Have you heard that before? Right. A million times, probably.
E.g., Web 2.0: you'd get so much money and be the only ones profitable online, if you only had forums, and tags, and wikis, and supported BitTorrent. 'Cause it's all about empowering the users, baby. Build a better community web site, and they'll just beg to give you their money. No seriously, that's what the Web 2.0 trademark was supposed to mean. Well, until it was hijacked. There wasn't enough to be sold with that idea, so it got hijacked to mean: buy our funky javascript frameworks and servers, and you'll get everyone wanting to buy stuff from you. People only take an e-commerce site seriously if it has a megabyte of javascript per page, ya know?
E.g., portals. Everything has to be done using portlets, and reinvent in Javascript badly the multiple windows and window management that your OS already had anyway. Customers will only take you seriously and give you lots of money if you buy our portlet server. And here's a few strawmen and non-sequiturs about how if it's done with any different technology, it can't possibly be the view and the information that the customer wants. (Confusing content with a presentation layer technology, basically.)
Etc.
So now the next message and bubble will be: do it with 3D virtual worlds! Buy our virtual shop kit, and this time the customers will really take you seriously! Would we lie to you? Again?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The concept of "pure" virtual worlds (i.e. not a "game" with a massive community) is pure marketing hype through and through, an accidental but inevitable extension of the success instant messaging has had. The vast majority of people find very little use in the concept and even less in the execution. Part of this is the fact that such applications require someone to relatively social and extroverted (to find value in interaction for interaction's sake), yet also find a need to supplement or replace being social in the real world with doing it online. These subsets don't overlap too much.
The reason this doesn't apply to instant messaging is because instant messaging allows people to do much more: they can add coworkers and friends they know in real life, and be able to imitate existing technologies like the telephone they would already use and supplement them with advantages like a more casual environment allowing briefer conversations (also see SMS), and creating grouped conversations. It's form over function - you don't need a "3D world" to do that. So the problem is twofold. If you create a product that uses a new technology, and doesn't need that technology, it's introducing needless complexity. If you create a product that uses a new technology, but fails to extend current technologies, it's a novelty.
Existing "virtual worlds" have two uses: gambling and sex. SL is barren except for the "clubs", most of the others are too. The only thing keeping the concept afloat is the endless cycle of press articles on about how "innovative" it is. Businesses have no sales in these "worlds" because while advertising is something that people accept on TV, if they don't have to go to a advertising area in the game they won't.
And that's different from the real world how? Hell, Microsoft got started by being there at the right time and getting a lucrative contract.
And that's different from the real world how? There are lots and lots of poor saps who pay huge amounts of money on an establishment and setting up a business because they think they can run a successful bar, turns out they can't, and go bankrupt.
Sounds a lot like a large part of the real world to me
How's that any different from the real world? Your "casino" scheme is precisely the way land works in the real world -- whether you make any profit or not, you have to pay taxes. Same goes for webhosting, or renting an establishment, or...
SL has very little to do with a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are bound to collapse at some point, while SL doesn't really have to, just like a webhost or any other business that operates on the same model
During the Second Life PR stage, back during its honeymoon, I do remember the "people getting rich on Second Life" stories, though when you looked closer, "rich" ended up meaning "making far less than minimum wage".
The worst part is that these were the hand-picked best examples, and for every one chump even breaking even, there are likely worlds more failing miserably (albeit probably trying to spin a fiction to themselves and online to convince themselves that this is the next big economy). And even if they weren't directly fed to the media by Linden Labs, the media has a vested interested in overblowing these things: It doesn't make for a very compelling story to write "A bunch of assholes sit wasting their lives away, all while pretending they're entrepreneurs despite making less real world money than a kid cutting lawns."
And the stories about big business all rushing to set up their Second Life environments....you've been had, bitches! The only ones making money out of that deal are the pitchmen that sell the services to set up this garbage.
Umm for same reasons people spend lifes in virtual worlds instead of real ones - your virtual alter ego is better looking, more succesfull and easier to live with than a real one
"I hear about all these businesses and universities spending so much money on virtual places that are lucky to get a dozen "hits" a month. Are any of these visitors buying a product, becoming more brand-loyal, or spreading the word?"
Sounds like the beginnings of the WWW, doesn't it?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I'm surprised there's so many negative comments on SecondLife in particular although in some ways I agree. Myself I've long been a user of MUDs, actually I'm still a part of one today. (Free Text-based Virtual Systems). I never did like SecondLife due to it's commercial content but I can understand it's attractiveness for many. I think businesses don't understand the reality of VR systems. For most people, it's about one's self in many ways. Think of it as a spiritual journey for many. Put it this way, I think VR Systems are an expression of someone's hopes and dreams. If your hopes and dreams only consist of commercial products... Well I'd say that's why your life feels empty.
It's not a "world" until it advances a lot more. One of the reason that "virtual meetings" don't hold a candle to real meetings it that you have a what? 30 field of vision? That is if your screen is fairly large.
See, in the real world you have 180 FOV, full positional full-duplex audio, unlimited resolution, and a much, much more intuitive user interface.
Virtual worlds need to become a lot more immersive before they will take off. As long as a simple conversation isn't as simple as in the real world, there will be some early adopters and hype, but that's it.
Me, I want touch. You don't even begin to realize how much touch and force feedback matters until you're in a "virtual world" where you have neither.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
For some things, a virtual store is not ever going to really help you. People go to stores to inspect what they are buying and to see how clothing looks on them, for instance. In VR, the item you buy is never ripped or threadbare or doesn't fit right, nor does it feel flimsy.
Now, I imagine that you might someday get enough fidelity in color matching on your monitor to at least see the colors as they would be in real life, but you'll never be able to inspect the merchandise.
For other things, you don't need a silly virtual store, a web page will do just as well. Things like electronics and other things that you can't spot inspect in person can be just as well sold in 2D because all you really need are the specifications of the item and whether it is what you are looking for.
At the very least, a mostly convincing store is going to have to wait for virtual worlds that are not stuck inside of a monitor, but rather exist as a "holodeck" or completely jacked in Matrix experience. In that case, you might finally be able to create an accurate enough representation of yourself to say, try on clothes. It still won't allow you to inspect the real goods, however.
Things like electronics and other things that you can't spot inspect in person can be just as well sold in 2D because all you really need are the specifications of the item and whether it is what you are looking for.
Imagine, if you will, wanting to buy a computer -- a tower workstation -- and you want to examine it -- to see how easy it is to open, and work on - where are the memory modules -- are they poorly placed near the power supply, making replacement/retrofitting problematic?
Wouldn't it be an application that is tailored to the virtual world? This is also an application that you don't often (if ever) get a chance to do IRL - as you say.
Training and troubleshooting hardware is another area where this can be useful -- without having to incur the expense of a live system -- it can all be simulated in software in the VR world.
I agree you won't be able to try on clothes...but who thinks that is a valid application for VR anyway?
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
they said the same thing with the advent of vrml 2.0
its spin
they asked if sgi and its cosmo division would lead the way to , get this...THE SECOND WEB!
the problem with most of these 3d communities is they are encapsulated into a corporate environment requiring u to EULA to exist in their realm
it equivalent to camping on private propery
back in the day we didnt have no old school