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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.'"
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.