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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.'"
businesses will become shrewder about their involvement in such environments and look more carefully at the tangible benefits they can realize
Translation: Business has realized the ineffectiveness of trying to do business against giant penis attachment and furry accessories in a world inhabited by idiots.
...quieted down because the people who play second life or other such games don't *want* business to intrude in their virtual world. There's nothing to sell in virtual worlds because someone else can make the same "virtual object" and sell it cheaper so all it becomes is another advertising tool which seems to me that people are trying to avoid by going to a virtual world. ''The first and perhaps most obvious is collaboration. This includes holding real-time meetings in the worlds with each member participating via an avatar. It can be a big cost saver, as it removes the need to fly workers around the globe.'' seriously? And document collaboration in a virtual world? give me a break. There is much better software out there that does this a million times better...just doesn't have the 3d graphics... This guy probably bought a bunch of patents on this crap and is just trying to drum up interest for this...nothing more But I know nothing and the replies to this will probably refute or state what I'm attempting to state much better.
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.
IBM's Smart predicts more web browser-based virtual worlds will appear over time, meaning users won't have to spend time downloading and setting up client applications.
This would be a large step. One of the main issues now is the effort required to do the equivalent of clicking a link. Imagine installing a new program for every link you wanted to click.
So we will be even more busy with real life and virtual life's. Will we also get virtual kreditcrisis?
First page of the article:
"There's no credit crunch in Second Life"
:-)
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.
Has any business, anywhere, recieved any tangible benefit from their participation in Second Life?*
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?
*Linden Labs and Second Life developers not included.
-David
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.
The economics of virtual worlds are driven by synthetic scarcity. Indeed, any digital product is subject to imposed scarcity as an infinite amount of copies could be created at practically no cost.
A big difference is that with virtual worlds, copy control and usage control can be enforced more rigorously to drive up prices. This is why you see people paying for virtual gifts on Facebook. $1 for the right to give a worthless icon to a friend. Here, the value of the product is not the product's uniqueness, but the product in conjunction with the limitations of use. You are buying back a freedom that was taken away from you by the implementation.
Second Life allows users to create and sellp roducts and take advantage of the imposed scarcity, but will skim profits by controlling the
conversion rate between linden dollars and USD. It looks like a real economy, but it's more like a pyramid scheme, as the profits will inevitably trickle up. It's like a casino. The house cannot lose as long as people keep coming.
I suppose the positive side of this is that if people are happy spending real money on virtual objects, then they probably have enough money.
A witty
Embrace the tech!
Imagine that the NEXT boring meeting dominated by hours long powerpoint slideshows....
*1. From your 'virtual' meeting, access a proxy, and hack/crack the presentation with flying penises.
2.How 'uncomfortable' can you make your avatar?
3.Bonus points for hacking the system and substituting a lip-sync'ed animation of Richard M. Nixon replacing your PHB in the next teleconference.
4. Uhmm?...Use your creative imagination?*
P.S.
I agree with you, this is just marketing looking for multi-bucks.
Since big businesses have noted the 'exposure' available on such sites as "Second Life", Google's clone of SL, etc. there seems to be a rush to exploit this perceived market/resource.
It's not about the advantages to businesses, but 'how much can we sell this "solution" for, with extended support contracts', and for how long?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
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
would love to buy stuff in secondlife or some other virtual world. I mean rw objects, not virtual objects. I can't believe how many geeks here poo-poo the potential, just because secondlife et al haven't done much yet. I'm sure when online stores started, the 3-digit user IDs opined that they'd rather go to a real store thankyouverymuch.
I hate surfing on sites where I have to click through list after list of things I don't want to finally see what I want. In a virtual werehouse, I could clearly see all the hanging signs, fly to the part of the store I need, wave my hand at a poster on a wall, and buy what I want with paypal or some other convenient form of payment. It combines the convenience of rw store layout, quick online payment, and instant access. I could teleport from store to store, listen to music, interact with virtual salespersons when I need help, meet girls (or furries or whatever), and (importantly for vendors) make impulse buys as I walk around. This has the potential to be a much more interesting and fulfilling shopping experience than simply searching through Google Products, eBay, or New Egg.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Over the past few years a very quiet and innovative revolution has taken place in 3d graphics. I know this because I am immersed in it. Now I don't really know how much bandwidth will be required to make it all fluid. Without getting into brands or specific applications there is software that abstractionalizes all 3d entities into basically database records with a visual component. That visual component can then be placed and oriented into 3 dimensional space. This object can then provide as little or as much information about itself as is required. So I don't think that poo pooing the idea is makes it a stupid one. For over a decade I have imagined a 3-d warehouse that can be navigated visually and then reorganized according to whatever criteria amuses the user. It can be done now rather easily with the right combination of skilled people and software that exists now. Of coarse the computational power is a huge factor. However back in the day when I had a 1meg 386 with a 40 meg hard drive I could not even fathom 500 gigs of storage so that is a relative thing too. I just wish I had the resources and the backers to actually do it. I envy those that are doing it. I smirk at those that don't have the imagination or the knowledge to understand just how feasible useful things can be created this way. So stand by to be wrong.
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
From my experience, a virtual economy can support itself without any intervention or participation from outside companies. For example, there are lots of people who sell skins, clothing, accessories, you-name-it to the residents of Second Life, and *I* make money by providing business tools to them (for visitor counting/automated greetings/report services/surveys, etc.).
I think Second Life paved the way for bigger and better things, but by no means should it be considered the model for the way a virtual environment should work. The utter lack of an interactive forms API and zero support for interaction with real-world documents (such as PDF, .DOC, Excel, PowerPoint) are big flaws that are already frustrating businesses that try to conduct meetings in SL. And don't get me started about their "land" approach to paying for CPU cycles.
From the outset, SL hasn't been about business. Linden Lab created a barren virtual landscape and has let the residents create just about 100% of the content using a very limited (dare i say "primitive"?) set of tools. It has been a big hippie-furry-fetishfest that has concentrated on bugfixes rather than connecting to the outside world. Considering how long it's been around, Second Life shouldn't still be regarded as a place where cyberweirdos go to get their kink on...and yet it still is very much regarded that way by even hardcore geeks.
Now that Linden Lab is starting to realize that their talk of SL as a place for serious business isn't just the hot air even *they* thought it was, they're trying to turn the ship around with some meager business-related integration. Fortunately for them, most other tech companies have watched them struggle and have stayed out of the game.
Over the past two years, I've conducted close to 50 lectures and business meetings in Second Life. This has save me time - I can easily appear "live" to an audience half a world away without the attendant cost of time to get there - and it has saved IBM money - I'm shipping my bits, not my atoms. I created an avatar that looks very much like me in real life, and by using voice inside Second Life, the overall experience for those with whom I interact is close enough to real life to be good enough for real business use, especially given the economic benefit. Before the end of the year, I'll have started a virtual office on one of the IBM islands where I'll be holding regular office hours - something that many Lindens already do - for we do have an in world community that spans the world, and this will actually extend my reach.
So, it's not about the economics of buying and selling virtual things in world; for me, it's using a virtual world as an extension of my real world. Being in world is subtly better than NetMeeting (which works ok for point meetings but not so well with multiple attendees...and besides, I prefer to use real operating systems, so I only have Mac and Linux machines around) and - especially when I'm connecting to places where the network infrastructure is less well developed - requires no special equipment on the distant ends. When all the folks with whom I'm interacting are in world, social interaction carries out much like in the real world, with small groups forming and reforming. This is better than video for me, as it to some degrees encourages serendipitous communication and addresses the watercooler problem.
Lest you think I'm a shill for IBM, please note that I'm only a minor player in the larger metaverse community that has evolved at our grassroots. There's more going on than I can describe here, with regard to IBM's internal use of virtual worlds (as one brief example, we just held our first Academy meeting entirely in world; additionally, given these economic times, a life Academy meeting had been cancelled - but in its place there will be, among other things, an in world meeting).
With growing energy costs, conducting business in world as an extension of the real world is where I, for one, am reaping economic value.
"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.
I can explain every aspect of virtual world economics.
Feel free to buy a virtual ticket to the lecture "How to Retire Your Toon", which my toon will be giving at the virtual conference centre in Second Life. Real world currency only.
Life needs more saving throws.
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
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
Just a few days ago, I finally installed and ran an OpenSim server on my own box.
Given the absurdity of being effectively forbidden to make backups copies of the stuff in Second Life they claim I own the copyrights to (a deal breaker in my book), I'm pretty happy to finally see an actually open and complete virtual worlds platform (even if it is alpha).
It wouldn't surprise me if the burgeoning openness of these and other VW software projects is what is driving business to take a second look at it, as well.