The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed. William Gibson said that, and I heard it at this last day of the Virtual Worlds 2008 Conference (coming, I believe, from Ginsu Yoon from Linden Lab).
In this uneven distribution, it seems, not surprisingly, that kids, teens and tweens have more of the future on their side, as we reported about the Thursday sessions. Friday morning we saw another example of this, with an impressive presentation by Jeffrey B. Yapp, executive VP of MTV Networks and Kyra E. Reppen, senior vice president of Neopets.
“The tipping point for virtual worlds has already happened” Reppen said. “Other sites may have gotten some buzz, but it’s the kids space that got the audience.” What could that buzz have been? Maybe Second Life – oops, the World Which Must Not Be Named?
It seems that millions of kids discovered the Worlds for kids and teens. Those Worlds (BarbieGirl.com, Club Penguin, Habbo, …) all claim to empower the kids (but also their parents), to offer them a safe environment (demanded by parents and kids), offer them cool things to do.
The people from MTV explained that Worlds for kids must be easy to use and fun. It is like organizing a party, ultimately the audience is controlling the experience. To be more precise and to give some recommendations for those of you who cannot resist the urge to create a Virtual World for kids, here are some guiding principles, given by Reppen:
- Make it fun, don’t forget that a huge majority of kids consider gaming to be the number one activity.
- Empower the kids, give them control over the virtual environment.
- Socializing is key, playing with friends.
- Self-expression is crucial, hence give lots of possibilities for creating avatars.
- Keep it safe: the kids ask for this themselves.
For a detailed report about this presentation, go to Virtual Worlds News where you will find impressive figures and new Worlds planned by MTV.
But the future is, alas, unevenly distributed. That became very clear during the next presentation I attended, about New Ways of Working. This time the World which Must not Be Named was presented, by Ginsu Yoon, so Second Life was mentioned here. Other experts here were Justin Bovington of Rivers Run Red, Corey Bridges of Multiverse, Christian Renaud of Cisco, Remy Malan of Qwaq and Erica Driver of Forrester Research.
No big surprises here. Virtual Worlds can be used to help homeworkers to stay in the loop, to have meetings with dispersed employees or for outsourced projects, to prepare meetings, for training etc. And yes, the technology is not yet completely there to make everything possible inworld what could be done in 2-D. It would be nice if one could implement semantic bookmarks to search archived meetings, to give but one example.
At which point people in the audience began asking to give them concrete stuff to convince unwilling colleagues to experiment with Virtual Worlds. Stuff like concrete stories about institutions or companies where productivity or creativity gains were reached. Concrete stuff like how to respond when unwilling IT departments refuse to poke a hole in the firewall or do not want to provide computers with better graphics. Ginsu Yoon smiled and talked about that unevenly distributed future. Presumably attitudes at conservative corporations will change when competitors do well using Virtual Worlds.
Of course, there are stories to be told about good professional use of Virtual Worlds. But just as Second Life is nowadays often the World Which Must Not Be Named among Virtual Worlds people, there is a Sector Which Must Not Be Named: universities and non-profit institutions.
There is nothing wrong with those academic people. There are about 400 universities in Second Life and thousands of educators experiment in Second Life. There are tons of non-profit educational projects. Studies indicate that virtual worlds do very well for medical training. So why Must this Sector Not Be Named? “Because the numbers are not there”, “because there is no business case”, “because there is no methodology for the use of Virtual Worlds for the education of kids, we cannot play with fire here” professionals told me.
Allow me a free translation. Of course The Sector Which Must Not Be Named means business for The World Which Must Not Be Named. Even though educational institutions can buy virtual land at a discount, they still buy land, which means business for Linden Lab. For the high profile consultants and world builders however, this sector is disappointing. I guess universities ask their students or lesser known Second Life people to help building the virtual infrastructure, and non-profit organizations will undoubtedly ask volunteers to help them.
So commercially speaking, for a whole number of rising stars in the fledgling Virtual Worlds industry, this sector is not that interesting. But to promote the sector, to provide interesting stories about how Virtual Worlds can be used as cooperation tools, the sector is extremely interesting. The future is unevenly distributed, but not only kids and the young teens are winners here, also educators, students and volunteers are. And this is a good thing for Second Life too.
The very big players do understand this, and they do not hesitate naming Second Life.
Jeanette Gibson of Cisco told Reuters that her company is definitely committed to Second Life. Gibson said her company’s considered its “Network Academy Group” a success.
Another person who still dares naming Second Life, even though he was fired by CEO Philip Rosedale, is former Chief Technology Officer Cory Ondrejka. Please read his post, I will limit myself to this small quote:
The future is not a phalanx of walled garden, advertainment worlds constrained by short-term thinking.
I know Linden is going to continue to be bold. I am shocked that none of the competition is.
Well said, Ondrejka, but even though I really love Second Life, this seems too harsh. This is a fledgling industry, and in order to survive, companies look for projects where they can earn money, and in many cases not in ten years time, but as soon as possible.
Another issue is that Linden Lab seems to believe firmly in a full 3-D world. Ginsu Yoon said that in order to have a deep immersive world, you simply need sophisticated graphics. A light-weight world has certain advantages, but is less immersive.
I am not sure this is always the case. As said CEO Reuben Steiger of Millions of Us, technology is maybe less interesting than the stories. Stories are inherently social:
Let us not obsess about the tools. It will be frustrating, but it is about inspiration, imagination.
That inspiration however needs metrics, another hotly debated issue at the Conference. What is important? The number of unique visitors or the time spent? The engagement with the brand, the actions people do with a brand? How to measure? Millions of us announced an industry-wide coalition to commission a study from Forrester Consulting to study engagement metrics, and return on investment in virtual worlds (read more at Virtual Worlds News).
The whole idea that a virtual solution can very well be 2-D, 2,5-D or 3-D, depending on the audience and the project, was advocated by several experts. But experts – often the same ones – also tell us that it is a question of time (5 years? 10 years?) for the whole distinction between “3-D Virtual Worlds” and “The Web” to disappear, because there will be only “The Web”, which will self-evidently have both components.
So there is a whole industry now, trying to promote this vision and to succeed as businesses. But let us not forget, The World That Must Not Be Named and The Sector That Must Not Be Named are extremely important in the ecosystem of the virtual worlds.
Roland Legrand