TheWayoftheWeb

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second life

Real investments in virtual worlds continue

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I was pretty surprised to see social media blog Mashable is ‘utterly baffled‘ by someone investing a record $330,000 in a virtual space station in the online MMORPG Entropia Universe, despite the fact they themselves quote figures of $600 million invested in virtual worlds in January 2009 alone, and the $2 billion virtual economy in China.

Don’t forget back in 2004, David Storey paid $26,500 in Entropia, then Jon Jacobs invested $100,000 in a virtual space station in Entropia in November 2005, and of course Anshe Chung became a millionaire via Second Life in 2006.

Apparently both David and Jon have made their money back and more. Meanwhile back in 2004, Julian Dibbell wrote Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot about his attempt to match or increase his income by trading in Ultima Online – he also wrote a great blog about the experience.

What’s surprising is that the Mashable author, and probably 50% of those commenting, still express disbelief that investing in a virtual good can be worthwhile, despite the fact that we’re all happy to discuss investments in websites, or even in media companies. If your media company goes bust, you might get a share in a building and some outdated PCs locked on a defunct corporate network, but the real value is in the minds of the employees – another virtual asset!

And given the economic climate, I’m not sure I’d count any investment as being comparitively reliable – but the move is certainly towards investing in ‘idea’ companies. And of course, the rapidly expanding, already massive, social gaming companies such as Zynga.  Pervasive gaming as entertainment is here, but pervasive gaming as a legitimate, recognized career follows whenever a game is designed to allow the exchange of goods by players (or the players themselves find ways to exchange – e.g. Ebay).

It’s another hugely interesting impact of gaming as the interactive entertainment medium which has risen up to compete with traditional entertainment forms (TV, radio, print), and at the same time powers so many new entertainment forms (Facebook’s gaming population is massive, as one example).

After all, in checking back through this blog’s archives, I’ve invested around 3 years in this version of the site, which only exists virtually on my hosts servers, and on a hard drive backup.

When everyone is virtual, it will be in Grand Theft Auto – not Second Life

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Second Life Avatar by tifotter

Having played quite a few hours of Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest game in the series, I’ve become convinced that future evolutions of the game are far more likely to bring virtual worlds to the masses than Second Life ever will.

I’ve experienced the whole GTA series, including the original 2D games for the Playstation, the original switch to 3D, and the gradual expansion of the gaming universe and variety of missions, side missions, and alternative exploits (Why is it the press always focuses on the hookers, rather than the fact you can play darts, pool, or go bowling?). And now there’s a range of really enjoyable multi-player missions.

It’s a consistent world, with rules loosely based on those of reality – but bent for more fun. All it takes is a mechanism for an ongoing economy, and suddenly it’s a virtual world.

Second Life, by contrast, has the barrier of requiring a reasonable PC, a sign-up procedure, and learning how the world works…as opposed to ‘insert cd and play’.

This might be a risky prediction, but some figures do back it up. March 2008 saw 13 million Second Life accounts registered with no idea of how many were active.

By contrast, GTA IV sold 3.6 million copies on the first day of release, and 6 million in the first week. The previous instalment, GTA:San Andreas hit 21.5 million units in total. (Figures from wikipedia.org)

And with copies of the game costing around £40, people are definitely going to play it until they get their money’s worth. It already became the most played game on Xbox Live for the week of it’s release.

It’s got the fans, the brand reputation, and mainstream appeal on consoles which offer easy online access alongside home entertainment. And I know I’m not the only person who bought his copy on the day of release – and without reading a single review.

If GTA hasn’t become a persistent virtual world within the next couple of years, I’ll eat my copy of GTA IV!

Don’t swap journalists for users quite yet…

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User generated content (UGC), citizen journalism, blogging. I’m a huge fan of all three when used correctly, but they all need to be handled with care by traditional media companies, whether it’s not serving them properly, or, in the case I’m going to hypothesise about, overestimating their effect.

Way back in June I quoted figures which put submissions to Youtube at 0.16% of users, while Flickr submissions were at 0.2%. Wikipedia was the involvement leader with 4.6%. Which should be one worry to the people I’ve spoken to who believe traditional journalists will be replaced by users in the near future.

Putting this to one side, along with discussions of trust, I think there is a further concern which anyone should consider before cutting journalists in favour of UGC.

And that’s going to be a growing rise in the need for payment for UGC. The oft cited example of OhMyNews already pays for submissions, and some bloggers are now being paid to produce work professionally. At the moment, these are exceptions rather than the rule for User Generated Content.

But there’s an established global market which already handsomely rewards creativity, and which will have an effect on any creative efforts produced. Users of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Rolepaying Games), or users of Xbox Live will already be familiar with the concept of creating virtual items, Forza Motorsport car liveries, or a wealth of other content, and being reward in game currency, or via online auction sites in real money. And then there’s Anshe Chung, the Second Life millionaire…

As increasing numbers of people are playing online games, and are familiar with the concept of virtual capitalism, then they won’t be satisfied with the fame of having their content published on a large website, and will increasing expect fair recompense for their efforts…

And to get the best UGC, to make it worthwhile, you’ll need to be making your site more financially rewarding…

And the worst part will be that your submissions will now come from people who aren’t tied by a contract or a notice period. Instead they’ll be free to submit to any site which appears overnight with a more attractive offer…

(None of this is meant to dissuade you from using UGC on your site… But as with anything, it’s one aspect of the future of online publishing, not the only answer…)

Web 3.0 – More like Web 3.wtf!

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I understand that a lot of people find it easier to collect groups of websites together under the Web 2.0 banner, and save time explaining every facet of social networking, tagging, rounded edges etc.

But web 3.0?

So far, it seems to be the holy grail of turning the internet into a Tron 3D world where everything is accessible by an avatar floating around.

I’d debate whether 3D really is the next step. There seems to be very little which has an advantage to being in 3D besides gaming. And I think that’s probably proven by the discovery of 3DMailbox.

It’s a free email service which merges Second Life with your email account to allow you to send emails whilst your avatar relaxes on beach.

Aside from the fact my first attempts to actually run the program have been scuppered by the fact I’m on a work spec PC, rather than high-end gaming rig (Apparently my graphic card doesn’t support pixel shading in the right way, causing 3D Mailbox to crash), the trailer and information doesn’t seem to offer any reason why using an avatar to surf my email is in any way quicker, easier to better than using a traditional email program.

And if it doesn’t make my life easier, less stressful, or more productive, then that just leaves the enjoyment factor. And call me cynical but I’d rather be outside in the real world, or immersed in the likes of Rainbow 6: Vegas shooting terrorists, than playing a mix of Outlook and Second Life…

Having said that, if you do get it to work, and you do find it a revolutionary way of enjoying your email experiences, do let me know.

Remember kids. If you can’t justify what you are doing in a couple of simple sentences which explain why it’s great, then go and do something else.

Mini ‘Second Life’ on your desktop

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If you’ve a hankering for an online avatar, but don’t have a PC at home, or the time to invest in Second Life, then a new site could offer a solution.

MyMiniLife.com offers the chance to create a basic avatar, and then buy and furnish a home to show to other users, and to get social in.

It’s a really new launch, and I registered yesterday to have a look around. At the moment there’s not a huge amount of people, as evident in the 3D lobby, but there’s a fair number of other people’s houses to browse.

The avatar and house design are all Flash-powered, and aren’t too difficult to use, although some of the house design tools need a little work, and also seemed to have a problem loading after a while. But it all worked enough to give an insight into the system, which is still subject to change in Web 2.0 stylie, but offers a fair bit of promise as a timewaster. One nice touch is that TV’s etc can be embedded with video clips etc, so you’re TV can play a clip of you on Youtube for example.

Definitely worth experimenting with before the crowds turn up

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