Browsing the metaverse

NASA wants a MMOG

dobre — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:01:28 +0000

Recently NASA published a Request for Information for developing a massively multiplayer online game. The virtual world would be aimed at students and would “simulate real Nasa engineering and science missions”. According to the RFI, “A high quality synthetic gaming environment is a vital element of Nasa’s educational cyberstructure”. “The MMO will foster career exploration opportunities in a much deeper way than reading alone would permit and at a fraction of the time and cost of an internship program.”

According to the document, games are becoming more and more important in education and could be useful for teaching a range of skills. “Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity,” it says.

The document calls for a game engine that includes “powerful physics capabilities” that can “support accurate in-game experimentation and research”.

NASA is already present in Second Life, mainly aimed at interaction with interested students and scientists.

The deadline was 15 January so for those who would have been interested its too late i am afraid.

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6 Business Models for the Metaverse

dobre — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:40:17 +0000

Digado wrote a very nice article about possible business models for Virtual Worlds. In short, those are

Inworld Economy: buying and selling virtual goods
Business Integration: conferences, meetings, brainstorms.
Brand Presence/Avartising: presenting your real life product, service or brand in a virtual world.
Content Creation: thats what we are doing
Services for Virtual Entrepreneurs: tools that make business in virtual worlds easier, like SLexchange and OnRez<
Create your own Virtual Environment: branded virtual worlds like Mattels Barbie Girls

Just thought it was a nice piece to share!

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Teaching pupils with special need on the Teen Grid

dobre — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:47:35 +0000

For Waag Society [Lost in the] Magic Forest developed a complete island on the Second Life Teen Grid for the project Self City. The goal of this educational project has been to test a new method for teaching pupils of the Special Needs education branch from the age of 12-14. Many pupils have such a social-emotional or very light mental handicap, that they cannot function properly in a group. One of the goals of special education is to lead these youngsters back to regular education or a work situation. Most of the existing methods are not suitable for this group of pupils, as they are developed for groups.

We developed a complete city on the island with a movietheatre, (fake)gambling hall, basketballcourt and a Heads Up Display (HUD) to assist the pupils in their interaction (see screenshots). The scientific findings of the new teaching method in Second Life have been gathered in this report (Dutch only): Research Report Self City

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Duran Duran Second Life Machinima

Damien — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:13:44 +0000

For the Duran Duran “‘Falling Down’ Video Mash-Up Challenge” a machinima movie has been shot in Second Life. It’s a great video that contains shots of the official video for the track as well as artwork of the new album. If you look closely you will see familiar places in Second Life such as Extropia Core, Maya, MetaXpand and many others. Check out the video below:

Oh and if you look closely you might recognise me as well

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Virtual theft punished by Dutch police!

dobre — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:12:10 +0000

Now thats interesting, the first arrest for virtual theft is a fact back here in the Netherlands. Five Dutch teenagers have been jailed because they stole for about 4000 euro of virtual goods in Habbo Hotel. The virtual criminals hacked the account of other residents and moved the virtual furniture to their own rooms. Virtual burglary, in that sense!

Curious what will happen, will a judge send them to a virtual jail? However, interesting to see that the police is treating virtual goods like real goods, makes sense of course…

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Virtual worlds on the updated hype cycle

dobre — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:06:31 +0000

Every year Gartner updates the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, included the newest technological trends and developments. A few months ago Gartner published the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2007. Interesting to see that according to Gartner web2.0 is already passed its hype (but this may be due to the typical 18-24 month lag between the U.S. and Europe).

Gartner identifies three key technologies:

Web 2.0: The community, technology and business innovations of the web continue to evolve and specific approaches and technologies have progressed including wikis, mashups, enterprise RSS, social network analysis and collective intelligence. The product and platform underpinnings have been more tightly defined in the 2007 hype cycle, with entries for web platforms and Web 2.0 workplace technologies.
User Interfaces: A number of emerging user interface technologies are entering serious commercialisation, including electronic paper (for mobile devices and signage), gesture recognition (as incorporated in the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Surface) and virtual environments/virtual worlds (such as Second Life).
Mobile: Mobile and wireless technologies, devices, and services continue to be an active area for emerging technology groups.

According to the Priority Matrix (see below), ten of the 36 key emerging technologies examined in this year’s hype cycle have been designated as having a transformational business impact and should be strongly considered for adoption by technology planners in the next ten years. These ten includes virtual environments:

I had the strong feeling that the virtual worlds are passed its hype, but actually perhaps Gartner has a point here. Its Second Life that perhaps blinds us a bit in our ‘post hype depression’ while indeed the whole spectrum of virtual environments is still not over its peak. And they define ‘portable personality’ as still in its early stage, presuming this also includes the whole thing with interportability of avatars and profiles this is indeed something that only just now is starting to develop with quite a big technology push of companies like IBM and Philips. What I think is interesting is to look at all those new technologies that are now starting to develop in the ’slipstream’ of Second Life. Mashups with television, widgets in virtual worlds, mobile services for virtual environments (or the other way around), etc….

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Wheelchairrace, anyone?

dobre — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:55:40 +0000

The Dutch Fund for Sports for Handicapped (actually I have no idea if this is the right translation) offers a wheelchairrace! So, take your wheelchair out and see who can roll the fastest!

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Virtual Worlds Landscape

dobre — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:48:44 +0000

Bumped into a nice map of the virtual world landscape. Based on criteria of Business, Entertainment, Social and Game, Fred Cavazza made an inventarisation of the virtual worlds. I like it because it sort of nicely categorizes the different worlds out there, at least based on their most important features. Ofcourse one can argue that for example WoW is also a strong social environment, so its just a good overview. Additions are welcome ofcourse!

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Audio from the Virtual Worlds Session@PICNIC Amsterdam

dobre — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:26:24 +0000

Thanks to my collegue Frank, here after all the audio of the Virtual Worlds Session

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Some notes after the Virtual Worlds Session@PICNIC Amsterdam

dobre — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:34:00 +0000

Last week I was part of a panel discussion about virtual worlds at PICNIC in Amsterdam. PICNIC is one of the biggest cross media events/seminars in Europe with a very impressing lineup (ranging from Mr Sir Richard Branson to yoga guru and activist Woody Harrelson).

We recorded the audio for an nice podcast but it seems the output from the audio mixer was far too low. I will try to fix the audio, but let me just share my notes:

Jack Myers, author of the book “Virtual Worlds: Rewiring Your Emotional Future” talking about how Virtual Worlds are becoming an embedded part of our culture. Jack discussed how marketeers unfortunately try to bring their traditional marketing models into a changing media landscape. He stated that those marketeers need to rethink what they are doing and come up with new models for marketing, with a much more customer approach. Marketeers, CEO’s and other decision makers are in that sense confused and overwhelmed by the new media opportunities but are not changing their scope. This has leaded to marketing and branding initiatives in virtual worlds that focussed on experimenting and learning but not actually implementing and making true emotional connections with a community. Jack pointed out the importance of understanding virtual worlds and stressed that particularly virtual worlds for tweens offer huge opportunities. This age group is growing up with virtual worlds, online and serious games and online communities, which demands a radical reorientation for marketeers.

You can download Jack’s presentation here

David Burden of Daden discussed what happens when video games meet Web 2.0 and virtual worlds meet geospatial maps of the planet? David discussed the Metaverse Roadmap and stressed that the internet is mainly about Information where virtual worlds are much more about Experience. The ROI should therefore be more defined along the lines of creating experience and engaging your audience. David also showed some interesting forcast stating we will be moving from a media/social space to a transaction space, a entertainment space and ultimately into and agent space and a dream space.

Download Davids presentation here

After these two presentations there was a panel discussion with André Rotte (Vice-president, Philips Design), Nicole Yershon (Director, Innovative Solutions, Ogilvy Advertising) , Ilja Linnemeijer (Senior Manager, PriceWaterhouseCooper) and undersigned. The main outcome of this panel discussion was that Second Life was clearly overhyped but that we need to start understanding that virtual worlds are here to stay. That virtual worlds are about conversation, about interaction and about social experiences and that we need to forget traditional values like traffic.

It is much more about 1-to-1 communication, feedback and engagement. Virtual worlds will be a great and very important new channel for communication and branding that need to be considered there where it fits the product and the goals of a campaign or a company. An interesting remark came from the audience, where someone stated that she was happily surprised to discover that her 8 year old son learns a great deal about social behavior and group processes, skills she notices he then also uses in ‘real life’.

Once again, I will try to fix the audio and publish it if I succeed….

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