Business in Virtual Worlds News Roundup – Feb 2-8 2009
Headlines about virtual worlds just from the last week. See the archive page for past weeks.
I’m opening the “Events” sub-category this week. There seems to be a constant flow of industry news in this area, and as with Training, Government and Marketing, I don’t expect there to be any shortage of Events stories in virtual worlds any time soon.
Apart from that, lots of video. Oh, also apparently I pick on people this week. If you’re one of ‘em, no offense meant.
Disclaimer: As with everything on my blog, the opinions expressed here are mine and do not reflect on Clever Zebra, the vBusiness Expo, my friends, my family, my blip channel, any of the other “Jack of All Strange” stuff that I do, etc etc etc… k here we go:
Top Stories
Over $408 Million Invested in 41 Virtual Goods-Related Businesses in 2008*
Always lead with the money.
Gold Farmer Dupes Yahoo, Kotako and Co. Gets Free Advertising
Remember last week’s story about the $10M purchase of MyMMOShop.com? Fake. Ah well. I wonder if anyone will bother printing retractions.
Virtual MTV Launches Alpha of Browser-Based Experience
By itself this isn’t significant, but remember that MTV has historically been one of the most cutting-edge adopters of virtual worlds as a tool for consumer brand engagement outside of gaming. If they start rolling out a larger number of browser-based worlds in the future, we should all take it as a sign of things to come. If they don’t, that will mean something too. Let’s allow them to gather some metrics and see where it takes us.
First responders meet Second Life: Public health enters the virtual world
Anthrax drills in SL. OLIVE is the usual destination for this kind of thing but maybe they wanted to do a public display.
Disney to Invest More in Virtual Worlds, Sees Them Close to Profitable
Club Penguin is already making money, other Disney worlds soon to follow suit.
RocketOn Launches Beta with Comedy.com, Hypster, Online Flash Games, Hotspot, faceDub and Boosh Magazine
Press release. Nice list of collaborators! I still don’t know if I really “get” this one but if there’s ever been a way to launch well, this seems like it.
Mattel Q4 2008 Earnings: BarbieGirls MP3 Player Drove Decline
Well, it’s clear something got bungled badly here in the marketing. Best quote: “executives found that girls were more interested in the digital content than the consumer electronics device.” Wow, really? Girls like to dress up avatars, decorate and socialize more than play with gadgets? Gosh I would have never seen that coming!
Vzillion Building Virtual World for Search
Kind of a 3D social space Web 2.0 search engine browser mashup. Yeah, I’m having a hard time picturing it too. So much of this ends up bearing out in the details of the actual implementation, so we’re in wait-and-see mode while their beta remains closed. Here’s a screenshot if you’re curious but it’s not giving us much:
Events
Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc.’s Virtualis Convention and Learning Center™ Expands Due to Demand
Press release covering an event with a few discussions and lots of games. Comes with a very well produced newscast-like advert:
Second Life Plays Host To Healthcare Hearings
I had linked to Draxtor’s video a few weeks back about Obama’s heathcare hearings in SL before the election, but Mitch Wagner’s behind-the-scenes take gives great insight into what went into making it happen and how much more of this we might see in the future.
TPMA and Trade Promotion Industry Leaders Converge on Second Life
Press release, seen the MSNBC short version. Significant quote: “It was a truly immersive experience and our attendees stayed for the entire three hour session — much longer than most traditional webinars.”
Want to Hold a Virtual Event of Your Own?
Clever Zebra offers event support and white-label services for anyone interested in a branded gathering in a virtual space. From venue setup and hosting to VIP orientation to speaker coordination, we’ll handle it all. Contact us today!
Training and Education
University of Idaho holds a fashion show in Second Life
Well, that’s one way to get people to dress properly for job interviews.
Ernst & Young Awards $500,000 to Accounting Dept. for Second Life Projects
NCU’s Accounting Department gets money to “establish a presence”. Vague wording notwithstanding, people in the department have produced some interesting video in the past on the growing role of virtual worlds in business and applications for teaching and learning. They’re worth a look:
What’s the Point?
Second Life: NC State Classes Go Virtual!
Government and Military
United States Joint Forces Command Investing $36M in Immersive Training
A good continuation of past efforts. To be honest, I’m surprised it’s this little considering how wildly successful their other ventures in this area have been.
The Man is in your virtual world
ENISA releases a position paper entitled Security and Privacy in Massively-Multiplayer Online Games and Social and Corporate Virtual Worlds (click for PDF). Worth reading the executive summary, no idea what may happen as a consequence.
Nevada debates child porn bill
Bill prosecutes those who view child pornography, but may include those who do so accidentally. Wording of the bill includes virtual spaces.
Marketing
There.com Announces Four New Virtual Goods Partners
Fandango, the Academy of Country Music, Blair Wear, and Beelya all sign on to bring branded content to There.com.
Justin Timberlake Debuts Virtual Goods with WeeWorld
VirtualGreats works a distribution deal with WeeWorld, creates surprisingly accurate avatar of Timberlake. They got the bug-eyes and head-to-body proportions just right:
Gaming
Enabling interaction between 2D and 3D games
Multiverse launches “Battle“, a browser-based game playable in Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and Kongregate. Quite the accomplishment for this open ended open source platform! We’ve all been expecting great things from Multiverse but haven’t been able to play with anything really “finished”. It’s nice to see something like this that proves the technology.
PlaySpan Introduces Secure In-Game Item Delivery System
Significance: a popular game-maker embraces item and currency purchases rather than trying to fix the problem by suing everyone.
Nerds Only
Q&A: John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment
Oy vey! The fanboys are going to eat this up, but if that’s not you then be forewarned that this is just a fluff piece about virtual goods. We don’t get answers to any of the important questions, like:
- Why were four new Star Wars movies not enough to revive the ever-floundering Galaxies MMOG?
- Why on earth are you allowing the Final Fantasy MMOG to become stagnant?
- How did World of Warcraft manage to so completely destroy the once-dominant Everquest series?
- How is it that Runescape, of all things, is more popular than all your MMOG brands combined?
- What went wrong with Home?
SOE, your stakeholders deserve answers. Shockingly they’re letting him keynote the Engage! Expo in March…
*Ahem*. Sorry.
The MITRE Corporation joins Web3D Consortium
Press release. Web3D Consortium is working on the X3D specification, a 3D markup for webpages. MITRE works in the public interest by operating Federally-Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) for the U.S. Department of Defense
OpenSim Starts Messaging Second Life
It’s not completely flawless, but it basically works: instant messages between avatars across OpenGrid worlds and Second Life. Pretty nifty.
Newbs Only
Second Life Applied To Classrooms! Social Skills Under Threat?
They’re all going to become nerds! Nerds I tell you!
Sociological Oddities
Oh now THAT’s odd. There’s nothing freshly odd this week in the news. Well… need something fun yet applicable… how about this for an out-of-the-blue feature:
I was touring orientation experiences yesterday and it reminded me of the CSI:NY experiment from late 2007. Check out the video overview.
Now one of Second Life’s most infamous marketing failures, we’re left asking: what was the problem? There was so much hype and dozens (literally!) of islands set aside, this should have been huge!
Unfortunately…
- It was almost impossible to figure out where to click on the website to sign up and get the client.
- The new user orientation was… let’s say “disastrous”. Honestly, the worst I’ve seen.
- One-player games in social spaces don’t make a lot of sense, really.
- I just couldn’t figure out exactly how I was supposed to play the game. I got the sense that if I spent about fifteen minutes reading notecards I could figure it out but… uh… no. Sorry, I’m a typical spoiled gamer. Instructions = garbage bin.
- The premise of the campaign was to bring a few hundred (or even a few thousand) people into Second Life. For a hundred reasons this is the worst possible platform choice for that. This could have been a massive stand-alone winner in something lower-stress like, say, Activeworlds or using the Unreal engine.
It’s a shame that, at the time, I was too swamped to get into the details for an intensive writeup. I’ll be sure to give it a mention in the ROI series. Meanwhile, I leave you with the words the marketers impressed upon the audience: “Log off now!” (Closing line from the trailer below, meant for drama but yet another marketing faux pas.)