Business in Virtual Worlds News Roundup – Feb 16-22
Headlines about virtual worlds just from the last week. See the archive page for past weeks.
Either I’m unusually cynical because of this head cold or this is hype week. Good hype, bad hype, fretting that the hype is over, hyping hype as an indicator of… anything. Weird week really.
On the positive side, I get to link two of the best virtual world bloggers out there: Tateru Nino and Jenn Hienrichs. I don’t generally get the opportunity to do so but they both happened to post stuff that falls within the scope of these roundups.
/me waves.
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
New partnerships and collaborations:
- Dassault Invests In Intercim For 3D PLM And Manufacturing
- GMG Partners With Gravity Interactive For Prepaid Cards
- Disney Acquires Kerpoof For Kid-Generated Content
- Microsoft to Acquire Virtual Reality Company for $35M, Rumors Suggest
- GamesCampus to Partners with Ukash to Accept Payment Vouchers
- The Project Factory Merges With Lean Forward
The Second Life Hype Has Fizzled—Is Twitter Next?
Oh, it’s so very much worth your time to consider this. After all, the massive hype over Henry Ford’s “Model T” died and where are all these “automobiles” today? (A shorter version of this article by the same author appears at paidContent.org.)
Reuters Closes Second Life Bureau, but (Virtual) Life Goes On
Reuters reacts to the massive press Second Life has been getting lately as a place that gets no hype.
GMG Reports 800% Revenue Increase For Q4 2008
“[...] based almost entirely upon its entrance into the prepaid game card market early last year.”
The Coaches Centre: A 3D World For Training, Collaboration, And Canadian Ice Skating Coaches
“[...] a professional virtual world for training, meetings, and collaboration to the athletic community beginning with, as may be obvious, coaches.”
UPDATE: Erica Driver posted a great expansion to this: The Coaches Centre pilot: 14X revenue generation, travel costs reduced by $1M CAD
Virtual Fairground Announces $4M Funding
Angel investment for a world based on a tv show called “Galactik Football”.
Virtual Reality Treatment May Help People With Balance Disorders
More from the medical industry.
Philips extends invitation to its virtual island
Philips continues work with its virtual R&D island.
Linden Lab purges nearly a million inactive Second Life users
I’ll admit it: I frantically double-checked that my alt accounts were still active upon reading this. Lucky for me my secret identity is intact. Question: is it better marketing hype to keep the inactive accounts to falsely bolster your numbers, or does this send a better message?
Events
Students graduate in the virtual world
“When your graduating class is scattered around the globe an awards ceremony can present difficulties…” This was an awards ceremony specifically for BP executives. More details from The Drum.
3DXplorer® Webinars in the FCVW virtual facilities
A series of webinars is being held by the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds (FCVW) at the Government Center in 3DXPlorer. (FCVW is sponsored by National Defense University.)
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. Everything from venue setup and hosting to VIP orientation to speaker coordination. Here’s the contact page.
Training and Education
NoviCraft: virtual world team building
Metaverse Journal interviews TeamingStream’s CEO, Petri Ahokangas, about NoviCraft; the corporate team-building world. A video overview is available on the TeamingStream website.
‘Second Life’ revolutionizes classroom experience
I always get a little thrill whenever I see ‘Second Life’ in quotes. Fun story about taking correspondence courses in SL.
Virtual Worlds: New frontiers for expression
University of Nevada’s student paper gives an overview of the “Virtual Worlds and Interpretive Communities: Opportunities for Global Dialogue” event. Mostly about “blurring lines”, which is what academic opium is made of.
Real-Life Teaching in a Virtual World
General overview by Campus Overview, complete with … comments below.
Second Life used as way of teaching
Towson University takes a crack at Second Life. Not a bad article, and also wins a special award: worst Second Life screnshot ever.
Government and Military
AFCEA on Second Life
Just a quick mention of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s presence in Second Life.
Virtual Philadelphia on CBS3
This is VERY impressive! Gigabytes of graphics, integrated webcam technology, integrated e-commerce tools, and more than a few amazing surprises. Download it and check it out for yourself.
Is one Oldham not enough?
Oldham County builds a presence in Second Life, and goes the extra (often forgotten!) step of planning a series of community events.
Virtual Cocos Island
Costa Rica tourism board does a fantastic job building a place worth visiting.
Marketing
10% Of Build-A-Bear Store Customers Influenced By Virtual World
How much would a 10% sales increase mean to you?
Online Shopping in the Future Likely to Look Something Like Second Life
A Kansas State University marketing professor posits that shopping for real goods in 3D beats e-commerce websites. Sadly, no successful examples of this proving true are indicated and the logic is a bit confusing… something about how the horrible marketing job many brands have received in Second Life proves the point. Hmm… ScienceDaily took another crack at the material, see if their slightly altered version of the press release adds up better for you.
Gaming
Ganz Opposing Webcarzz Trademark Registration
This can’t be the last time we hear about this kind of conflict.
Upper Deck targets today’s kids with online card collecting world
Funny little note at the end about spending less than $10K on PR. Cheap! But hey, they plan on using Facebook so…
Nerds Only
NASA MMO To Run On Unreal 3; Information in Place and Big Stage Also On Board
The story covers all of the collaborators involved, so if that’s important to you there it is. One thing isn’t mentioned: the Unreal 3 engine is responsible for some of the most unbelievable eye-popping real time rendered graphics we’ve seen in the last few years. Here’s a screenie of BioShock to give you an idea:
Newbs Only
Help wanted: public service avatars
I’d reference this for recruiting or government but something about the style… I think it was this part: “Search. Click. You’re there.” Ah, the newbs category then…
Turn Life’s Lemons into Virtual Lemonade
You know what? DON’T READ THIS. It’s more of that hype that Forbes says doesn’t exist. You don’t want to read a non-existent article do you?
Sociological Oddities
Keeping the Faith: Cyberfaith unable to replace real thing
Well… now you know.
Getting used to Internet may kill the ability of independent thinking, the Russian Church warns
Ok, ok, I’m logging off now, I swear…
Research Shows Worldwide MMOGs Not Very Cosmopolitan
Hype warning. “A group of researchers recently took a look at social habits inside the MMOG Everquest II” and basically discovered people there hang out with people who live near them in real life. (Ars Technica has more of the details.)
There’s an attempt to generalize this to all MMOs and make some kind of statement about who we are as people, but there are three little facts selectively omitted here:
- Hardcore MMOG guilds need to use voice all the time – which means they need to be able to understand each other really well to function as a unit.
- Hardcore MMOG guilds play for hours and hours at a time, often several days a week. You’d better all be in the same timezone.
- Everquest II has had 400,000 players, ever. That’s not active, mind, that’s in the history of the game. This is a microscopic number by MMOG standards, which not only skews the sample but means that those who do play it have to be pretty hardcore (see previous points).
Other random numbers are tossed around, some seemingly disproving and then proving the point, culminating in some kind of internationalization effort of Habbo’s that didn’t work out well in Japan: “So it was a total catastrophe. The Japanese closed their doors and wouldn’t let anyone in without a Japanese name.”
Ask any Otaku. That’s Japan. I mean, “gaijin” is an insult over there… and that’s hardly news.
That’s hype week.
Did I miss an important story? Got feedback? Leave a comment below, or email me at
info [at] calebbooker.com
Hmm. I like mine better, but then again, I’m partial to the Futura font. Maybe this 70s/80s funk feel logo is really fitting for a cutting-edge technology show, considering how well technology seems to be dissolving our sense of history as something from “long ago”.