1. The Australian (Australia) – Virtual worlds the real deal. “ASK most academics about virtual worlds and the response will usually be something along the lines that they are frivolous games of no relevance to their work. Get more specific and inquire whether they have a presence in the best known virtual world, Second Life, and they commonly refer to their workloads and bemoan how nice it would be to have a first life. Yet virtual worlds are profoundly affecting opportunities for research and teaching, and need to be taken much more seriously. Virtual worlds are places where digital representations of individuals, or avatars, congregate. They are not real but they are a place where real people interact. As such, they are places where behaviour can be studied and important research can be conducted.”
2. VentureBeat (USA) – Vivaty shuts down site for user-generated virtual scenes. “Virtual world company Vivaty announced on its site today that it will shut down its user-generated “virtual scenes” site on April 16, another victim of the malaise around virtual worlds. Jay Weber, chief technical officer and co-founder, announced on the company’s blog that the site will close because its business of letting users create their own 3D virtual spaces just hasn’t taken off. “I apologize to our loyal users that this must be so,” Weber wrote. “Vivaty.com is a rather expensive site to run, much more than a regular web site, and Vivaty the company has been running out of money for some time. Our business model was to earn money through Vivabux sales, but that has never come close to covering our costs. We tried for months to find a bigger partner that would support the site, but that didn’t work out.”
3. Philadelphia Inquirer (USA) – Girls abandon dolls for Web-based toys. “Paige Gabriele loved her dolls – once. At age 8, however, the Swarthmore girl has largely abandoned them. Even Barbie gets slim face time, and the single American Girl doll, a gift from her grandmother, sits pretty on her bureau – untouched. Playing with dolls “gets boring after a while,” said Paige as she passed by the well-stocked aisles full of Barbie, Moxie Girlz, Liv, and other fashion dolls at the Target in Springfield Mall. She was more interested in a basketball, and gushed about social Web sites such as moshimonsters.com, where she nurtures pet monsters. It used to be that dolls held girls’ interest at least through elementary school. But these days, girls are dropping such playthings at ever younger ages, largely replacing the childhood mainstay with technology-driven activities, even as the toy industry battles to attract the coveted market with new products.”
4. The American Spectator (USA) – Virtually Innocent. “Several months ago, at the request of Congress, the Federal Trade Commission released a report explaining the risks children face when they play in virtual worlds. Virtual worlds, a quickly expanding market of online playgrounds, combine glitzy three-dimensional environments with social networking. Basically, users can lazily sit behind their computers, but still interact, communicate, and play with each other in these worlds via their avatars, cartoonized representations of themselves. Some of the games they can play, parents may be surprised to learn, push the boundaries of Larry Flynt’s wildest dreams. Virtual worlds took off in 2007, with sites like the Disney-owned Club Penguin and the adult-oriented Second Life leading the charge. According to KZero Worldswide, one of several virtual worlds consultancies that have emerged in recent years, in 2009, an estimated 150 worlds were either live or in development, bringing in about $1.3 billion in revenue. In the next two years, an estimated 900 virtual worlds will hit the market, generating $9 billion in revenue. ”
5. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Secret Builders Scores $2.3M. “oday Renaissance 2.0 Media, parent company of the educational virtual world Secret Builders, announced that it had raised $2.3 million in new funding. Despite the world’s educational theme, it still monetizes by selling virtual currency to its users, mostly kids aged 8 to 12. Parents can also buy subscriptions for their kids, which give them a monthly in-game allowance of virtual currency. Secret Builders serves 1 million registered users, with around 350,000 monthly active users. “We’ve weathered a tough time in the market,” said Secret Builders CEO Umair Khan, in statements made to Venture Beat. “Spending money to get users was a good way to go out of business. Now the investors are looking for traction and your long-term success in attracting users.”
6. Discovery News (USA) – Avatars May Inspire Us To Exercise. “If seeing is believing, could watching a digitized version of yourself running on a treadmill drive you to get in shape? Watching a self-resembling avatar in action turns out to be an effective motivational technique to start exercising, according to a Stanford University research project. Participants who watched digital versions of themselves run on a treadmill ended up exercising nearly an hour longer than those who watched their avatars hang out or viewed avatars of other people exercising. “We’re definitely surprised that the manipulation worked,” said Stanford doctoral student Jesse Fox, who oversaw the studies. “I was very fascinated.”
7. University of Ulster Online (UK) – New Computer Games For Stroke Sufferers Tested. “Researchers at the University of Ulster have been carrying out trials of specially designed computer games to help rehabilitate stroke sufferers. Ulster’s School of Computing and Information Engineering in Coleraine has collaborated on the project with fellow researchers at the Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at the Jordanstown campus. The Games for Rehabilitation project, which has been funded by the Department of Employment and Learning over three years, focuses on rehabilitation of the upper limbs and involves the player using their hands and arms to touch targets which move around the screen. Their movements are tracked by a webcam and the game responds to their interaction, giving them positive feedback on their performance and engagement with the system. The design of the games and interface means people don’t need to have played computer or video games in order to engage effectively with the system.”
8. Gamasutra (USA) – DFC: Virtual Goods Adoption Grows, ‘MMO Lite’ To Reach $3 Billion By 2015. “88 percent of gamers surveyed have bought virtual content, says a study from DFC Intelligence, in partnership with monetization platform company Live Gamer. Research firm DFC and Live Gamer studied some 5,000 gamers in North America and Europe during the first two months of 2010, and included seven years of Live Gamer’s historical data from around the world. According to the survey, “digital content” also includes music, movies and games, and isn’t limited to virtual goods bought through microtransactions, as players can do in popular Western social games like FarmVille on Facebook or Sony Online Entertainment’s family-friendly Free Realms MMO.”
9. Kotaku (USA) – Free Realms Reaches 10 Million Users, Gives Out Free Cash. “Free Realms continues to be an unrelenting engine of family-friendly fun and frivolity, reaching the 10 million player mark just short of its first birthday, with Sony Online Entertainment doubling Station Cash purchases this weekend in celebration. We’ve established by now that people love mini-games and free things, and that’s pretty much the formula to Free Realms’ success – it’s a free massively-multiplayer online game packed with mini-games. It’s also packed with stuff to buy with Station Cash, which is a Sony Online Entertainment form of currency people buy with real cash. To celebrate the big 10 million, SOE will be doubling any Station Cash card values redeemed between 4PM today Pacific and 11PM Sunday.”
10. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Educators save money switching to OpenSim. “Educators in primary schools, colleges, and other institutions looking for lower costs, better controls, and no age restrictions are considering switching from Second Life to its open source alternative, the OpenSim virtual world server platform. The OpenSim server software can be used to power an entire public grid, or a small, private behind-the-firewall installation, and can be run on an institution’s own server or hosted with third-party providers. In general, educators say, they find that OpenSim offers significant cost savings over Second Life. However, there might be some hidden costs.”
Speak Your Mind