Archives for May 2010

1. Edmonton Journal (Canada) – City leads Second Life in virtual world. “Here’s a surefire way for Daryl Katz to get the arena he wants. Join Second Life. Edmontonians, including Katz, may soon be able to revisualize the city the way they see fit when Edmonton goes virtual later this summer in Second Life. In the 3-D virtual world of Second Life, users create avatars that interact with each other just like they would in real life. They clock in hours at work, catch up over coffee, go shopping, and even buy land, which they can build up to their exact specifications. Last week, Edmonton’s chief information officer Chris Moore announced via Twitter that the city is partnering with local media design company Christie Communications and Second Life maker Linden Lab to bring Edmonton into Second Life.”

2. Ars Technica (USA) – Sociologists invade World of Warcraft, see humanity’s future. “In their continued quest to plumb the mysterious depths of human interactions, some sociologists have stopped watching people—and started watching their avatars. And the US government is paying them to do it. While playing World of Warcraft and traipsing through Second Life might not sound like traditional academic disciplines, they are increasingly important for research into virtual communities. This burgeoning subdiscipline even has its own publication, the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. What gets studied? Gold farming, “goon culture,” griefing, entrepreneurial activity, intimacy, even “The Visual Language of Virtual BDSM Photographs in Second Life,” which appeared in the most recent issue of the journal.”

3. nextgov (USA) – Virtual Worlds — Virtually? “Today I’m covering the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds conference here in Washington. Sure, it’s being held just a few miles away from Nextgov’s offices, but I decided to try attending the conference about virtual worlds virtually. I had high expectations for this experience — after all, isn’t Second Life, one of the more widely used platforms for virtual interaction, cool?”

4. ZDNet Asia (Singapore) – Second Life can find niche in virtual events. “Virtual world pioneer Second Life can leverage its 3D environment to explore niche markets such as virtual event hosting in the face of competition from specialty virtual worlds, said a Forrester analyst. In an e-mail interview, TJ Keitt, analyst at Forrester research, said Linden Lab’s Second Life will not disappear anytime soon. However, it is facing stiff competition from specialty virtual worlds such as Disney-owned Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel, as well as business-targeted virtual worlds Teleplace and ProtonMedia. Keitt believes Second Life will be able to find its niche as an avenue for virtual events. Virtual event hosting is an emerging market which was spurred on by the recession’s effect on business travel, and is currently led by On24 and InXpo.”

5. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Virtual World Web Reaches 25,000 Virtual Worlds. “This week Utherverse announced that the 25,000th virtual world had been created for its Virtual World Web platform. The Virtual World Web is a network of independent, user-created virtual worlds developed using standard platform tools and content libraries provided by Utherverse. CEO Brian Shuster says that the Virtual World Web was designed with replacing the traditional (or “flat”) Web in mind and is well on its way to doing so. Shuster compared the current state of the Virtual World Web to the state of the Web in roughly 1994 or 1995, when online commerce was in its infancy and most sites were run for the Webmaster’s entertainment. He believes that the “Worldmasters” building out the Virtual World Web are at the same point, despite the platform launching only last September. He attributes the network’s accelerated rate of growth to Utherverse’s toolset and massive library of objects, textures, and regions. Both were developed over the course of five years. ”

6. Tech News World (USA) – Where Have All the Avatars Gone? “Many have already written eulogies for the virtual worlds. Dead, they claim; the avatar is dead in the corporate realm. But the truth reads like the “Star Trek” script for the “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode: just because you don’t see them, doesn’t mean they are not breeding like mad in a closed grain bin. Without doubt, many corporations are indeed tribbling their avatar action. “The ease with which entities can close off public access in Second Life makes it difficult to know exactly what might be going on behind closed boardroom doors with regards to their presence in Second Life or other virtual worlds,” Shenlei Winkler, CEO of The Fashion Research Institute, told TechNewsWorld. Winkler is also author of Shengri La Spirit: A Designer’s Perspective of the Making of OpenSim on content licensing for virtual goods, virtualization of enterprise in immersive workspaces, OpenSim enterprise application development, and user immersion in virtual worlds. A successful designer, her real-life apparel designs have now reached more than US$70 million in sales . Her couture work has appeared on stage, movie screens and in Second Life.”

7. New York Times (USA) – Club Penguin Misses Goals, Giving Disney a Half-Price Deal. “Club Penguin, the subscription-based online community acquired by the Walt Disney Company in 2007, has failed to meet profit targets that were tied to $350 million in payouts to the Web site’s creators. Disney’s purchase of Club Penguin was valued at $700 million, with half of the total paid up front and half coming in two payments based on unspecified growth thresholds. Disney disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last May that Club Penguin had missed the first target. On Wednesday, the company confirmed that the Web site did not meet the second one.”

8. VentureBeat (USA) – Rocktropia virtual world for music lovers debuts. “If you can’t get enough rock and roll in your life, you might want to go live in Rocktropia. That’s the new virtual world for rock music lovers that is debuting today. It’s a world where you dress up like a rock star, immerse yourself in rock lore, explore a rock-inspired landscape, and go listen to live events. Building a virtual world in the age of social networks such as Facebook may seem antiquated. But Jon Jacobs, creator of Rocktropia, believes that virtual worlds will become popular again once the Facebook crowd moves on to something new. “I think that high-end 3D virtual environments will be the next step,” said Jacobs. “Our platform has all of the features of a social network. It has immersive storytelling, and is an entertaining game.”

9. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – How open are virtual worlds? “There are three ways in which a particular platform or service can be considered to be “open.” One is whether it runs on multiple systems, or is locked into a system from one particular vendor. For example, Apple’s Leonard operating system only runs on Apple computers. The Windows operating systems, by comparison, can be installed just about anywhere. The Wii Sports game only runs on the Nintendo Wii. Microsoft Word can run — sometimes with emulators — on pretty much any machine out there.”

10. VentureBeat (USA) – Woozworld raises $3M to expand virtual world for tweens. “Woozworld has raised $3 million in a first round of funding for a tween-focused virtual world. The Montreal-based company is spinning off from parent Tribal Nova so that it can concentrate on building a world for tweens, a age group which embraces kids aged 9 to 14. Investors included Canadian venture firms Inovia Capital and ID Capital. Woozworld already has 350,000 members and a million user-generated virtual places after launching in December. The product lets tweens build worlds where they can engage with their peers, design their own spaces, set up activities, and manage a business. Previously, Tribal Nova was focused on developing a virtual world for children dubbed Kid Studio.”

1. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Q&A: A Real Study of Virtual Worlds. “Students of Ulrike Schultze might know her better by her Second Life avatar, Uskla. That’s because the Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business professor utilizes the online game to connect to her students in an unusual way. Ms. Schultze, who teaches management and information technology, leads both an online and physical classroom — students have the option of attending either or both. But for her, Second Life goes beyond being a teaching tool. Ms. Schultze explored the avatar-self relationship with a paper she presented at the 30th International Conference on Information Systems in Phoenix back in December. With her research, funded by the National Science Foundation, she will write a series of papers that look into the different aspects of these avatar-self relationships.”

2. Nextgov (USA) – Virtual Worlds on the Rise. “In her blog on Thursday, Paulette Robinson, the assistant dean for teaching, learning and technology at the National Defense University, posted an item on Thursday about her effort to create a group in the federal government to talk about the use of virtual worlds in the federal government. It started out slow she said, but now the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds has 1,600 members – and a conference starting May 13.”

3. BizReport (USA) – InXpo’s new suite integrates social, gaming, virtual worlds‎. “We are witnessing an important shift in how organizations connect with their customers and their own people,” said Chris Meyer, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, InXpo. “By incorporating these three transformative technologies – virtual, games and social media -in our powerful virtual platform, organizations have entirely new ways to connect people, foster education and improve productivity, all within a single virtual environment.” With the suite of tools, marketers could engage the attendees of a virtual conference by placing an interactive social or gaming widget in one of the virtual rooms. Visitors then click to use the tool and can share information on the products or services through their own social networks. ”

4. CNET (USA) – Measuring the sales of virtual goods. “New data from PlaySpan, a provider of payment and monetization solutions for online games and virtual worlds, shows that digital and virtual goods purchases are going global, and that revenues can be tracked to better ascertain the size of the market. It’s estimated that virtual goods will generate $1.6 billion in the U.S. in 2010. Some predict that sales of digital goods will account for 20 percent of gaming revenue by 2011. As part of analyzing which players and geographies drive the most revenue, PlaySpan has settled on a metric of average revenue per paying user (ARPPU), similar to how mobile phone companies measure customer value.”

5. Gamasutra (USA) – Offerpal Launches Cross-Game, Cross-Platform Currency. “Social media and gaming ad company Offerpal Media announced the beta launch of GamePoints.com, a site where users earn points for taking part in offers redeemable for virtual currency in hundreds of games and different social networks. The site works similar to current systems, in which players earn free virtual currency in a specific social game by completing surveys, signing up for trial subscriptions, and taking part in other ad offers. GamePoints.com, however, adds an extra step that allows users to redeem Game Points in more than 1,500 games and apps across various social networking platforms, virtual worlds, MMOs, and other gaming sites.”

6. Brisbane Times (Australia) – Split Screen: The game of love. “On my first trip to the land of the rising sun, I couldn’t resist buying a Japanese dating game. At the time Konami was revered for Metal Gear Solid, but made more yen from dating simulations. After playing the game Forever With You, it was difficult to understand why. Your bedroom was (fittingly) your base for the game, and from here you would select icons to perform actions like schooling, working out, preening yourself in front of the mirror, and sleeping – activities presumably undertaken to make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex. Yet strangely, I could never find icons for popping pimples, getting insider tips from Cosmo or Dolly magazines, or showing off on the monkey bar in the playground. And unfortunately, when I finally summoned up the courage to use the telephone icon, my potential date sounded suspiciously like a bloke. ”

7. CNET (USA) – Class action lawsuit targets Second Life. “A number of paying users (or “residents”) of virtual world Second Life have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company and its founder, Philip Rosedale. Their complaint: The terms of virtual property ownership have changed, and residents were forced to agree to a new terms of service that eroded their ownership rights to virtual property and goods. In fact, the suit filed on April 15 claims, the promises of “ownership” were empty in the first place. Through extensive marketing, Second Life parent company Linden Lab, with Rosedale as its spokesman, “lured consumers across the United States to invest real money into (Second Life) by promising those users that they would own the virtual land and property they purchased as well as the content they created,” the terms of the suit allege.”

8. VentureBeat (USA) – Blizzard predicts biggest year ever with Starcraft II and World of Warcraft Cataclysm. “Mike Morhaime, the president of Activision Blizzard’s Blizzard Entertainment division, said the coming release of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty was the company’s “most ambitious” in history. Add to that the release of World of Warcraft Cataclysm, and the two games are going to give Blizzard a license to print money. ”We are poised to have our biggest year ever,” Morhaime said. Starcraft II launches on July 27 in 11 languages across five continents, while Cataclysm, which is an add-on pack for the World of Warcraft online game, is coming later in the year. The company made the comments on its quarterly financial call today.”

9. New York Times (USA) – Avatars Go to School, Letting Students Get a Feel for the Work World. “Even as work crews and scientists mobilized over a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, high school students in this city were hard at work cleaning up another spill — in the virtual world. Students like Christian Lopez jumped into an elaborate video game, called Spill, in which they assumed on-screen identities known as avatars to run cleanup efforts for the mayor of New City. The game, devised to help students sharpen their business acumen and skills, was rolled out in more than 750 schools across the country as part of a business contest in March and April.”

10. Telepresence Options (USA) – Beaming Into the Big Meeting. “Fallout from a recession and ash from a volcano drove more companies than ever to try videoconferencing. Once the skies clear on both fronts, will it be time to plan more business trips or will virtual meetings continue to get the job done? As a technology consultant for the IBB Consulting Group, Justin Forer of Miami takes 100 to 150 flights a year and also participates in one to four audio or video conferences a day. His answer? “I do believe you can get quite a bit done via teleconferencing” — especially things like project updates and clarifications. But when it comes to creating strategies, general brainstorming or generating new business, a trip is better, he said. He sees videoconferences as just another tool in his arsenal of business interactions.”