Archives for 2010

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.”

1. Los Angeles Times (USA) – A real-world battle over virtual-property rights. “Architect David Denton spends much of his time on a lush tropical island, where he experiments with cutting-edge building designs and creates spaces for artists to showcase their work. Never mind that the island only exists in the virtual-reality world of Second Life, a popular online venue where people interact via digital avatars. Denton, 62, said he purchased the island for about $700 — real money, not virtual cash — from its former owner, and considers it his property.”

2. VentureBeat (USA) – TinierMe launches Japanese-style anime virtual world. “Japanese comics known as “anime” have become popular among young Americans. And TinierMe is planning on capitalizing on that with the launch of its anime-focused virtual world. After six months of beta testing, TinierMe is formally launching its virtual world today. The U.S.-based virtual world is a separate version of a two-million strong virtual world in Japan. Already, thanks to the beta test, the English-language version of TinierMe has 700,000 registered users, said Masaru “Nogi” Ohnogi, chief executive of the company, which is owned by Japan’s GCREST.”

3. CNN Go (India) – GoJiyo: What India’s first 3D virtual reality world is like on the inside. “I have a love-hate relationship with virtual reality. When I first heard about Microsoft’s Second Life — a virtual interactive 3D environment, launched seven years ago — I chucked my default life for three whole days and nights, pausing only for the occasional nap and a few bare-minimum human necessities. Realising that I might lose myself to the real world forever, I got out of Second Life for good, cleaning the software off my hard drive completely. I have a love-hate relationship with online social networking sites, too, spending days on end immersed in Facebook’s voyeur/exhibitionist way of life before setting it aside to be used only when absolutely necessary. So when I heard about the launch of GoJiyo, Godrej’s new browser-based 3D virtual reality social networking environment tailored for the Indian market, I cringed and whooped simultaneously. Marketed as “India’s first online virtual world” that blends online gaming, virtual reality and social networking, GoJiyo is admittedly a brand repositioning exercise for the Godrej group, which makes appliances and furniture, aimed at capturing a younger, hipper audience.”

4. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Resilience during virtual disasters. “Virtual worlds have been offered up in recent weeks as alternatives to physical events because they are disaster-proof. No volcano or tsunami can take down the whole Internet. And virtual events are particularly budget-friendly during that other kind of recent disaster — a financial crisis. But virtual worlds are prone to their own kind of disasters, as yesterday’s shutdown of Second Life demonstrated. OpenSim isn’t immune either, with both local outages and widespread failures possible. For example, this past weekend, the owner of Aesthetica found that his entire region was gone, and several months of scheduled backups had never taken place at all — a combination of hardware, software and management failures. Last summer, a hacker took out servers running over a hundred thousand websites — and around a hundred OpenSim regions were destroyed in the attack as well.”

5. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Worlds.com Settles NCSoft Suit; Short On Funds? “After a little over a year since Worlds.com filed suit against NCSoft for patent infringement on Christmas Eve in 2008, the parties have settled the matter. According to Patent Arcade, the court ordered dismissal with prejudice due to a binding settlement agreement between the two companies on April 23. NCSoft began the litigation process by telling us that it would defend itself “vigorously,” but the terms of the settlement seem to be confidential, so there’s no way of knowing how it shook out for certain. Based on a recent SEC filing, though, it may be that Worlds.com needed some money or, at least, didn’t want the cost and trials of litigation.”

6. nebusiness (UK) – New school is virtually there. “South Shields Community School was mulling over the idea of creating a virtual replica of its school when it came upon a Journal article about Second Life and Gateshead firm Vector 76. It decided to contact the firm, which designs content for 3D virtual worlds on the internet, to talk about building a three-dimensional plan of the school. The new £20m South Shields Community School in Nevinson Avenue won’t be open in the real world until September 2011, but the virtual version is opening its doors from today for curious parties to have a look around. Deputy head Chris Roberts was approached with the idea by Key Stage 4 culture and heritage co-ordinator Graham Trick, who wanted to create an interactive version of the architect’s fly-through he had seen in the school hall.”

7. Times Live (South Africa) – Japan’s women love gaming. “They have been hooked on everything from hula dancing and oxygen bars to electronic darts and foreign exchange trading, but Japan’s housewives have finally settled on the ultimate addiction: on-line role-playing games. Once relied on as the “good wives and wise mothers” behind the country’s economic miracle, women have begun burying themselves for days in elaborate virtual worlds, emerging only sporadically to carry out their chores. Sometimes they play flint-hearted assassins, sometimes fluffy animals. Often – bizarrely – they play housewives. Classic online combat titles such as World of Warcraft are popular, but much more so are games that broadly emulate real life.”

8. The Standard (Hong Kong) – Living Doll. “Paige Gabriele loved her dolls – once. At eight, however, the girl has abandoned them. Barbie gets slim face time, and the single American Girl doll, a gift from her grandmother, sits on her bureau – untouched. Playing with dolls “gets boring after a while,” said Paige. She was more interested in a basketball, and gushed about social websites 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, they are dropping such playthings at ever younger ages, replacing the childhood mainstay with technology-driven activities, even as the toy industry battles to attract the coveted market with new products.”

9. The Yorker (UK) – Generation CoD. “I had my first addiction when I was about 12. Luckily, by the time I came to take my GSCEs, I’d gotten over it. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have got the grades I did. Now this addiction wasn’t alcohol, or drugs. It was a computer game – Age of Empires to be precise – but I maintain it could have been equally as dangerous had I let it continue. Little did I realise that the problem, although fairly rare, was widespread and spreading. An article in The Sunday Times Magazine the other week highlighted that increasing numbers of gamers are becoming addicted. But when does a game cease being fun and turn into a life-ruining obsession? And what will this new addiction do to a generation of young people in this recession having to cope with increasing uncertainty over the security of their futures?”

10. Forbes (USA) – IMVU Adds Former Second Life Exe. “IMVU, a social networking and instant messaging client which uses 3D avatars to represent its users, announced Thursday that they have hired David Fleck to serve as vice president of marketing for the company. Fleck served in a similar role for the company behind Second Life, Linden Lab. Forbes spoke with Fleck and IMVU’s CEO Cary Rosenzweig about the move and what the future holds for the company. After Fleck left Linden Lab in 2004, he focused on helping start ups in the social entertainment/social networking field get on their feet. It was through these start-ups that he became acquainted with Rosenzweig. Fleck says that discussions with Rosenzweig about the company quickly got his attention. “…It just became really clear and obvious to me how incredible this place is, and from a success standpoint, to the level that I couldn’t actually ignore it. I had to pay attention to what he was telling me,” he said.”

1. The Drum (UK) – Yomego set to enter virtual world with Horrible Histories. “Children’s book publisher Scholastic has commissioned social media company Yomego with the developed of a virtual world for its Horrible Histories series. The Horrible Histories virtual world is planned to go live in June 2011 and will allow fans of the book series the chance to interact with the historical world it has built over the years. A series of ‘rooms’ based on key historical periods, including Rotten Rome, Awesome Egypt and Terrible Tudor London are planned, with children being allowed to create their own avatar when they enter. They will then be able to explore each world and discover the ‘nasty bits’ of history within them and interact with other avatars.”

2. Courthouse News Service (USA) – Players Want Real Money from Virtual World. “Linden Research, creator of the massive multiplayer “Second Life” Internet game, induced thousands of players to invest as much as $100 million in real money in “virtual” properties, then took the properties back without just compensation, four former players say in a federal class action. Plaintiffs Carl Evans, Donald Spencer, Valerie Spencer and Cindy Carter say that throughout the early 2000s the company and its founder, Phillip Rosedale, promoted the concept of property ownership and commerce in Second Life through press releases and media interviews. Linden Research and Rosedale claimed they would protect rights to virtual property and that the virtual real estate could be used to earn money for its owners.”

3. nebusiness (UK) – Firms explore world of virtual conferencing. “Thanks to the lingering volcanic ash cloud from Iceland, many European business leaders have found themselves struggling to attend meetings as planned. This unusual source of disruption has led Gateshead-based business Vector76 to encourage firms to explore the possibility of meeting in the virtual world. The company was set up two years ago to explore the development of the 3D internet, especially virtual worlds such as Second Life. Vector76 set up a virtual NewcastleGateshead last year, and CEO Shaun Allan says the recently-launched conferencing facilities are ideal for deal-makers who have found their operations grounded by the lack of movement in the real world.”

4. The Guardian (UK) – Creating the next dotcom boom could be child’s play. “Anyone expecting one of the figures behind the world’s most popular online game, the sword and sorcery epic World of Warcraft, to serve up another instalment of blood, guts and glory with his latest online venture is going to be in for a shock when his new project goes live next week. There’s no fighting in the world of Boaki, there are no items to trade and players must collaborate as they try and solve the mystery of what happened to the previous inhabitants of their strange new world. But the most striking difference is that the new “game” is aimed specifically at children.”

5. The Age (Australia) – Split Screen: Lost in the sandbox. “Open world” is one of those phrases popular with games marketing people today. Games promise freedom, non-linear stories, with a unique experience for every player, a “sandbox” for everyone to play in and create their own fun. While the creation of convincing virtual worlds that encourage exploration and experimentation is a great goal, and one toward which games have made huge strides in the past decade, it has inherent risks. The big one, I think, is a phenomenon I call “too much world, too little game”. This describes a game which features a big world, but puts too little in it for the player to do, or puts in too many of the same activities with too little variety.”

6. Honolulu Weekly (USA) – Life on Mars. “Jim Sink is the CEO of Avatar Reality, a locally–based gaming company. Its first game is Blue Mars, a 3D virtual world that will remind you of Second Life at first glance but aims to be the next generation of virtual worlds. Before working with Avatar Reality, Sink worked at Microsoft’s Xbox Live division and managed business development at Foundation9, the world’s largest producer of independent video games. Honolulu Weekly sat down with Sink to talk about some of his projects and the state of the high-tech industry in Hawaii. In short: things are not heading in the right direction.”

7. Kotaku (Australia) – Identity And Online Avatars: A Discussion. “Gamers are beautiful, so think of this as a love letter to you. I love how we can circle the wagons when the medium we care for so much is assailed. So, let me tell you directly: my goal is to support your creativity in gaming and other digital media forms. In recent days, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Elisabeth Soep for boingboing.net on the topic of research into identity representation that I have been conducting. This article, “Chimerical Avatars and Other Identity Experiments from Prof. Fox Harrell,” also had the distinction of having been reblogged on Kotaku under the sensationalistic headline “Making Avatars That Aren’t White Dudes Is Hard.” I am thrilled to see the dialogue started by my fellow denizens of gamerdom, however the title and article misstated my aims. ”

8. PopMatters (USA) – T.L. Taylor’s Guide to MMO Culture. “One of the most interesting shifts in MMO design compared to single player gaming is moving from an emotion centered design to something oriented around social spaces. Rather than focusing on making a game fair and fun for one person, you have to orient it around thousands. T.L. Taylor’s book Play Between Worlds is a careful study on the effects of design in Everquest over an extended period of time. Detailing her observations as a Gnome Necromancer, the book relies on academic research and interviews to paint a broad picture of how the design of the game interacts with the culture.”

9. iTWire (USA) – Would you pay US$3.5 million for a virtual horse? “Well (as a collective) plenty have, the World of Warcraft Celestial Steed hit the virtual fantasy universe created by Blizzard, and lots of Warcraftians were willing to jump in the saddle. The Celestial Steed mount and Lil’XT Pet (!) went on sale over at Blizzard from the 16th of April (or 15th depending on where you live), and it seems that folks that fossick around in World of Warcraft are pretty sick and tired of their current modes of transport, and want to try the new. At a price of US$25 the queue to download the Celestial Steed alone was 140,000 and seven hours long at launch. This is a nice windfall of US$3.5 million for the Blizzard massive multiplayer juggernaut.”

10. Computerworld (USA) – Linden Lab holds to grand plans for Second Life. “Linden Lab’s plans for Second Life are as visionary as ever — “to enhance and improve the human condition.” But the company is working to marry those dreams to more practical goals for the immediate future. “I’ll settle for a million active users by the end of the year,” said Tom Hale, chief product officer for Linden Lab, which develops and operates Second Life. The service now has about 700,000 active users, who spend more than an hour per month logged in, up from 680,000 active users in February. One million active users is a big goal, but it’s more modest than the dreams of the Second Life boom a few years ago, when Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale talked about Second Life becoming bigger than the Web in 10-15 years. For example, see this 2008 video of Rosedale at TED Talks.”