Harbingers
Games are about to become a lot less relevant to the future of virtual worlds.
That’s where Electric Sheep comes in. The company, technically based in Washington D.C. but operating more often than not in the virtual world, has been booking six-figure deals from members of the Fortune 500 who want to engage their customers/communities… employees can find themselves hired by a client to customize an island, or what in “Second Life” is called a “sim”–a 16-acre piece of land that users can buy and do with what they like.
Your 3D I.D. Meez? They’re 3D identities that you create. Hairstyle. Clothes. Piercings. Everything.
And you can use your Meez all over. IM. Communities. Blogs. Email. It’s up to you.
— Meez.com
Avatar-based chat service IMVU has raised $9 million in Series B funding, a deal reportedly co-lead by Allegis Capital and Menlo Ventures. While IMVU bears some resemblance to virtual worlds such as There.com and Second Life, it is a much more focused affair, therefore the infusion of $9M will doubtless go further than investments in its closest competitors.
Cyworld US, the American version of the popular Korean social networking site, just launched a public beta.
Having used the Korean version of Cyworld in the past, I can attest that it’s a fascinating place. In essence, it’s a closed social network with some blog-like features and its own internal economy. Each user has a “mini-hompy” – a pixelled room that can be decorated with furniture, wallpaper and other items…. in September 2005, BusinessWeek reported that the company was making “$12.5 million on sales of $110.4 million”. It’s a high stakes game.
Second Life +is+ an OS… You can store files there. You can script things (there’s a whole API). In fact, it’s a platform. You can build a video game inside of second life. Or a music store. Or a dance studio. Or a city. Or a helicopter. Or a video screen that plays whatever content you want. Or fountain that spits blood. Or, pretty much anything you can dream up. And it already has a monetary platform so people are willing to pay for things you develop! Soon you’ll be able to blog inside Second Life. Soon you’ll be able to run more applications. This is why I think Microsoft needs to pay deep attention to it…
Skibinsky says that his big breakthrough was in 2004, when he realized that “instead of building a closed online game it’s possible to do the reverse.” In other words, he had an epiphany that web is the ultimate API. He put together a virtual universe which has rooms where folks can meet, meet, chat, exchange resources and items. What got me excited about Hive7 was that it allows anyone to customize the whole experience. You can take the code, and tweak it.
Looking at what Hive7 has built, I have just realized that the web has now gone 3D.
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Quoting myself…
I’ve long-held that serious games will play a significant role in the future of the games industry. I’ve yet to discover anyone who agrees…
I bet serious games end up rivaling games made for entertainment — not in glamour, but in revenues.
Ralf, thanks for mentioning us! Personal tour anytime you want it 🙂
Thanks, Max! I may take you up on that soon…!
And I just realized I forgot to mention Multiverse above, even though I meant to do so. Another harbinger…
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Raph –
So, we’re coming back to VRML and all of that? It seems most of these “worlds”, are just fancy front-ends to existing online services. It would seem that the best way to compete or exceed their capabilities would be to build a slick Flash or other SDK front end wrapper for open-source services adding in blogging, etc.
After all, the systems that these guys offer are no more (and perhaps not a much) as MySpace. The only interesting addition is their various economies.
So, what do we really see here?
Social Networking Platforms – IMVU, CyWorld, Second Life, Hive7, (and what about Habbo Hotel(?))
Secondary Social Networks – Electronic Sheep
The social networking platforms will stand or fall on their feature sets and the whims of popularity and, perhaps, their support for derived businesses (i.e. scaling by letting others do the work).
In some sense, these Social Network Platforms are no different from what Salesforce.com has been doing for hosted business applications… just prettier.
I dont…realy agree.
Most of thoes games are VERY nitch. large ones, but nitch. Not for everyone…Far cry from it really.
oh, NVM. (read it WAY wrong, its early)
your right.. i know of a few here at work going on 😉
(lets also not forget Furcadia lol)
(Edit button?)
Can Otherworld be far off? I read those books (by Tad Williams) … actually, “wrestled” is a better term. I was instantly in love with the idea of this massive network that supports “user built” worlds running concurrently with a common “gateway” that links all of them.
As your avatar moves from one VW into the next it is appropriately outfitted/styled/whatever for the sim into which it is moving. Second Life has a hint of this in some of the sims that require visitors to where specific costumes, etc. What would be really cool (I think) is to be able to walk your av through a portal from SL into, say, WoW … during the transition, your av is appropriately configured for WoW. Maybe it’s as simple as “linking” your WoW av to your SL av.
I’ll stop there before I imagine myself to death.
You know, I’ve been trying to determine the value of Second Life as a tool for education and business. I am having trouble picturing anything beyond stuff like “The Cooking Game”, which would seem to be an excellent addition to Home Ec classes. I can see it as a way to add to basic courses for education, but when it gets into more detailed education in the classroom or for businesses it just seems to not stack up well to existing ways.
I had previously read that Texas U. was using Second Life in some way. I did some serching and found it:
OK, but can anyone see anything more here? I mean, yeah, someone could upload a CNC program, I suppose. If not now, someday in the future. But the hands-on part of the education, coupled with the already existing cost of the program and the desire of the producer to sell licenses for profit….I just don’t see anything like that happening.
I can see loads of possibilities, such as Home Schooling, beginner courses, etc. I can see it used for computer related education. I can see it as an additional tool for the Home Ec’s, etc. But this all seems like people are getting a little overly excited about all this, when it truelly seems more like just a natural next step rather than some big step forwards. I smell marketing people somewhere abouts.
I think Steven has said it much better than me.
Amaranthar, I think many niches can be served by a platform such as SL. Many will be in ways that many of us could never imagine. I believe, however, that the focus will always be on entertainment, and therefore any attempts at serving up educational fare, I suspect, will be about as limited and obscure as in the software industry in general.
I agree with you that there are a TON of great ways SL (and others like it) can be used for education. It’s just that entertainment sells better than education, I guess.
Steve, I do think that at some point we are going to hit VRML all over again. SL is certainly pushing along similar lines — and they are growing at some astronomical rate, like 17% a month.
As far as Habbo Hotel, I heard this stat at GDC: 5.5m unique users a month. That’s probably comparable to how many uniques WoW gets in a month, if not more.
Games will have the glamour, for sure. But it’s getting to the point where ignoring these developments is getting very hard even for game folk. I think that some sort of synergy is finally happening between web technologies and these ideas; it took several generations of social networking services to come and go like mayflies before Facebook and MySpace blew the lid open.
SL, There.com, (others?) … all sort of derivatives of Active Worlds, which seemed to me to be the first effort in VRML on the web (unless I’m remembering incorrectly and it was another group).
The sandboxes are going to grow over the next couple of years, to be sure, but I’m thinking a little bit “flash-in-the-pan” unless an experience is crafted for the user. I mean, sure, they can exist fine a 3D chat rooms, but why people would pay money for that … well, I guess I’m just from a different era.
Why games will still matter
Over on his blog, Raph posted a bunch of quotes trying to show how games will become less important in the future of online spaces. His argument boils down to the fact that non-game online spaces are getting more attention (particularly more investme…
Interesting stuff. I hope this craziness doesn’t influence your future career decisions, though. I want another virtual-worldy-game like UO or SWG. (You do take requests, don’t you?)
Man, it boggles the mind though, dunnit? I can think of a million directions this could all go down.
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[…] https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/04/03/harbingers/ Avatar-based chat service IMVU has raised $9 million in Series B funding, a deal reportedly co-lead by Allegis Capital and Menlo Ventures. While IMVU bears some resemblance to virtual worlds such as There.com and Second Life, it is a much more focused affair, therefore the infusion of $9M will doubtless go further than investments in its closest competitors. YAAAAY so.. uhm.. after all the hard work us Devs do for you.. you get 9 mil we get…….. tokens.. YAAAY!_________________ […]
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