In general, it can be definitely said that all the major players in the industry were there. CEOs and other senior executives of the major virtual worlds, content players, technology players and more. And most of them participated in the panels that as a result were very interesting.
Now, let's go ahead and walk through the interesting things I heard and saw:
TV and Virtual Worlds: CSI and The Office
The conference started with a keynote by Anthony Zuiker, the creator of CSI. What he announced is that CBS's CSI:NY is going to have an episode about Second Life (which was aired yesterday)... In addition I learned that NBC's The Office is going to have today an episode on Second Life as well... When two major networks have shows on that topic - it seems that the virtual worlds trend is getting to the eye of the public... BTW - CSI not only has an episode about SL, but also have a whole array of in-world activities that viewers can play with. This is a nice try to make a crossover between TV and a virtual world, so it would be interesting to see what was the users uptake.Avatar Island by CyberExtruder and Cranial Tap
Isn't that the coolest thing? CyberExtruder, a 3D solutions company has a technology that allows transforming a 2D image into a 3D character. The system can recognize the face parts and based on that extrapolate on how the person looks like in 3D. Together with Cranial Tap they built Avatar Island (SLUrl), that makes use of this technology in Second Life by allowing users to upload a picture and get a face skin for their avatars.... Then you could roam inside the Metaverse wearing your real life face... In the picture you can see yours truly transforming from a real life person to a bold avatar... and there's a video too...Motion Analysis Studios / Icarus Studios
This is an immersive technology by Motion Analysis Studios, Basically they have an optical-based motion capture system that allows them to translate the movements of a real person in real time to Second Life (And other apps as well of course). In this picture you can see the demonstrator on the right, and the Second Life avatar is doing what she does on the screen to the left. This was all a part of the Icarus Studios booth.HiPiHi
HiPiHi, the "Chinese Second Life" as some call it was certainly one of the talks of the day. Everybody wants to know what the recently launched HiPiHi is planning. From the demos given at the conference it looks pretty much like Second Life, but in Mandarin Chinese... Also the look of the default avatar is somewhat different... Anyway it's one of very few worlds in which you can actually build freely and upload objects, and not limited to just simple customizations. Also, they have now an English translation of the interface (downloadable from the link above).Planet 9 Studios
"Building Virtual Earth.. polygon by polygon" - this is Planet 9 Studios slogan, and indeed that's exactly what they do... They have a database of 3D cities data (of about 40 cities) which they update annually and can be licensed and used with several viewers (including Google Earth). This database can be used for Augmented Reality applications such as adding layers of data over the real buildings etc.3Di - Movable Life
Movable Life from 3Di is a web-based thin client that allows users to connect to Second Life without launching the regular client, the idea being that you can chat and IM with other avatars, see 2D maps and more, but not see the fully rendered 3D world. This can be useful both when you can't launch the real client for some reason (Playing at work again?...) or if you don't want to launch it since you just want to chat with your friends and you are tired of the client crashing every 5 minutes... Of course I should also mentioned AjaxLife that works on the same principle and was online even before and also SLeek which is another thin Second Life client in the form of a windows application.inDuality by Pelican Crossing & IBM
And another client solution is the still unreleased inDuality from Pelican Crossing, which was shown at the IBM booth. Unlike MovableLife, this is an in-browser full featured client for Second Life (and other virtual worlds). As far as I understand it downloads in the background a plug-in for each virtual world you want to connect to, which I guess weighs as the regular client (since it is fully functional), so while it's better in some ways than thin clients, the edge of doing things fast and from "dumber" devices is lost. Anyway, it's good to have variety...Miuchiz by MGE Entertainment and Active Worlds
Miuchiz is basically a handheld virtual world... It is based on the Active Worlds technology and the MGE Entertainment brands and targets mostly kids. The device comes in several "flavours": Bratz (for girls), Monsterz (for boys) and Pawz (for both genders). The kids can play on the device and then synchronize their actions to the main grid using the USB connector that is built-in the device. Neat...Active Worlds Facebook Application
Social Networks and Virtual Worlds are supposedly coming all together with this Active Worlds Facebook application. Once installed in your Facebook profile, you can enter the world from your profile page. However, the real value here is not very clear, since there is no real integration with Facebook. You might as well open the regular Active World app, and when you want switch application to your browser.MoiPal by Ironstar Helsinki
MoiPal from Ironstar Helsinki is a mobile virtual world. It is still very small in terms of users, but it would be very interesting to see how this world evolves. This is one of very few mobile virtual worlds currently available, and it looks quite good and well adapted to the mobile form factor. The founder of the company is well aware that people will only use mobile in their idle time - and that's a good starting point. The question is whether users will engage in virtual worlds from their handset which they currently use in their idle time mostly for casual gaming.Mobile and Virtual Worlds
On the mobile side, I asked virtual worlds operators' executives and it appears that everybody has mobile in mind. They all know that allowing mobile access to their worlds is one of the next steps, but as one of them told me not necessarily one of their top-5 priorities... There are others however that feel more strongly about it and are currently developing a mobile solution in-house, but are not willing to say much more about how or what it is going to be... In that aspect, virtual worlds are somewhat behind social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook that have a decent mobile interface. But I guess the challenge with a virtual world is bigger. The only world that I see as having a solid mobile solution in the short-term is Habbo Hotel. I spoke with Sulake's CEO, Timo Soininen, and he told me that as a result of Mini Friday's success, they are going to launch a mobile version that is both connected to the main grid and also supports a multitude of phones (Currently Mini Friday supports mostly Series 60 phones).Interesting Statistics
According to Parks Associates 6% of all Internet users use some virtual world at least once a week, while 18% visited at least one at some point in a virtual world. These numbers are rising of course, but they still are quite low compared to the usage of social networking sites: For example in ages 18-24, 10% use virtual worlds, while 71% use social networking sites (!)... That's not very surprising since virtual worlds are new in town, but still this shows how much more it can grow (or not...).Growth
As for the expected growth of users in virtual worlds, KZero forecasts that Second Life and the kids world Club Penguin will multiply their user base, There will grow from 1M users to 7M (!), Whyville from 3M to 10M, the relatively new player Kaneva from 0.6M to 3M and the upcoming Chinese HiPiHi from 0 to 10M.Well, That's all for now, soon to come are the reviews of the Mobile 2.0 Conference and the E for All expo. Stay Tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment