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Cinemassively: The Future of Virtual Worlds
Forget for a minute that this is an advertisement for the virtual worlds development company, Millions of Us. It's also a great video that discusses the future of these emerging platforms. Narrated by Reuben Steiger, the CEO of MoU, we're taken on a journey through the three major past, present, and future developments in virtual worlds this year. From Sony's Home, to Google Lively, all the way to in-browser worlds embedded on your Facebook pages, the road ahead is pretty exciting![Thanks, Eric!]If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
GDC 08: Entertainment content convergence in online worlds
We spent most of Monday ensconced in the GDC Worlds in Motion summit track, which made "standing room only" seem extremely spacious -- most of the sessions were packed to the gills and then some. It seems like more than a few industry types are interested in the intersections between gaming and virtual worlds. Case in point, the following session we've paraphrased (hopefully not too liberally!) from Reuben Steiger, CEO of Milllions of Us, a company that builds marketing campaigns and content for virtual worlds. Reuben: Storytelling is the bedrock of human culture. (Looking at a slide with a real campfire on the left and a user-created campfire in Second Life on the right) -- users in virtual worlds are recreating this storytelling tradition. I'm going to make a contention: the internet has failed as a storytelling medium. Instead, the norm is bathroom humor and ridiculous jokes. So virtual worlds: are they games or not? What defines a game -- linguists and semioticians get real worked up about it. The audience might say "virtual worlds are games without rules, competition, goals or fun." And it's hard to blame them. Extreme openness has defined virtual worlds, where fun can be in a way you define as opposed to what some game developer feels is fun. But the appeal of virtual worlds is that we can tell stories on a broader and less walled playing field.
Omnicom drives a stake into Millions of Us
One of the more recognizable names among metaverse development companies (MDCs) is Reuben Steiger's Millions of Us. Steiger's MoU has done work in Second Life, Gaia Online and Zwinky. Omnicom, reported by Reuters to be the world's largest advertising services company, has bought a stake in the company. A majority stake, or just a share - nobody's saying. Inevitably, the sale is being compared to CBS's investment in rival MDC, Electric Sheep Company - a partnership which is leading to the joint release of a CSI:NY episode revolving around Second Life, and a customized, user-friendly Second Life client. What Omnicom and Millions of Us have planned at this stage is anyone's guess - advertising is where the smart money is, of course. Could MoU be becoming the general virtual worlds arm of Omnicom? Could be.
