virtual-worlds
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Barbie Girls tops ten million
Mattel's child-oriented 2.5D virtual world, BarbieGirls.com has reached ten million registered users (well more or less) according to the Washington Times. Long-time MMO/Virtual World observers and users will instantly note that a registered user does not an active user or subscriber make. However, Barbie Girls registered users require a special (customizable) Barbie MP3 player (called a Barbie Girl Device that range in price from US$40 to $US60) that has to be registered as a part of the signup process. That makes things more interesting, and puts Barbie Girls as bigger than operations like Second Life which have similar ballpark numbers of registered users, but no such financial barrier to entry. It's true that we don't normally write much about Barbie Girls - not because of any lack of merit as an MMO, no. We tend to avoid it because of the curse. They say that one of our writers once wrote a small news piece on Barbie Girls, and was inundated with messages about outfit unlocks and Barbie Bucks from millions of little girls. Forever. They say you can still hear him howling at GDC in San Francisco.
Icarus Studios switches from mySQL to Informix
Icarus Studios, an MMO middleware developer specializing in zoneless next-gen MMO platform technology has made the shift to migrate their underlying tech away from widely used open-source SQL database, mySQL, and instead has migrated to IBM's Informix Dynamic Server. Icarus was able to switch from mySQL to Informix rapidly and apparently fairly painlessly, with Fallen Earth - a post-apocalyptic MMORPG built in Icarus' middleware - running on the new high-performance database systems.
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.
GDC08: Exercise - the MMO?
Early this afternoon during Erik Bethke's discussion of the cross-over between Virtual Worlds and Massively multiplayer games, he hit on a fantastic idea that I'd love to see explored. What if you could incentivize people to do things that were good for them by giving them goal structures? Players provide goals for themselves all the time in ostensibly 'goal-less' virtual worlds, from Second Life to Club Penguin. In an aside, Bethke noted that assigning goal structures - reasons to play - is actually a fairly easy part of game design. Though it takes some effort to make those goals fun and interesting, working them up in the first place is a fairly trivial piece of work. So what if you could make eating right and exercising fun by leveling up and earning loot?%Gallery-16369%
Practical Marketing: Keeping your PR out of the trash
There's a lot of marketing, media and PR going on in virtual worlds, particularly in Second Life. You've probably noticed. We've talked a lot about differentiation, approach, engagement and a whole lot of other factors. Now it is time to talk about actually getting your message out. Your presence in Second Life isn't worth a dime if nobody knows you're there. This entails a tricky process called talking to the media. Sure, you used to do this, but the media changed a couple decades ago. No really, it did, and the last thing you want is the media ignoring you. At Massively, we get lots of media and PR contact as you'd rather expect. We've got a more than a few words of advice for flacks who need to get their message to the media outlets.
Metaverse U conversation: Raph Koster, Cory Ondrejka, Howard Rheingold
We headed to the Metaverse U event at Stanford University this weekend to hear a smorgasboard of prominent thinkers and workers in the fields of virtual worlds and online gaming have a meeting of the minds. Below is a recap (caveat: some paraphrasing involved!) of one of our favorite sessions featuring a conversation with Metaplace's Raph Koster, former Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka, and social media and online community guru Howard Rheingold. Henrik Bennetsen (moderator): (Introduces 3 panelists and asks Raph to kick off with his thoughts on virtual worlds) Raph: From the beginning, virtual communities has never been about the "virtual." All the oddities come from the mediation, not from human nature. We build trellises, and communities are plants growing on them... you get to shape them a little bit, and sometimes in very bad ways if you're not careful. We tend to think we have more power than we do when architecting these things. I wince at the title "community manager" ("relations" would be better) because it perpetuates the myth that we have power to control what users do. Mediation gives us a window into things that in the real world can be hard to see. Virtual communities are an opportunity to see how people tick. Cory: Having spent 7 years building Second Life, the interactions and collisions with the real world are what make it interesting. We had only 400 users at launch and we were ecstatic! Can you imagine that today (especially for companies with big name investors)? I think about virtual worlds as communication technology. I agree there's a need for customer service and arguments about the declaration of avatar rights are important but yet I feel there's something off in these arguments... (he's referring to earlier conversation about declarations of avatar rights) %Gallery-16285%
Six virtual world myths busted
Second Life celebrity, thinker, developer and blogger, Gwyneth Llewelyn takes a look a white paper by Proximity London on virtual worlds. The white paper is based on some 4,000 interviews with people and builds up a picture of the realities of these synthetic environments. The paper's author, John Urpeth, basically rounds up six of the most popular claims about virtual worlds, and basically finds them all to be pretty much so much smoke - and you don't need to ask where that smoke is blown or why. Llewelyn goes through all six and the results are well worth your time reading. If you only know virtual worlds from TV, newspapers, and major news sites - then the odds are you've learned little that's actually true. You can find interesting and energetic discussion on the topic at Digado.
Why mainstream media hates the Internet, games, MMOs and you
From the Sexbox and Mass Effect to World of Warcraft, Everquest and even face-to-face Dungeons and Dragons, the mainstream media hates your hobbies. They're turning you into suicidal addicts, mass-murderers, inappropriate touchers, criminals and terrorists, right? Well, seeing that you don't seem to be any of those things, has it occurred to you to wonder just why such FUD keeps turning up over and over. No, it's not Luddism (well, it's mostly not Luddism as it's commonly thought of). For the most part, this is about money.
MMOGology: Exploiting the matrix
You can't deny it; there's something exciting about seeing something you aren't supposed to see. It may have happened to you before, perhaps accidentally. You were minding your own business, just jumping down a flight of stairs in the Sunken Temple instance. And then ... BAM! Suddenly you're staring into a sea of light blue. "Am I dead?" you ask yourself. "What happened?" You rotate your camera angle and notice you can see three floors below you. You rotate it a little more and suddenly the grand design of the mighty level developer is revealed to you. You can see the entire dungeon stretching into the distance of ethereal blue. You've accidentally crossed over to the other side. You've entered the matrix!OK, so maybe it's not always quite that dramatic, but it's definitely interesting when you accidentally or accidentally-on-purpose stumble upon these little tears in the fabric of MMOspace. Many of us enjoy the exploration components of MMOGs. We love to find the hidden nooks and crannies of the world, the small places not often visited by our fellow gamers because they're in remote locations. Sometimes in our desire to see absolutely everything in the game, we stumble across these glitches that let us see a bit more than we're supposed to see. I think it's only natural to want to pull back the veil on our unrealities and see the "Wizard behind the curtain", so to speak. But of course anytime you begin participating in things that go slightly beyond the boundary of what you're "supposed" to be doing in a game, it starts to bring up questions about exploits and cheating. Viewing the underbelly of an MMOG hardly seems like a crime, but at what point exactly do you cross the threshold that will get you into trouble? At what point are we talking about account bans?
IBM disses virtual worlds
Okay, so they may not have intended to do it. The message could have been "You need IBM's expertise to take advantage of virtual worlds" or something more like famous-apparel-company's "Just do it." That's not really how it comes across, however. A quick informal poll, where we showed the video to a bunch of people suggests that the impression people get is "Virtual worlds are for losers and failures." - which seems a little bit odd since IBM is betting heavily in the virtual world space This is all a part of IBM's "Talking versus doing" campaign. Some of their campaign adverts seem to be more on-message than others. The video is below the fold, courtesy of YouTube's special twinkly magic - what's the message you're getting from it?
The Escapist goes virtual this week
Gaming commentary magazine The Escapist has gone all-online this week, with an issue entitled "It's a Small, Virtual World". Probably best known among gamers for the excellent video series Zero Punctuation, The Escapist's editorial side is always full of thought-provoking commentary. This week features thoughts on the alternate reality game spawned by "The Office", a discussion of this year's Building Virtual Worlds show at Carnegie Mellon University, and the harsh reality of life online. They liken living in a virtual world to the travails of the old West, complete with opportunity, outlaws, and more than a few dirty deeds. It's a great read, and The Escapist in general is well worth looking into.
Linden Lab promotes Cyn Skyberg to executive team
Linden Lab announces today that Cyn Skyberg (aka Cyn Linden) formerly Director of Customer Relations at Linden Lab has been promoted to Vice-President of Customer Relations. Skyberg's new role will see her also overseeing Second Life billing, risk management, in-world support as well as "external sales and management" (we're not really sure what that part means).
Second Life content creators face genuine dilemmas
Content theft has always been something of an issue in Second Life, though there seems to be less of it going on in per capita terms than in the physical world. That said, it is interesting to see Second Life content creators increasingly moved towards positions maintained by music and movie publishers in the physical world. "Why would anyone walk into a store and spend 400 or 500 Linden on a dress, if they can get a dress of similar quality for free or very cheap from a reseller," asks Ziggy Quirk.
IBM partners with HiPiHi
Chinese virtual world developer HiPiHi has partnered with international information technology powerhouse IBM. The collaboration is essentially twofold, a spokesperson from HiPiHi tells us. First, IBM is to provide hardware, services, and consultation on scalable architecture, essentially "battle-tested solutions". IBM's obviously getting into virtual worlds, and is too big and too experienced to put all of its eggs in one basket.
The Heron Sanctuary helps the disabled find a Second Life
An element inherent in virtual worlds that the mainstream press frequently misses (or deliberately ignores in favor of the more sensational aspects), is that your avatar can be everything you want to be, but for whatever reason, can't be. And while this has led many with otherwise socially-debilitating conditions to achieve a degree of happiness and freedom, there are relatively few organizations devoted to helping disabled people realize new social lives through virtual worlds.I previously wrote about Fez Rutherford's 2nDisability, but here's another wonderful example of people reaching out to help others: The Heron Sanctuary in Second Life. Eureka Dejavu and Schmilsson Nilsson (previously podcasted here) graciously give some space on their blog 'Dispatches From a Virtual World' to Widget Whiteberry, who talks about the importance of making connections over the Web and founding a virtual community for disabled individuals. It's a worthwhile read and serves to refute the assertions by so many naysayers that there's nothing of value to be had in SL.[Thanks, Schmilsson!]
ION Game Conference to address social networking on consoles, PC
Game industry types looking for yet another reason to flock to a central location and gab about the business while getting liquored up at the open bar should take a moment to block out some time for this summer's Ion Game Conference, taking place from May 13-15 in Seattle. Known as the Online Game Developers Conference in a previous life, organizers Evergreen Events note that the re-dubbed conference will feature an expanded focus, with panels covering topics such virtual worlds and social networking on home consoles.While few details concerning specific panels have yet been revealed for this year's event, last year's topics included "Xbox LIVE on Windows and 360: Are Your Games Dead or LIVE?," "The Future of Games and Entertainment Resides Online," and "Dirty Secrets of Episodic Video Games," among others. Early registration for the Ion Game Conference is now open, and event organizers note that as they are expecting a considerable turnout by attendees across the globe. Those interested in taking part in the event should register early.
Practical Marketing: who engages whom?
Marketing in virtual worlds has had a pretty spotty start. Granted, it is in its infancy, but already you have marketing teams turning away from virtual worlds or strongly urging you not to get involved. Its boring! There's no engagement! There's no return on investment! They'll never amount to anything! Remember those phrases? That's what your last marketing team was saying about the Web about 12 years ago. Odd that, isn't it? What's really wrong here?
Avatar rights: A person chooses, a tool obeys
There are any number of small avatar-rights movements going around, both in virtual worlds and even in some game-based MMOs. Does your avatar have rights? Is it a separate and distinct entity that can possess citizenship, rights, privileges and obligations in a different world (or virtual country)? The short answer is, no. The rather longer answer is also no.
Seven strategies to successful games
Rick van der Wal over at Digado ( which stands for "Digital Adoption") wrote a very interesting piece listing his "Top 7 Marketing Strategies in Games." Van der Wal (who is studying Communications and Multimedia design at the Hogeschool Rotterdam and has worked as a Marketer) hits on a few points that are very insightful. His article really goes hand and hand with Sanya Weather's "Why People Quit" piece over on Eating Bees.His first strategy, Socially Excusable Meetings, states that games have evolved to a point where they offer complex, social environments and have become a "social excuse to meet and interact." Much like golf. As Van der Wal points out he's not the first to make this comparison. I've seen the analogy made that MMOs are in fact today's version of golf, which aside from a "social excuse to meet" has long been used as informal "business meetings." Why not take this modern day version of an old school concept to a whole other level?Strategies two through five: Create Clear Objectives, Instant Rewarding, Create a "common" Goal, and Challenge your User all seem obvious to everyone except gaming companies. The one that intrigues me the most is "Challenge your User" because as I've mentioned before, players are starting to feel less and less special. As Van der Wal points out, gamers are more than willing to listen and learn, spending hours of their precious free time in game. Instead of letting them just grind their day away - challenge them! His final two points (The Value of Status, and Create "epic" Experiences) are just as fascinating. Van der Wal's points aren't just marketing strategies though, they can even be regarded as design strategies. Strategies that could benefit the gaming industry immensely.
CES 2008: discussion panel on virtual worlds and the "MMO explosion"
Gamasutra has posted a panel discussion covering many different facets of virtual worlds and MMOs in general. The panel consists of several panelists coming from all sorts of companies from AMD to Turbine. Overall the panel discusses many of the issues you always hear about when virtual worlds/MMOs come up. You've got talk of evolution within the industry, in-game advertising, global relevance (aka "how can we conquer the world?"), virtual goods/secondary markets (RMT/item selling) and of course cannibalizing older markets.The discussion on each piece is mostly similar to what has been said already. There are a few intriuging quotes from some of the panelists throughout. Their conclusion to the discussion happens to be focused on a few aspects, but we found one was more interesting than the rest. Steve Goldstein from Flagship Studios had this to say, "As we spend the next three or four days talking about margins and monetizing, we shouldn't lose sight of the miraculous industry we're in, where people are selling imaginary gold and building real relationships across the world."Probably the most prolific statement of the entire discussion, Goldstein manages to bullseye the nail on the head.
