virtual-worlds
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Online operators avoid balls-up with football trademarks
The last time we saw any statistical data on overall awareness of intellectual property issues, it seemed that awareness of copyright and trademarks was quite appallingly low – and actual accurate knowledge about them was a very rare thing indeed. Surprisingly few people seem to know their way around the don't-do basics, and with record numbers of trademarks being registered in recent years, it is actually nice to see that some online operators have got a firm grip on things this year. Honestly, if you tossed a press release on our collective desk touting your virtual environment or MMOG having items or outfits available in support of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ ... well, it'd probably cause an avalanche of pizza boxes ... but after we got the mess cleared, we'd probably assume that your promotional stuff was littered with unlicensed FIFA trademarks. It's happened before.
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life
Second Life has just seen its seventh anniversary (called its seventh birthday, only it technically isn't -- the original birthday is in March, but the anniversary is in June. There's history there). It's also traditionally a time when Linden Lab and Second Life users most often treat each other as enemies and obstacles; and it is a time for retrospectives and for considering the future. With the departure of Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon (the press release release says "stepping down," but the day prior to the release many Linden staffers were saying that Kingdon was fired) Linden Lab has hit a turning point -- or the end of another era. Accordingly, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to look at the history of Second Life, starting back in 1999 and continuing to the present day. Or at least as much as we can cover the ten-year history of something so rich and diverse in the available space. Second Life is quite legitimately a phenomenon (and even won an Emmy award). It was also something of an accident, since it wasn't what Linden Lab started out to make.
Linden Lab CEO steps down
TechCrunch has announced more changes in the works for Linden Lab's troubled Second Life virtual world. On the heels of a move that laid off 30 percent of its workforce, the company has announced that CEO Mark Kingdon will be stepping down and giving way to Linden founder Philip Rosedale in an interim capacity. Additionally, CFO Bob Komin has taken on the role of COO. Linden has yet to announce a definitive reason for the upper-management restructuring, but many are speculating that the company will be looking to add a CEO with experience in the burgeoning social networking scene. Rosedale, posting on the Linden blog, had the following to say regarding the moves: "Our thinking as a team is that my returning to the CEO job now can bring a product and technology focus that will help rapidly improve Second Life. We need to simplify and focus our product priorities - concentrating all our capabilities on making Second Life easier to use and better for the core experiences that it is delivering today. I think that I can be a great help and a strong leader in that process." Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
The Virtual Whirl: A crisis of confidence
Most things in the world operate on faith. Governments, currencies, intellectual property, human rights and brands all require certain minimum levels of belief and confidence in order to function. When it comes to virtual environments, as I've maintained in the past, faith is critical.
The Virtual Whirl: The bottom line
Hot topic of the week would be the Linden Lab layoffs. 30% of the staff (roughly 110 or so individuals) were laid off this week in a round of layoffs that we spotted ahead of the official announcements. Additional staff have been shed since the beginning of the year. Staff have been dropped from market-development, business development, engineering, quality assurance, human resources, community and executive management. Hardest hit this week are community and customer-advocacy roles and quality-assurance/testing. What isn't hard to see is why these cuts were made, and in fact, why they are vital to Linden Lab as a going concern. At least it isn't hard to see when you're looking in the right place.
Linden Lab laying off staff, closing Singapore office
Back in April, we observed the departure of what we estimate to be approximately 5% or so of Linden Lab's total headcount. Some churn is to be expected, of course, especially in a tech company. It seemed a little odd that the positions didn't appear to have been advertised or refilled, but sometimes that happens out of sight. Last week, a Lab spokesperson confirmed for us that the Lab still had in excess of 300 staff. This week, however, we're actually becoming quite concerned as there are signs of what seems to be a significant series of layoffs in progress at Linden Lab.
The Daily Grind: Virtual world passport
Escapism isn't always a bad thing, in our opinion, as long as you do come up for air in the real world now and then. Escapism can even be used to handle difficult real life situations, serving as a stress-relief valve or a place where you can be accepted no matter what. In our travels through virtual worlds, we expand our imaginations, broaden our horizons, and become refreshed mentally and socially. So assuming you're not like my ex-girlfriend (who truly wished with every fiber of her being that she could literally pass through the television screen and live on the Enterprise for the rest of her life -- and talked about it incessantly), what virtual world would you like to visit in the flesh if you had the chance? Would it be the grassy meadows of LotRO's Shire, the ganktastic fields of slaughter in Darkfall, or the reimagined worlds of Star Wars in SWG? What world would you want to see in true 3D, experiencing not only sights and sounds, but taste and touch and smells as well? Imagine that today you were handed a 24-hour passport to the virtual world of your choice -- where would you go? What would you do with that time?
The Virtual Whirl: Is one hour enough to be considered an active user?
It has long been a matter of considerable debate among virtual-environment pundits about what constitutes an 'active user'. In some ways, subscription MMOGs have it a lot easier than many other kinds of virtual environment. You can always count paying subscribers, and that's all that matters. In a general-purpose virtual environment, free-to-play or 'freemium' model, though, counting active users is important. Trends in active users measure the health of your user communities, as well as allowing you to credibly measure your virtual-world's e-peen compared to that of the competition.
2010 Linden Prize winner: The Tech Virtual
The online arm of the San Francisco Jose based "The Tech" museum has been announced as the winner of this year's second annual humanitarian Linden Prize. The Tech Virtual museum will collect the US$10,000 prize for projects that "[elevate] the human condition through using Second Life," and "improve the way people work, learn, and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world." The Tech Virtual (which has been open now since 2008) acts as a center for the creation of reusable (and frequently interactive) science and innovation based concepts and exhibits, and offers US$ design prizes for exhibits which demonstrate fundamental principles in a variety of areas. Even the museum design itself is a collaborative effort, and the museum is providing prototypes for the construction of physical museum spaces.
The Virtual Whirl: Linden Lab short-lists viral poultry for humanitarian prize
In just a few more days, the winner of the second annual Linden Prize is going to be revealed, and the ten finalists have been announced. The stated criteria for the Linden prize are projects that "[elevate] the human condition through using Second Life," and "that improve the way people work, learn, and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world." Therefore, I feel it only natural that I was rather astonished to see sionChicken/sionCorn in among the finalists, since it apparently does neither of these things.
The Virtual Whirl: The secret sauce
Virtual environments evince a significant lack of mainstream adoption. Relatively tiny percentages of the world population are involved in them in any way online. There's something clearly missing. At the present time, virtual environments simply lack any compelling reason to exist that motivates mainstream users and might drive mainstream adoption. There's no killer app, or secret sauce that gets large numbers of people thinking "I want to get me some of that!"
The Virtual Whirl: Immersion, virtual environments, Facebook, and the conceptual hump
Second Life is an immersive virtual environment. That is, it fosters attention and a quality of focus. You might subscribe to alternative definitions of the word "immersion", but focus and attention are the sense being used when developer/operators talk about an "immersive environment". They might intend one of the other meanings at other times – the word is a pretty slippery one. The problem is that for most general-purpose virtual environments (eg: Second Life), that immersivity – that quality of attention and focus – kicks in pretty late. Only after you understand the basics of the context in which your actions, activities and experiences are taking place, do you have the satisfying sort of immersion that comes so easily to flat spaces like the Web and Facebook.
The Virtual Whirl: Vox virtualis
A change is as good as a holiday, they say. Seriously, I don't actually know anyone who says this other than myself; though I'm assured that there are some folks out there who do. With that tragically underutilized platitude in mind, then, last week I posed a question to a spread of well-known virtual environment users (at least to those that I felt would actually respond) and collected the responses. The question put to the respondents was "What's the single thing that the operators/developers could do to make you feel more satisfied with their virtual environment offering; what thing would help an operator keep you as a customer, or that would make some other operator more appealing than the one or ones you already have?"
The Virtual Whirl: Death and taxes
"Nothing is certain but death and taxes"; a rather sardonic and bleak proverb, quoted and paraphrased by a number of famous figures over the years. The earliest on record was Daniel Defoe, in The Political History of the Devil in 1726. Well, this week the death part doesn't concern us so much as the taxes. Many Americans have spent this month scrambling to get their taxes filed, and for many of the rest of us our own turn comes due in just a couple of months. With that in mind, I thought I'd talk about the taxation status of virtual assets.
Linden Lab hands down Second Life metrics for Q1 2010
Today, Linden Lab is releasing the quarterly metrics for Second Life, showing overall performance for Q1 2010, and contrasting that with the performance of previous quarters. Linden Lab claims that Q1 2010 was an all-time high for the Second Life economy. We'll drill down through the metrics and see if that's so.
Blue Mars experiencing slow but steady growth
Blue Mars entered a scaled open beta back in September, and we've not heard a lot from that quarter since then. It's still there, though, quietly doing its thing and keeping its fans happy. Jim Sink, the CEO of Honolulu-based Avatar Reality, spoke recently with Honolulu Weekly about where Blue Mars stands today. Blue Mars has a fairly small audience of around 100,000 and adds roughly 10% to that figure every month. Part of the reason for the small audience is the limitations given by the game itself, but Sink hopes to change that in the near future: "The current version of the game is slow on older PCs. We're adopting a new technology called the Cloud Fusion Server this summer though that will allow anyone to play Blue Mars online." The team behind Blue Mars hopes that this will open the doors for a much larger player base. Plans for things such as a switch to browser based play and Facebook applications give Sink hopes for a bright future for the game. Honolulu Weekly has the full interview with Sink, and it's well worth a read for anyone interested in the genre. [via Worlds in Motion]
Evans et al vs Linden Lab: The new lawsuit on the block
Just to strain our collective brain here at Massively, there's a new lawsuit that has been leveled against Second Life operator, Linden Lab. Plaintiffs Carl Evans, Donald Spencer, Valerie Spencer and Cindy Carter have applied for a class action lawsuit against Linden Lab on property ownership, misrepresentation and fraud. The plaintiffs are represented by Jason Archinaco, of Pribanic, Pribanic, and Archinaco LLC of Pittsburgh. You may remember Archinaco's name as the man who represented Marc Bragg in Bragg vs Linden Lab on similar issues. That particular case was settled, and the terms of the settlement remain unknown – but appeared to be favorable to Bragg. Another name you might remember is our second-favorite USA Federal Judge, Eduardo Robreno, who heard the Bragg vs Linden Lab case, and is now hearing Evans et al vs Linden Lab. It's almost like old home week! Glee! Robreno found issues with the Second Life Terms of Service, and with the Terms of Service likely to go on trial in this case, it could have far-reaching effects for similar boilerplate EULAs for other virtual environments and MMOGs, as well as for Linden Lab's own new Terms of Service.
Free for All: A look at WURM Online
WURM Online is no ordinary MMORPG. Sure, we have seen some systems like this in a few other games and are seeing more games come out that promise features like this, but WURM has a charm and a community that make it second to none. Essentially it is a game of survival, pitting the player against themselves. There are many ways to die but those can be avoided if you use your head and practice some patience. I have a short history with the game, recently playing it with my social network site and for my blog, but after a few months break I decided to check out some of the changes that came along. There have been some tweaks to character models (which are essentially slightly animated dummies) and improvements to performance (the game runs in JAVA) but it was nice to see some of the same buildings still standing and to hear the familiar sounds of sawing and wolves howling.
Fahy vs Linden Lab: This just gets weirder
The other day we covered a lawsuit by Corey Fahy (AKA Belial Foulsbane in Second Life) vs Linden Lab, various third-party viewer developers, content creators and others. While there doesn't seem to be any case to really answer (because you can't copyright a name, method, process or algorithm, and Fahy seems ineligible for legal costs and statutory damages in any case) things definitely took a turn for the weird last week.
Virtual Island Entertainment offers MMO for women
As much as a goodly portion of the MMO market is perfectly happy blowing up spaceships, killing untold numbers of rats, punching criminals in socially-awkward spandex, and generally behaving like a twelve-year-old boy... suffice to say that a lot of people have zero interest in those settings. Virtual Island Entertainment from enVie Interactive is aimed specifically at that category of potential player. Specifically, they're aiming for women, trying to create a virtual world that they claim "caters to women looking for an engaging online game that speaks to them." The game's feature list is focused more along the lines of social environments rather than gameplay; players can engage in "episodic content, unique shopping experiences, high fashion, art design, and intimate encounters, all in a tropical island setting." Comparisons between the game and the 200-pound gorilla of virtual worlds, Second Life, are all but inevitable, and there is a small mention that the game hopes to support a certain amount of user-created content. Scheduled for release in the second half of 2010, it remains to be seen what kind of following Virtual Island Entertainment will draw and how the target audience will respond.
