Blogging live from the 'Metaverse' in Karlsruhe.
Nic Mitham from the 3D consulting agency KZERO is giving an overview of virtual worlds.
The following depends on his statements and comments.
He is differentiating mainly by the age troup that is targeted, the number of registred users and the age of the world itself.
When VWs (virtual worlds) communicate user numbers we have to be aware of the following indicators.
- registered accounts – awareness indicator
- unique acounts – cleaner awareness indicator
- active accounts – engagement indicator
- concorrent accounts – live activity
- premium accounts – value indicator
Really big for age 10+ are:
- Neopets with 45 million users
- Barbie Girls (12 m)
- Webkinz (1m) and many more.
- Lego Universe (LU) will be released in 2009.
These are the future users of SL and similar worlds
Lego is really user generated content all the way. In real life or virtually.
In it you can generate Lego models in a Minority Report' like interface.
And there is 'Darkling Battle', a fighting game.
LU will be combining gaming and social networking and collaboration for kids 10-12, but appealing to all ages.
More toy brands will go virtual like Barbie and Lego. Teaching and education in VW will also grow and early relationship building (social networking, virtual animals).
Age 10-20:
- IMVU (20 Million, since 2004, pedophile issues)
- Wee World (21 Million, oldest)
- but: Habbo (90 Million, also 2003 or earlier)
- Stardoll, Club Penguin (acquired by Disney, 17m)
- Whyville (3m, second oldest)
- Gaia (12 Million).
There is the issue of content control and moderation regarding pedophiles in faster growing worlds.
Case: vSide – a vertical virtual worlds concentrating on music. You play a 'virtual guitar' in jam sessions, practice and show off at virtual parties.
"Playstation Home" is a virtual place cor PS3 owners to meet before they connect to play games together. Very good graphics. Free of charge but with virtual accessories and virtual gifts. It has been beta for quite some time but will be big once it starts.
Is Stardoll really a virtual world? In comparison to SL: no. It's customizing digital dolls on a website.
For users between 20-30 years:
- vMTV (1.5m registred)
- There (1.5m)
- Kaneva (1m)
- Activeworlds (1m)
- Twinity
- MYCosm, many vertical Worlds: sports, music, fashion, ...
30+: mirror worlds, based on a location in the real world: moving into a VW you recognize - „a virtual London or New York“.
If Google is going to mive VW they will do SN in a 'real' environment.
Amazing Worlds is targeting tourism, recreate real tourism spots. Recreation takes a lot of time. We will have laserscanners that can scan areas quickly and recreate them. We will use the architectural data to create the virtual environment before the real one is built - this is currently happening in Dubai.
MyCosm will start in Q 3/4 2008. It will also be user generated content with a presumably very innovative cretaion module.
Growth in this area is maybe along:
- vertical worlds
- gifting, media convergence (3D spaces for movies)
- business and pleasure usage
- inter/outer operability
Nic shows a campaign he did in SL for L'Oreal: 'Some brands are good for Sl, others are not. You have to identify your target group and find a world where you can market it."
VWs for ages 30+:
- Second Life
- HiPiHi
- eRepublic
- Kinset
SL has almost no competitors in this sector.
Growth in this area will be
- enterprise apps
- inter-worlds apps
- mirror worlds
- augmented reality
Question time:
- (Markus Breuer in the room asks: How high is the popuation of the metaverse at the moment? Rougly 100 million uniques.
- Monthly growth in uniques: 10-15% (Markus Breuer in the room estimates 10%)
-
What about royalties? Brand owners often ignore
it (like Gucci in SL). Gucci Bags in Bangkok are a problem, the same
bags in SL cause no loss to Gucci. Nic's suggenstion is to collaborate.
Users of the VWs are big brand advocates. If they are selling: work
with them.
- Christian Scholz (Mr. Topf) sees a lot of interoperability ahead. The VW-sphere will become simlar to the web.
-
The innovators and aearly adopters are already in - the early majority
is still 'in waiting mode'. There is a gap between those groups and
that is why growth has slowed. and there is not only value in VWs than
markeing - like collaboration.
- (person who worked for LL/SL till
alst summer:) Companies need to create reasons for the avatars to come
back. They need to unsderstand the VW first. You also need to include
it in the marketing package on all channels.
- Nic: There are the
builders and the big agencies. and the agenies have to take the blame
for the bad press about deserted corporate islands.
K Zero is a virtual worlds consultancy. We are specialists in connecting real worlds brands and companies with the residents and environments of virtual worlds. Its work is closely with virtual world owners to further development and improve their in-world propositions and market positioning.
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