IBM gives Second Life the Accolade

This is a good week for business with and within virtual worlds. The place, where most of the good news originate is San Jose, the Virtual Worlds Fall conference - (which I sadly had to miss because of a pressing project deadline). And the most important announcement from a pure PR point of view was the agreement between IBM and Linden Lab to work on the standardization of virtual worlds technologies, probably. The areas of standardisation are:

• Universal Avatars
• Security-rich Transactions
• Platform stability
• Integration with existing Web and business processes
• Open standards for interoperability with the current Web

So, will we have stargates between rival virtual worlds soon? Let's see. I don’t want to report on the (nonexistent) details of this agreement. You can find them at IBM, Virtual Worlds News, Linden Lab's company blog Reuters or eigthbar. What I find much more interesting are the repercussions this announcement sends through the industry.

IBM's very active involvement can be seen as a kind of accolade for the whole industry. And it certainly does not weaken Second Life’s position as one of the leading platforms in the virtual worlds market. IBM sends out a very strong signal, that it is taking virtual worlds seriously – and not just for entertainment applications purposes. And at the same time it recognizes Linden Lab’s efforts - not only as one of the most popular platforms but also as one of the platforms which might be on the forefront of a standardization movement.

Don’t hold your breath, though, if you want to travel with your level 75 mage from World of Warcraft to Second Life and expect to bring all your weapons and armor with you. I don’t expect this to be possible in the next three years. And it might never be possible in the way a few people are interpreting the goal of this agreement. ...

Technorati Tags: 3d web, second life, virtual worlds, web 3.d

On eightbar, Roo Reynolds writes for example:

[...] because Bobbie Johnson at the Guardian Unlimited rather hits the nail on the head:

“I don’t really want my avatar to move between a series of closed virtual environments: I want a single, linked virtual environment that I can move around freely.”

And that’s exactly where we need to take this goal of interoperability and standards in virtual worlds.

I am not sure if this is exactly where "we" (?) need to take virtual worlds. I am not sure if this will happen and - if it would happen - if this would be the outcome desired by most users of virtual worlds. At least it depends on the interpretation of "single, linked virtual environment". What would be great, would be a way to move from world to world without the need to go through log in processes. These worlds will most certainly be "different environments", though - very much different in some cases. And these differences will limit what initiatives like "Universal Avatar" can do.

Bobbie's and Roo's vision is fueled be the worldwide web of today, of course, which is perceived as one homogeneous environment, where yo move freely from page to page from website to website. There is no such homogeneous web, though!

If you look at a few dozens of websites you will see a wild variety of elements, page types, styles, technologies and functionalities. All of this is based on a set of (quasi) standards like http-protocol, HTML, CSS, grafic file formats like GIF, JPEG, ubiquitous plugins like Flash and QuickTime etc. But the results achieved by combining them are very, very different. Taking an element from one web page and transplanting it into a page on another website might be technically possible. But more often than not it wouldn’t fit there – because those sites use different metaphors, visual styles and even different technologies.

It will be equally hard to take a character from an MMO like City of Heroes (or from a hypothetically Donald Duck world) and transplant it into a World of Warcraft horde. Many avatars from Second Life would be similar anachronisms in an environment like Eve or Entropia. The same goes for a lot of objects within virtual worlds. Some of them would be (very unpleasant) anachronisms in another virtual world. Other simply would have no use or meaning.

What I want to say with these long and winding sentences? Simple: technical feasibility does not equal practical usefulness! Standardizing basic technologies does not equal a "single unified platform" based on these technologies. And the problem of interoperability between virtual worlds can certainly not be solved by technical standardization alone.

It might be easier to solve these problems if the goal of every virtual world would be to do an exact replica of the real world with photorealistic avatars, copies of real buildings, vehicles etc. Maybe some of the people involved in the current standardization efforts consider this the only worthwhile direction in which virtual worlds can evolve. I am afraid (not really afraid, I have to admit) that people's desires are different. What some business guys in the industry tend to overlook is, that most of the activity in virtual worlds (like on the web) is driven by entertainment.

But – not to be misunderstood – I applaud these standardization efforts, of course, and I can’t wait to see the first results. I am just afraid (honestly, this time), that there are a lot of (non-technical) challenges waiting around the corner, which might prove to be very disappointing for some of the enthusiastic supporters of the standards movements.

Comments

[Roo Reynolds]

> "Bobbie's and Roo's vision is fueled be the worldwide web of today, of course, which is perceived as one homogeneous environment, where you move freely from page to page from website to website. There is no such homogeneous web, though!"

I think the web is a perfect example of this blend actually. It's not homogonous, but it can seem that way because of the largely common underlying standards which allow anyone to plug in and develop at a number of different layers. You don't care who developed the web server your accessing, and you shouldn't have to; HTTP over TCP/IP is ubiquitous and everyone adheres nicely to HTTP. You can also pick between a number of browser clients, and most of the time the end results will be passably similar (because HTML and CSS are, with some exceptions, well adopted). Pick a layer, whether it's physical or abstract, and you can create another example.

> "But the results achieved by combining them are very, very different. Taking an element from one web page and transplanting it into a page on another website might be technically possible. But more often than not it wouldn’t fit there – because those sites use different metaphors, visual styles and even different technologies."

This is a good point, and why it's so funny to see people make what I hope are jokes about moving your Warcraft character into Second Life. The standards which will make it possible to move your avatar (inventory, wallet, friends list, ...) between worlds are key, but it makes little sense to think only in those terms.

And this, actually, is my point. *Just* having transferable avatars is still not enough. In fact, it does seem that I'm in agreement with Bobbie on this, and I loved his line about the situation in which "my avatar has to act as the hyperlink". We (and by we I mean the industry and the world) can do better than that.

The blurring of the boundaries between virtual worlds and the web as we already know it - with all its richness and variety yet common underlying standards - and the ability to do more than *just* super-teleport an avatar between worlds, that's where it gets really exciting.

[Markus Breuer (Pham Neutra)]

Roo, we probably do agree more than we disagree :)

What I wanted to emphasize was the fact, that, while there are some basic underlying standards (or quasi standards) which are the foundations of the web as we know it today, there is a lot of diversity on the upper layers. And that is not easily translateable between sites. Some of these not-easily-translateable elements are analoguous to avatars and inventory items, actually.

The funny remarks about avatars moving from WoW to Second Life have an important (and completely serious) core: the metaphors which virtual worlds present, the visual styles, the attributes of your ID (avatar), the functionalities of the platform and the client are very much different. And while there will be a convergence movement with some of these aspects, there might be a much greater diversity left even in the future, than some commentators envision today.

Actually it might cause more problems (anachronisms) for a Second Life avatar crossing into WoW (or Entropia) than vice versa.

It might be possible to circumvent some of these problems with "mappings". Other differences between platforms might prove to be rather stubborn ones ...

Many of these challenges are non-technical ones.

There are some interesting technical problems, to - which I am sure will be covered in the standardisation efforts - but where I don't see easy solutions: what about moving objects from platform to platform for example (especially between from a platform, where user get IP rights for their creations to a more laissez faire platform)? The DRM word raises its ugly head here.

Summary: Great initiative ... and a long hard road to travel :)

[James Taylor]

The thing that really stands out for me is when you say,

"Many of these challenges are non-technical ones."

Absolutely! The technical challenges can't be ignored but they never seem as complex in comparison.

It's good to see the current web get a mention as I really hope that these 'new' challenges are addressed with existing sites and services in mind- I already have online avatars and identities, from facebook to Amazon, and I hope they don't get forgotten. The appearance of your avatar in different spaces and virtual worlds is only one facet of your identity, and one which may vary- it's easy to see a fantasy warrior, a soccer player and a cartoon character all meeting up together in Sony Home, while donald duck might look a bit out of place in WoW! And, as Roo says, there is plenty more to it than that.

Exciting times.

[Len Bullard]

Information wants to be free.
Art wants to survive.

The author's sun is the language.
The platform distributes.

If the bargain is to use the tools to host on the site, the author demands a language or when the tools goes, so goes the expression.

Our history shows this. If the language had not been the basis for the VRML97 design, no expression of it would still be working twelve years later.

But VRML97 still does. X3D extends the power and range of integratibility of the VRML97 scene graph without losing the VRML. This has proceeded unbroken because care was taken in the language design to keep the existing content alive.

Isn't that marvelous?

IP-free unencumbered application of the language is the contract between the tool and the author. This frees expression from the tool and this is the freedom we as artists DEMAND.

A sun is the free energy of a universe. A language as generative tool is the free energy of our minds. A tool is and only ever is a means to express the language.

A sun gives warmth.
And it takes your life.
A language remembers.

[Just Some Guy]

Standards? They're great, for technologists.

Wherever possible, they should remain irrelevant to artists. By definition, they stand directly in the path of creativity.

Now, as to how to balance both of those and come away with something that is worthy of creativity - as well as works - well that I can't fit into a comment box. ;)

Good article.