The Otherland Group - Blog

The Intraworlds are Coming!

In the first wave of the big virtual worlds hype (which was a Second Life hype, actually) the canonical application for this new technology was "marketing" - maybe because marketeers are the ones, which just love new ways to reach the minds of customers (and the costs for some experiments in Second Life did not mean much in relationship to typical marketing budgets). They were disappointed after a while, when they discovered the size of their target groups, which they could reach through Second Life ... and the anti-hype began.

At the same time, quietly and steadily, another group of people began to discover virtual worlds. And actually, it seems as if at least in the "corporate world" there is a lot more immediate potential for a real ROI with applications in the context of intranets and education/training. The big advantage of virtual worlds, immersion, the feeling of being together with other people, no matter, where they are in the physical world, is extremely interesting for these application areas, too. That is not just a virtual worlds fanboy's opinion. IBM,  Gartner, Forrester or McKinsey do agree.

So, while we might have to wait a few years until the global Metaverse appears, there will certainly quite a few Intraworlds around in the near future. I would like to define an Intraworld as follows:

Intraworlds are to virtual worlds what intranets are to the web. An Intraworld is a virtual world, which is accessible to the employees of one company. The server side of such a platform usually runs in the company’s own data center and the users access the world with PCs connected to these server(s) through the company’s LAN (or through a VPN connection). Additionally, an Intraworld is optimized for similar purposes as an intranet: communication, information sharing and general collaboration. Typical applications are meetings, conferences, presentations and sometimes training.

In a similar way you can define 'Extraworlds', too, of course.

The first products, which are optimized for this market, are Sun's Project Wonderland and Qwaq by a company of the same name. Both are intended to help companies set up their own Intraworlds. Qwaq is more of a packaged service offering (see here), while Project Wonderland is a real "tool kit" in a more technical sense. You can build a virtual world with it, but you can not simply "log in to" Project Wonderland. Sun has used Project Wonderland to create their own demo intraworld, already, which it calls MPK20.

I will be looking into both products in some detail in the coming weeks.

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

Die Intrawelten kommen!

In der ersten Phase des "Virtuelle-Welten-Hypes" (der eigentlich ein Second Life Hype war) nahmen Viele an, dass das Hauptanwendungsgebiet "Marketing" wäre, vermutlich, weil Marketeers immer nach neuen Wegen suchen, ihre Kunden zu erreichen (und die typischen Kosten für ein Second Life Experiment in Relation zu typischen Kampagnen-Kosten nicht besonders hoch erschienen. Diese Leute waren sehr enttäuscht, als sie feststellten, welche Reichweite ihre Kampagnen in Second Life hatten (was keinen Experten verwunderte), und der Anti-Hype begann.

Zur gleichen Zeit entdeckte eine ganz andere Gruppe von Anwendern heimlich still und leise die virtuellen Welten. Und tatsächlich sieht es aus, als gäbe es zumindest in der "Corporate World" ein großes Potential für Projekte mit virtuellen Welten im Umfeld von Intranets, Aus-/Weiterbildung sowie Training. DER große Vorteil virtueller Welten, Immersion, das Gefühl - unabhängig von räumlicher Distanz - mit anderen Leuten zusammen zu sein, zu kommunizieren und zu arbeiten, ist für diesen Anwendungsbereich hochinteressant. Schließlich arbeiten in allen großen Unternehmen die Teams inzwischen standortübergreifend zusammen und Reisekosten und -Zeiten sind ein entsprechend großer Kostenblock. Nein, das ist nicht allein die Ansicht eines "Virtuelle-Welten-Fans. IBM,  Gartner, Forrester und McKinsey stimmen zu.

Wir müssen vielleicht noch ein paar Jahre auf das Werden des globalen Metaversums warten. Bis dahin wird es aber sicher eine ganze Reihe "Intrawelten" geben. Wobei ich Intrawelten wie folgt formulieren würde:

Intrawelten stehen zu virtuellen Welten, wie Intranets zum World Wide Web. Eine Intrawelt ist eine virtuelle Welt, die nur den Mitarbeitern eines Unternehmens offen steht. Der Server einer solchen Plattform steht meist im Rechenzentrum der Firma und die Anwender erreichen diese Welt nur über das firmeneigene LAN (oder über eine VPN-Verbindung), Weiterhin ist eine Intrawelt optimiert für einige der wichtigsten eines Intranets. Kommunikation,  Informationsaustaushc und Zusammenarbeit im Unternehmen. Typischen Applikationen sind Meetings, Konferenzen, Präsentatione, Diskussionen und manchmal auch Trainings.

Analog dazu könnte man natürlich auch 'Extrawelten' definieren.

Die ersten richtigen Produkte für diesen Markt sind Sun's Project Wonderland und Qwaq (der gleichnamigen Firma). Beide sind dafür gedacht, Unternehmen beim Aufsetzen eigenen Intrawelten zu unterstützen. Qwaq ist schon mehr ein fertiges Lösungsangebot (siehe auch hier), während Wonderland ein echtes "Tool Kit" ist. Man kann eine Intrawelt damit bauen aber nicht einfach in eine bestehende einloggen. Allerings hat Sun Project Wonderland schon dazu genutzt, eine Intrawelt für das eigene Unternehmen zu bauen, MPK20.

Ich werde mir beide Produkte in den kommenden Wochen mal etwas genauer ansehen.

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

Why do we feel that we own our body?

If we ponder what the the Metaverse will look like in 10 years we might think of a world in which you can enter a virtual environment totally and with all your senses, not just the eye. This is the vision of numerous science fiction novels like "Snow Crash" or "Otherland".

If you have read "Otherland" or similar novels you will remember that one of the issues discussed is the danger of losing the connection to your own body if you dive too deeply into the virtual world. You fail to be able to "come back" and fall into some kind of a coma.

All fiction?

The German Magazine "Gehirn & Geist" has an article titled: "Why do we feel that we own our body?"

The Swedish researcher Henrik Ehrsson from the Karolinska Institute approached this question experimentally and I must say I was very surprised that this was still an open issue and that research was going on in this area.

The findings her replicate my own experiences, though (from a very "scientific" point of view, of course):

It certainly IS possible, to identify with your virtual body (avatar)! You can easily further this identification through emphasizing the connection between physical and virtual body by  making them go through the same "experiences".

The King of Second Life is (not yet) dead. Long live the King!

Every one but me already wrote about this probably, but I still can't hold my 2 cents back.

A little more than a week ago, Philip Rosedale, founder ad CEO of Linden Lab announced his intention to step down from his post as CEO and look for an external manager to take over. As soon as this person has been found Philip Rosedale will take over the post as Chairman of the Board (currently held by Mitch Kapor).

See Philip's personal statement here and Adam Pasick's excellent analysis here.

This move came as quite a surprise to many observers. Others had expected another change in the top management of Linden Lab for quite a while - as the growth problems of the company were a little bit too apparent lately. A founder handing over the CEO position to an experienced manager after a startup has reached a certain size is nothing unusual, additionally.

These are certainly troubled times for Linden Lab and Second Life. All in all this feels like very good news to me, though. Philip Rosedale has been an excellent "visionary founder". Without him, Second Life would not exist. Without him, the platform never would have reached it current size. No one else would have accepted the risk to base a platform like this nearly 100% on the idea of user generated content. And that was certainly one of the driving factors for Second Life's (arguable) success.

But - while I certainly do not know enough about the inner workings of Linden Lab to judge this objectively - from the outside it looks as if he wasn't a very good "manager" once the company reached a certain size. Linden Lab never seemed to have clear priorities for the development of the platform and many publicly announced goals have not been met. Although the scaling and stability problems of Second Life have been apparent for more than 2 years, most of the projects to overhaul the basic architecture are still in the planning stages.

Linden Lab's support systems and processes are "barely adequate" on a good day, pathetic on a bad one. (The support team is great and full of enthusiastic people, but its badly understaffed and working without a balanced set of priorities "from the top".)

Second Life has probably the steepest learning curve of all virtual worlds known to me - and (coincidentally?) the worst retention rate when it comes to "trial accounts". This has been known for at least 3 years, and still, there has not been a single major overhaul of the software's user interface in all of these years; maybe because the company's boss is much too intelligent, to really believe that average people simply can not understand his product. ;)

We can only hope that this will improve with a more operations-oriented top manager responsible for day-to-day operations. This hope is not just optimism. Look at a company like Google. The founding geniuses are still on board. But the company's operations are lead by an experienced manager (who probably won't understand the math behind Google's ranking algorithms - but doesn't need that to be successful in his job).

Many in our industry are very skeptical about Second Life these days, And that skepticism isn't unfounded. Linden Lab's track record hasn't been perfect in the last three years, to phrase it politely. The platform's performance is erratic at best, software services important for residents and developers alike go down every weekend. And many of the improvements promised regularly by Philip and other officers have missed their deadlines - some of them for more than a year or indefinitely ...

OTOH Second Life is still the platform with the most flexible development capabilities, with a lot of good developers and the most representative demographics.

Additionally, the OpenSim project might (!) deliver an alternative, open source, second-life-compatible platform, which can easily be used to create closed and semi-open worlds utilizing the tools, developers and other resources which are available for Second Life today.

I wouldn't be too surprised, if Second Life would be considered as one of the leading platforms for the creation of the Metaverse in 2009/10 again - if they select the right CEO soon.

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

Learning from with virtual worlds about the coming nano-based economy

A fascinating aspect in the economy of virtual worlds is the fact that - once a product has been designed - production costs are nearly zero. Some people usually wonder how an economy can work at all, when production costs (and distribution costs, too) fall to zero. Would this lead to everything being offered for free? Certainly not, as the economy in virtual worlds like Second Life, There or IMVU tells us.

But is this 'realistic"? Does this have any relevance for the 'real' (?) economy? Can we learn anything from virtual worlds economies under such unrealistic assumptions? We certainly can!

In many industries, productions costs are rapidly dwindling too, and there already is a flourishing industry selling digital goods like music, movies, ringtones etc. And all those items are NOT being offered for free. Why? And how will these prices will develop in the future? What will happen with other types of products which can be manufactured at ever dwindling costs (for different reasons)?

If you are interested in science fiction or some of the more futuristic technologies like nano-tech manufacturing you might have heard about the theory, that nano-assemblers will - one day - be able, to create ANY material object from raw materials available in abundance. The idea is to directly manipulate single molecules or molecular building blocks (like depicted in the picture to the right; Source: Foresight Institute).

While it is NOT certain, that nano-tech manufacturing will be possible ever ... if it became possible, it would certainly change the production industry in a dramatic way: the production cost for nearly all physical goods would shrink dramatically. Just Science Fiction? Maybe ...

But is interesting, to think about these ideas. If you want more food for thought, read Snowcrashing Into The Diamond Age 2 (Part Two) by Extropia DaSilva. Warning: Extropia, like Gwyneth Llewelyn, who published this text, has a tendency to produce long and winding texts. It is well worth the time to digest this essay, though.

While I am not saying that nano-tech manufacturing is right around the corner - it is certainly interesting to think about the parallels between such an economy and the economy of virtual worlds (or industries like music and entertainment already today). Virtual worlds might be an exciting training ground on which to test business models for the "real" world.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, augmented reality, metaverse, virtual worlds, web 3.d

Protecting property rights in Virtual Worlds - interconnected Virtual Worlds

Among the attributes, which separate Second Life from other virtual worlds, is the fact, that every resident owns the full IP rights of his or her creations. There has been some debate, how "real" this assertion by Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, is. But it is at least real enough that there are many very real businesses based on the creation and sales of digital goods. And - like with all digital goods - there have always been attempts, to "steal" them i.e. circumvent the permissions system, which protects property rights and controls what other users can do with your objects.

Lately a new solution, SecondInventory, came onto the market, which allows Second Life residents to make backups of their own items to the local disk - a functionality sorely missing from the Standard Second Life. And soon this product was accused of being a thief's tool. As the debate raged on, some technically oriented Second Life residents began to argue, that any such permission system is superfluous, because if can't offer real protection, anyway - "no technical solution is bullet proof" ... "and code wants to be free"

I think this is a very simplistic view.

While no technical solution is bullet proof ... and I don't believe, that any technical solution will keep people from stealing other peoples property (physical, digital, virtual, intellectual whatever) in the long run, there is a huge difference, though, between "some sensible protection" and "I don't care/I do nothing". Stealing is not OK.

Let me try to put this product "second inventory" (and the old copybot etc.) into perspective. Because the questions arising here are actually questions, which are important for many developments surrounding virtual worlds technology these days, especially the growing number of "alternative grids". What will happen, when the long awaited "interoperability" arrives and our avatars (and their possessions?) move freely from grid to grid, from world to world?

Read on ...

Technorati Tags: 3d web, metaverse, second life, trust, v-commerce, virtual worlds, web 3.d

China taking virtual worlds seriously

China will be launching a project to create a huge virtual world officially today. In the western world there is still a debate going on about the merits of virtual worlds. Every week someone declares this whole category of applications 'over-hyped', 'useless' or even 'dangerous'. Reports like the one by the Yankee Group from a few weeks ago even use completely faulty data to argue that nobody is actually using virtual worlds and companies should focus their efforts on currently en vogue platforms like Facebook and MySpace.

Actually, I don't think it is bad idea to check out the new marketing possibilities of Facebook. Innovating is something else, though, than just following the horde. It seems that even in the self declared 'creative' and 'innovative' industries and departments (advertising, pr, product development ...) people dare to try out a really new paradigm only, when most of their peers and the trade press agrees, that it is 'creative' and 'innovative' - which might be a little late. It took all those innovative guys some 2 years to understand that these online communities are really a new paradigm for (some of) people's relationships, professional and private networking needs and that they offer new opportunities for effective marketing.

Turn back the dial some 18 months and you will see, that those very same guys which are announcing now, that their companies will be doing BIG business in online communities (real soon now), were ridiculing the users of these online communities. Some of them even tried out MySpace, Facebook or started a small blog only to 'find out' that there were only antisocial, pimpled teenagers doing this stuff and adult consumers within their target groups would NEVER find the time for such frivolous activities. Times, they are a-changing ...

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

Was macht eine Online-Plattform zu einer 'virtuellen Welt'?

Es ist 'Haarspalterzeit' in der Virtuelle-Welten-Branche. Mit der Professionalisierung dieser Industrie wird es offensichtlich immer wichtiger, Kategorien zu definieren und sich abzugrenzen - speziell hinsichtlich der Trennlinie zwischen Online-Spielen und 'anderen, seriösen' (?) Welten. Spannende Diskussionen dazu gab es jüngst bei Metaversed und auch auf Raph Kosters Blog.

Ich möchte solche Haarspaltereien schon immer, besonders nach dem dritten oder vierten Bier. Deshalb hier mein eigener Versuch zum Thema (den ich glücklicherweise noch aus einem Buchkapitel, das ich letzten Monat abliefern musste, herumliegen hatte):

Das wichtigste 'Feature' einer virtuellen Welt ist für mich, dass sie das Gefühl, des Eintauchens, der Immersion unterstützen muss. Bei einer erfolgreichen virtuellen Welt habe ich nach einer gewissen Zeit das Gefühl, dass ich mich nicht mehr vor dem PC befinde, sondern an einem anderen Ort, zusammen mit anderen Leuten (deren Körper mir in der physischen Realität nicht nahe sind. Das ist aber eine blöde Definition, das sie hochgradig subjektiv ist.

Glücklicherweise gibt es aber vier klare Markmale, die notwendig (und meist hinreichend) sind, um das oben genannten Gefühl zu erzielen:

1. Räumlichkeit. Eine virtuelle Welt muss den Kontext, in dem Anwender interagieren, als eine Art Raum präsentieren, in dem jedes Objekt eine Position hat, in dem es Nähe und Distanz gibt.
2. Identität -- Avatare. In eine virtuellen Welt wird jeder Anwender durch einen Character, eine Persona repräsentiert. Diese wird oft "Avatar' genannt und wird vom Anwender gesteuert (nicht durch ein Programm). Avatare haben einen Ort in der Welt. Sie werden von ihrem Anwender gesehen und von anderen Avataren, die sich in der Nähe aufhalten.
3. Konsens. Alle Anwender an einem Ort (oder nah beieinander) sehen die selben Dinge und Avatare - ggf. aus unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln. Alle Veränderungen in der Welt werden gleichzeitig von allen Anwendern gesehen.
4. Persistenz. Jede Änderung, die ein Avatar in der Welt hervorruft, ist permanent. Wenn der Anwender die Welt verlässt und später zurückkehrt ist diese Änderung immer noch da (wenn sie nicht ein anderer Avatar rückgängig gemacht hat).

Dies ist eine sehr weite Definition - und das ist auch so beabsichtigt. Sie umfasst textbasierte MUDs. Sie umfasst Online-Spiele wie World of Warcraft und natürlich Plattformen wie Second Life, There, Kaneva at al.

Diese letzte Kategorie ist die kleinste (in Anwenderzahlen und Umsätzen), aber die spannendste für mich. Wie kann man diese von den Spielen abgrenzen? Einfach: man nimmt nur erzwungene Ziele weg und ersetzt sie durch Freiheit (die folgende Fomulierung basiert auf Entwürfen von Joel Greenberg/Giff Constable und John Lopez):

Freiheit. Eine ergebnisoffene, sozial orientierte Online-Welt ist eine virtuelle Welt, in der es keine Spielziele gibt, die Anwender erreichen müssen, keine künstlichen Barrieren, die sie überwinden müssen, keine Rätsel die zu lösen sind, um das 'virtuelle Leben' genießen zu könnene. In einer offenen, sozial orientierten Online-Welt definieren de Anwender ihre Ziele selbst und verfolgen sie auf ihren eigenen Wegen.

Das war's. Raum, Avatare, Konsens und Persistenz sind die Zutaten, aus denen virtuelle Welten gemacht werden. Ein großer Schuss Freiheit dazu und heraus kommt eine ergebnisoffene, sozial orientierte Online-Welt.

Ein paar ergänzende Erklärungen und Überlegungen ...

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

Measurable Results for Projects in Virtual Worlds

Now I have got a Slideshare account, too. The reason was a request, to share the presentation I did for the 1st Birthday of Germany's leading Virtual Conference Center Corecon. I don't really like to send around Powerpoints. And PDF is not a perfect format for presentatoons. So let's try Slideshare:

| View | Upload your own

Regarding the presentation: it is very much a "draft" and stream of thought just now and doesn't really work that well without a sound track. I guess I will be improving it in the coming weeks to get it out of beta status. This is a topic which is really at the heart (or very near to the heart) of our activities in virtual worlds. Making sense of business in virtual worlds. (And only measurable performance indicators are good performance indicators ...)

Anyway ... Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: 3d web, advertising, marketing, metrics, performance marketing, second life, virtual worlds, web 3.d

Opening words of Lord Putnam of Queensgate at the VWF in London

I have to admit that - as a German - it feels unusual to have two Lords doing the opening speeches at a trade conference. But actually, the first one, Lord Putnam, seems to be quite knowledgeable of the technology and many of the philosophical, sociological and economical challenges originating in this field.

It's hard for me to summarize it all - most has been said before, too. What I liked most, though, was his attitude towards the virtual worlds targeted at children (Gaia, Barbie World etc.) which have been extremely sucessful lately. He asks, if it is really most important,/enough to censor their chats and protect their email adresses, while at the same time doing not much more than trying to sell them consumer products. Is there really nothing else that children can use virtual worlds for, tha to consume and chat?

Actually there is much more, IMHO. The public focus currently is too much on "protection", though, while it should be on enabling.

Technorati Tags: 3d web, iwf london, virtual worlds, web 3.d