What if you built an awesome 3D Virtual World and nobody came? That seems to be the question facing the makers of a 3D virtual world that I recently discovered.

I was tinkering around with evolver.com a 3D avatar maker that hopes to create a common avatar for multiple web based 3D worlds. I was using it to create a new avatar for facebook, and I saw one of the “transport” options was something called

friendshangout.com

The name sounds atrociously lame. Sounds like a chat website for lonely emo teenagers. Who would want to go to a website like that? Curiosity, of course, got the better of me. The website was as lame as I thought it would be, featuring lots of pics of good looking college kids with dumb smiles on their face, and a video of some blonde chick reading marketing dribble from a teleprompter.

My first reaction was “I want no part of this”, my second was to see just how lame of a 3D chat this was going to be, like slowing down to look at an auto accident, or smelling expired milk before throwing it away.

So I create an account, go to the 3D chat page and pick a beach setting. My expectation dropped even further when I saw the 3D Chat runs in a web browser (remember Google Lively?). I was ready for the worst, and then…

OMG!!!

This was completely unexpected! A beautiful fully developed 3D world with awesome graphics, easy to use navigation, decent evolver avatars, that runs in a freaking web browser!

There are also vehicles to ride, and about a half dozen environments to explore. The only thing I didn’t try out was the chat feature as I could never find anyone else online. I pretty much had the place to myself, which was kind of sad.

This is a quality 3D Virtual World that impressed me way more than Blue Mars, and it is too bad it is buried behind crappy marketing.

Further reasearch indicates that the virtual world is based on the Unity game engine. The friends hangout “Island Paradise” is identical to the demo “Tropical Paradise” as seen on unity3d.com. Apparently some of the other places at friends hangout consist of other demos, or worlds created from arteria3d.com.

A little whois research indicates that friendshangout.com was registered over five years ago by a company that has a bunch of similarly designed websites, which tells me it is some off the shelf web template they are using.

So someone has managed to combined cheap avatars from evolver.com, with a cheap web based 3D gaming engine from unity3d.com (was $200, now available for free), and put up a cheap website with a domain they already owned.

If they were to actually get some professional web designer with a decent social network web system, and buy a decent domain name, and promoted it, they may have something really cool.  

There is not enough content here for long term interest, but in the mean time, I am enjoying what is here.

It is a nice place to visit on the remote outskirts of the Metaverse.

Metaverse News 3D art, evolver, friendshangout, metaverse, reviews, virtual worlds

The video above is not Google Earth, or Microsoft Virtual Earth. It is a creation of five guys in Britain led by Michael Fotoohi of Micazook.com. They have an ambitious plan of creating the entire planet in 3D navigable by avatars as seen in the video.  They use freely available aerial photography and digital street maps to create their world.  They are hoping to make a combination of Google Earth, Second Life, and Wikipedia.

Sounds like a cool project. More info can be found here.

Media, Metaverse News avatars, googleearth, mirror worlds, virtual worlds

Recently two of the big 3D Virtual Worlds released some numbers of how they are doing, and I thought it might be fun to compare.

IMVU

Population: 40 million registered users
Active: 6 million average monthly uniques
Money Spent (Annual Run Rate) : $25 million
Activity: Users average 1 hour + per day on the site
Peak Traffic: 80,000 simultaneous users online
Other Stats: 770,000 chat sessions per day, and 175,000 virtual items are sold daily
Source

Second Life

Population: Over 20 million registered accounts
Active: Over 1 million unique logins a month,  over 750,000 average monthly repeat logins (logged in at least twice in a month)
Money Spent (Annual Run Rate) : over $500 million
Activity: Users average 1.3 hours + per day on the site
Peak Traffic: Peak Concurrent Users hit 88,065 in April 09
Other Stats: Over 1 million monetary transactions per day
Source and Source

These are very interesting statistics. While I realize that the nature of these two 3DVWs is very different, making meaningful comparisons difficult, they both can claim #1.

IMVU is easily the highest populated, thanks to an aggressive advertising campaign. But, the Second Life economy is about 20 times bigger. Oddly the activity and peak traffic statistics are very similar, so there is no clear winner based on popularity.

Then there are many that question whether or not IMVU is even a virtual world or not. By my broad definition it is, but others consider it a 3D chat program and social network rather than a Virtual World.  Since you can create your own avatar, build your own home, customize both as you see fit, and visit any room you want, its a virtual world in my book. The only significant difference between IMVU and the more narrow definition of virtual world is navigation.  You cannot walk around in rooms, you click on little yellow dots which animate your avatar to a location in the room. You also cannot navigate from room to room.You select an active chat, or create a new one, and you move to a room. Due to the lack of navigation, there is no real estate or vehicles, which explains why its economy is smaller than other virtual worlds.

Some of the statistics are questionable, or at least not directly comparable. IMVU’s active user count seems to be based on sign ins to their website, which is a social network site as well as a portal to the 3D chat, while Second Life’s is purely client logins. The IMVU client allows you to sign in and then wait for a friend to invite you to chat like other IM programs do. That would also skew the “activity” stat above.

Similarly, Second Life’s Activity stat is over inflated due to bots. “Bot” programs keep an avatar logged in daily for long hours, they are used to automate club invites or to model clothing in stores. While bots are a small number of the active user count, they over inflate the time spent in world. According to SL’s own charts 3% of the avatars log in for more than 300 hours a month. That 3% represents 34% of the “activity” in SL.

So are these the two biggest? Well most 3DVW services are a bit stingy with their statistics. About the only thing we have to compare is total accounts (Population), which as you can see above is misleading. No matter how you measure, “active” accounts is always significantly lower than total accounts.

Here are the next five 3DVW’s based on population stats (via kzero.co.uk and other press releases):

PS3 Home 7 million
Free Realms 5 million
Red Light Center 3 million
There 2.5 million
Kaneva 2 million

All others are under 1 million.  Of these five, I suspect There has the most robust economy (possibly bigger than IMVU), but Free Realms is the fastest growing (a million new sign ups a month), and likely the most active these days.

Regardless, it is clear by population alone that IMVU and Second Life’s position as #1 and #2 (or #2 and #1 depending on what stats you use) are safely uncontested at this time.

Metaverse News IMVU, secondlife, virtual economy, virtual worlds

Just read an announcement that Doppelganger inc. is closing the teen oriented 3D virtual world vSide a week from today. Its sister 3DVW “Virtual Lower East Side” was still in beta when it was “temporarily closed for updating” about a year ago and never re-opened due to pulled sponsorship from MTV which also closed Virtual MTV a few months back.

I always thought it seemed a bit too simplistic, and the lack of variety in avatars and clothing options was a turn-off. But it did not take up much drive space, and the cool looking line art graphics could run on older machines without a problem.

But after three years of development, it should have been more popular by now. Lack of additional funding is the culprit.

I’m going to have to look at the other virtual worlds to see if they are all still operating. In this economy we could likely expect more closings.

UPDATE: see my comments below.

Metaverse News closed, virtual worlds, vles

The new 3D virtual world Free Realms by Sony, launches today! So I thought I’d post a review.

Free Realms is sort of a hybrid program. It is kind of like a virtual world, kind of like an MMORPG, and kind of like an online game portal.  “Kind of like” gets used a lot in explaining Free Realms. For example, “the graphics are kind of like World of Warcraft”.

It probably has the distinction of being the first MMORPG for all ages.  Really young kids (below 8 yrs) might find many activities too hard but others just right, Adults might find it a little too cutesy, but it manages to balance things enough so that parents and children could play together and both find it entertaining.

Free Realms has multiple activities. Some include “Brawling” (like a MMORPG style melee fighting), racing, demolition derby, “cooking” (simple 2D flash games for kids),  raising a dog or cat, playing board games (chess checkers, etc), and playing collectible card games. There are other types of activities available if you sign up for the full version of the game.

I tried this out in beta, but even then it already seemed like a full complete game. I did not really run into many bugs or horrible lag. Some players did however. It seems the better your computer hardware, the fewer problems you should have. A good video card seems to be especially important.

I found the game entertaining enough to play and the world is big enough for quite a few hours of fun, but it seems that as soon as you get far enough into an activity, your progress is hindered unless you sign up for the full version ($4.95 a month) . The “Free” part of “Free Realms” only goes so far it seems.

For example, I got into a battle with a “boss” and managed to defeat him by using some health drinks. After the battle, I looked to see if I could get some more health drinks, and it turns out the “gold” I have been collecting cannot be used for more health, only “Station Currency” which requires credit card purchase

Nevertheless, there is enough to do in the free parts to know whether or not you enjoy it enough to become a full member.  It is an entertaining enough program, and I suspect there may be quite a few players who do sign up.

As a “virtual world” it is very basic. You can customize your avatar, though there are not a huge number of choices. Each activity has a different outfit, which you can customize as you advance in level, or purchase optional items. The video demos I see indicate that home and yard decoration will be an option, but did not see anything like that in the free version. There are no player submissions. Chatting is limited for child safety reasons.

The MMORPG part is also somewhat basic. Even in the free game, you get better armor and weapons as you level. Being kid friendly, there is no “killing” or “dying”, it is all about knocking out the other guy before you get knocked out.  If you get knocked out 5 times in a mission, you lose the mission.  Most missions involve talking to NPC’s which launch individual “instanced” missions.  I have yet to see any team missions.

Racing felt a lot like one of those Nintendo kart racing games, where running over things gives you additional abilities like turbo boost, etc. Click to start a race, and others may join you, or more likely you will face a bunch of computer drivers.

It is definitely worth trying out if your computer can handle it.

Metaverse News 3D navigation, freerealms, reviews, virtual worlds

There is a lot to say about the Open Sim paradigm, and I’ll be covering it in future posts. For now, I’ll just say it is very early and there is a lot of work still to be done. Right now all it is is a poor substitute for Second Life, but I think it has huge future potential as long as they diverge from the SL model at the right point and go their own way.

I just felt the need to introduce the topic in a clever way, because it will be an important topic for the future.

Links to stuff mentioned in the comic:
Second Inventory
OpenSimulator
NuAthens archive by Lordfly Digeridoo

Previous Related Posts:
Dark Times for 3DVWs Part 3: Second Life’s Fatal Design Flaw
SL Open Source Update!

Metaverse News, Virtual Society future, opensim, secondlife, virtual real estate, virtual worlds

This is part 2 of an ongoing series about what works and does not work in 3D Virtual Worlds (3DVWs) in hopes of educating anyone thinking of building their own. In part 1, I discussed the importance of avatars. For part 2, I want to discuss the silly but strangely popular idea that if we could access a 3DVW from a web browser it would be a huge hit, and finally bring 3DVW programs to the masses.

The primary attraction for even attempting to create a 3DVW that runs in a web browser is from looking at all the success the 2D virtual worlds have been getting.  Conventional wisdom says that the primary obstacle standing in the way of 3D virtual worlds having the same level of success is that people do not like downloading and installing a separate program just to play.

There is some truth to that, studies have shown that only one out of 10 new visitors to a 3DVW website will bother to download the program. So requiring a download apparently drops your audience 90% right off the bat.

I believe this is only an obstacle initially. People will download a good program that promises to benefit them, especially if it is free and comes from a reputable source.

From what I have seen so far, and from what I have heard is in the pipeline, there is no real point in trying to run a 3D virtual world in a browser, its bad conventional wisdom based on faulty logic.

There may be some good reasons to have 3D displays embedded in a web page, if nothing else its an attention grabbing novelty.  But 3D multiplayer worlds with chatting and building capabilities do not fit into the web page model the same way they do with 2D virtual worlds.

The state of the art

A quick note on the state of the art (in case you do not follow my blog): There are a few 3DVWs that can run in a browser already. Among the ones currently available are Exit Reality, Just Leap In, and Vivaty. All three still require either a small download or a browser plug-in to work. I have tried all three and they all feel like novelties rather than full fledged 3DVWs. If the primary goal is to add a 3rd dimension to the 2D Virtual World, none of these come close.

There is a largely unrecognized truth in all this: 3D virtual worlds are not 2D virtual worlds with depth. The two attract different kinds of players. Play style and activities are of a very different nature. 2D is much more social, 3D is a more creative outlet. 2D is “point and click” just like the web. 3D is played like a video game.

Once you accept this truth, it logically follows that a 3D virtual world designed to play in a web browser will never work. Playing inside a web browser is too limiting, too simplistic.

A good example is Google Lively. It was probably the greatest 3D virtual world ever to reside in a web browser. It was a failure, because people found it too limiting. Outside of chatting, the two primary activities in 3DVWs is building stuff in 3D, customizing your environment.  Lively provided a simple but inflexible interface for building, and no real ways to customize. Exploring what other people have built was not that interesting due to limited content. Every room was variation of the same 5 or 6 rooms. Lively’s legacy is that it mostly killed the dream of browser based 3D worlds.

A downloadable full fledged client may limit your audience, but it makes your world much more flexible, usable, and customizable.

Alternate approach #1: Put the client in a browser

Since it seems that every browser based 3DVW requires a download anyways, maybe the approach is to embed a mini client in a browser.  This is the approach being used by Pelican Crossing and 3di. This allows you to create an embed on a web site that opens the Second Life client inside the browser, the user of the embed is taken to a location specified by the embed.

The primary question that comes to mind is “why?” Linking to Second Life locations is already possible via SLURL. There.com and other 3DVWs have ways of creating links to specific locations as well. A client embed looks cool, but it is limiting the size to a part of a web page (which you can click to full screen) but does not add functionality to the client. Multiple embeds on a page are unworkable unless you have a really good computer.

Now what would be cool is a way to convert Second Life places to VRML and embed them so you can show non SL users your creations. People would not have to have an SL account to see it, nor have a full SL client, just some generic VRML viewer. This is actually possible. There are tools available to convert SL objects to XML files for backup purposes, and these could easily be converted to VRML files.  The biggest obstacle to this idea is the lack of wide access for SL to XML converters. This is a very sticky issue (maybe you have heard of the copybot controversy?).  Still it is a cool idea.

Bottom line it is easier to add a browser to a client, than a client to a browser.

Alternate approach #2: Accessing 3DVRs via interactive streaming video (Cloud gaming)

Cloud gaming via embedded video is coming very soon. At least two companies OnLive and Gaikai are developing interactive web video technology allowing you to play (nearly) lag free video games remotely through streaming video.

Most online games works like this:
1. your computer or console “renders” your environment from game data stored on your computer.
2. you take action
3. action is sent to gaming server
4. gaming server decides outcome which is sent back to your computer
5. go to step 1.

“Cloud Gaming” works like this:
1. Your computer gets a streaming video feed from an online server.
2. you take action
3. action is sent to gaming server
4. gaming server decides outcome, renders the outcome from game data stored on the server, and converts it to streaming video
5. go to step 1.

That seems like an awful lot of work for the game server to handle, but if they can get it to work, there is no real need for powerful gaming computers to use the service. Theoretically, I could play Crysis in high definition detail on my ipod. There would be no need to get the latest hardware, or constantly updating your console.

Sounds pretty good, but unfortunately it could not work with Second Life as it is currently designed, because there is no way the service could handle all the custom textures. Handling the bandwidth of the streaming video is one thing, handling the bandwidth with the Second Life Servers as well would be a networking mess.

Just because SL will not work in a cloud computing environment does not mean another 3DVW could not.  If models and texture data were hosted on the same physical network as the rendering, it would eliminate the extra bandwidth. The 3DVW would have to work via submissions like There.com does, rather than instant feedback like SL. Building could be done with offline tools, then submitted. Since the whole technology of “Cloud Gaming” is in its infancy, I do not expect to see a 3DVW built with it for at least another 5 years.

Sounds difficult, but that may be the only way to get a usable 3DVW to play in a web browser.

Really, I don’t see the point.

Metaverse News 3D navigation, 3D Web, cloud gaming, exitreality, justleapin, onlive, secondlife, virtual worlds, vivaty

I’m following up my 3 part problems with 3D Virtual Worlds (3DVWs) with a series of at least three observations on what REALLY makes a good 3DVW. There is a surprising amount of myths in this regard. It seems most builders of 3DVWs do not understand their own potential audience.

Lets start with something that most all players understand, but as far as I can tell most game developers do not: “It’s the AVATARS Stupid!”

I have listed on my website something like 25 active 3D virtual worlds. Of these 25, how many have really great avatars?

The answer is zero.   I counted … twice.

I’ll tell you what a really great avatar is. Its an avatar that looks like PS3 Home’s avatars, behave like There.com’s avatars, and is as versatile and adaptable as Second Life’s avatars. Not one 3D Virtual world fits all 3 bills, especially Home, There, and SL.

People define who they are in virtual worlds by their avatar.  It is important for most players to have the means to create an avatar that is unique and at the same time beautiful.

Most 3DVW devs don’t get this. They are more focused on building a world to explore, or building the tools to let players build a world to explore. This is also important, no doubt, but no matter how nice your world is or how great the tools you develop, people will not stay very long if the avatars suck. I’ve seen it happen, heck I have done it myself.

Now I could spend the rest of this post trashing all the bad avatars, but that would not be helpful. Instead I am going to go over the almost good 3DVW avatars that are out there and tell you whats good about them and what needs to be in any future 3DVWs, if you want any chance to be successful.

Playstation 3 Home Avatars

I do not own a Playstation 3, so I am not an expert, but there are enough videos online to get the gist of the program. Basically the avatars in Home are realistic looking humans like any of the modern video games out there. They use morphing to make realistic looking joints and motion (failure of SL and There), high resolution textures and bump maps, clothing that actually has a thickness and folds and does not look painted on (another failure of others), lighting shading and highlights that looks more like real skin, real hair, real cloth, etc.

The primary negatives of the PS3 Home avatars is the quality and variety skin textures. Not just skin textures, everything. The lack of user customization means that everything about the avatars seems generic. They are also not very expressive, seems like a zombie world in PS3 Home.

Now I know what some of you are going to say. Why is realism so important? Many popular virtual worlds. both 2D and 3D have succeeded with unrealistic, almost cartoon looking avatars. I have even pointed out that there is such a thing as avatars that look too real. But, that’s not the case with any 3DVW I have seen. The truth is players prefer realism. In games that have custom texture markets (a subject for another memo post) the best sellers are almost always the most realistic ones. This is true in Second Life where realism is standard, and There and IMVU where avatars usually start with a cartoon look. Realism is an aesthetic people like in an avatar regardless of the environment.

There.com avatars

There has been around for six years now and is started to become dated. Despite this, there are aspects of There that are way ahead of their time. One is the behavior of the There avatars. First, the built in animations are first rate, better than Home even. They walk, run, sit, and stand very naturally. Their stances are constantly changing the way a real person standing for a long time would change.

Secondly, There avatars are great in the art of conversation. If you are using voice, the avatars look like they are lip syncing, and even gesture as they talk. If you are using text, it takes clues from the text to express mood. Use words like “happy”, “joy”, ”fun”, etc, the avatar starts smiling. “sad”, “bad”, “bored”, and they start frowning. LOL or ROFL or ROFLMAO get increasingly expressive laughter. Thirdly, the There avatars seem aware of their environment. If someone is talking, or doing some kind of action, they turn and look at that person, and nod or maybe even smile with approval.  They act differently around dogs, and with most vehicles they act like they are really interacting with them. If they are standing alone, they start to look bored even annoyed after a while. Yes, I am aware that this type of reaction is typical in single player video games since the 80’s, but surprisingly still uncommon in multiplayer games.

No other game comes close to this type of world interaction. IMVU can mirror some of it, but that is because Will Harvey is behind both programs. He is one of the few that gets it. Another one would be the short lived Google Lively, also created by a former There programmer. Lively handled two person interactions (handshake, hi-five, hug, kiss, synchronized dance, etc) far better than even There or IMVU.

Scripting in Second Life can mirror some of this action and interaction, but controlling facial expression via scripts in SL is very difficult, and turning a head to look at a speaker is damn near impossible. These simple actions make an avatar feel much more alive.

Second Life Avatars

It has been a complaint of Second Life since it opened almost six years ago that the default avatars are, well ugly. They look funny, they walk funny, the hands and face are damn near impossible to control. Those of us who came from There to Second life had to adjust to the lack of AI in these avatars. Suffice it to say that the strengths of Home and There avatars are precisely the weakness of Second Life avatars.

The one area where SL avatars are strong, which almost makes up for their weaknesses, is their customization. A good skin texture and shape makes them look a lot better, a script triggering animations makes them behave better. The “Appearance” options in SL has over 100 slide bars for customization, clothing and hair options number in the millions. Top and bottom halves of the avatar have 3 levels of clothing textures each, not including the base skin texture. You can attach objects to every part of the body, meaning if you want to look like another creature or “furry” you can. Attached objects can be scripted as well, so you can use particle effects to turn yourself into a human torch if you want. Customization is great for “role play”, easily the most popular activity in any 3D virtual world or MMORPG.

If you can imagine it, it can be done with SL avatars. No other 3DVW can even come close to this level of avatar customization.

Which leads to…

The ideal avatar is a combination of all three of the above, with the addition of the two person interactions like Google Lively had. I know the average Virtual World developer would balk at all the work it would take to pull off this much detail in looks, behavior, and customization, but it would make your world unique.

We have enough environments and building tools already, and these things can be upgraded as you go anyways. Avatars cannot be easily upgraded, especially if you allow future customization. If for example, Second Life fixed their avatars the way they should be fixed, all current clothing and prim attachments would basically become useless. The ensuing “restart” might ultimately be a good thing, but the aggrivation it would cause would be rather intense. It ain’t gonna happen.

Virtual Society avatars, PS3home, secondlife, There, virtual worlds

There.com’s sister 3DVW Virtual MTV is closing its doors. Here’s a portion of the note posted at There:

Members,

As some of you might have heard, MTV is planning to shut down “vmtv.com”, originally known as “Virtual Laguna Beach”, later this month. We at Makena will be sorry to see it go, as its environments based on hit shows like Laguna Beach and The Hills were a new experience for us, and an exciting learning process for Makena and the VMTV community. As you can imagine, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on why they decided to shut it down, or what their future plans are.

However, as you all know, a virtual community is far more than the environment. In fact, it’s a small part of what makes it a community. Even though the environments are gone as we knew them, we know that the VMTV community will still be there, and many of them might visit us in There.com. As with any visitor from any virtual world, I know that the There community will welcome them and do their very best to make them feel at home.

As you know, VMTV was based off the same software as There.com, but it had a “simplified” UI and lacked a lot of There’s coolest features (Hoverpacks, ‘hugs, and real estate, to name a few), so a lot of the members might have questions and need a little help here and there. I know you’ll all be more than willing to help them out and introduce them to everything from CC Metro to our huge catalog of developer items.

So let’s dust off the Welcome mats and warm up those volcano fizzes! Company’s a comin!

Michael Wilson
CEO, Makena Technologies

Viacom, once a major supporter of these worlds, who also sponsored the now goneThe L Word Islands in Second Life, and the vSide clone Virtual Lower East Side, seems to be pulling out of the 3D virtual world business all together.

This is no doubt part of the major cutbacks being made at Viacom, which isn’t making as much money in TV ad revenue as they once did.

Update: From the vmtv.com forums:

Dear vMTV member,

In August of 2006 MTV launched its own virtual world where you could watch our shows and live the MTV life, virtually. You’ve sent us your comments and we listened. We’re excited to let you know that you can now check out a new and improved version of Virtual MTV at virtual.mtv.com! This new ALPHA version is browser-based and allows you to create an avatar, get your own crib, explore virtual worlds and play games.

Here’s how it’s going to work: On February 19, 2009, vMTV (www.vmtv.com) will officially close and the new virtual world experience will begin. You will be able to link your new virtual account with your old one and convert your MTV$ to our new virtual currency, MTV Coin, at a 1:1 exchange rate (e.g., 1 MTV$ will convert to 1 MTV Coin). Be sure to link your accounts by February 18th or your existing MTV$ will not be eligible for conversion for use in the new Virtual MTV.

To convert your MTV$ amount to MTV Coin, you first have to sign up for MTV.com and then link your existing avatar to that account (it helps if the email you use for vMTV is the same). If at any point you have trouble linking your account, please email us at virtualmtv@mtv.com. For terms and conditions of the use of MTV Coin in Virtual MTV please see our Virtual Reality Additional Terms for MTV.com http://www.mtv.com/sitewide/mtvinfo/virtual_terms.pdf

Thanks for playing and we hope to see you in our new world – we built it with you in mind!

Thanks and enjoy,
MTV Staff

So that’s that. Another one bites the dust.

Metaverse News closed, There, virtual economy, virtual worlds, virtualmtv

This is the second of three “opinion” pieces on what I see as an imminent shake up in 3D Virtual Worlds, dividing myth from reality. Today’s topic: economic realities.

Two things are certain today: Virtual worlds are growing in popularity, and the economy is shrinking.

I think it is a safe bet to say that virtual worlds will not save the economy, but unfortunately a bad economy might be very destructive to virtual worlds.

The primary effect is that VC start up money is likely to dry up fast. Any virtual world currently not making money via customer sales and/or corporate sponsorship is likely to fail soon.  Who knows how long corporate sponsorship will last as well. I know a big sponsor of There was Cosmogirl, a magazine that has recently stopped publishing. There still has MTV, Coca Cola, Paramount Pictures, and Toyota as sponsors, so they will likely survive. I have noticed many corporate sponsored servers in Second Life have also disappeared as companies tighten their marketing belts.

On the other hand, historically sources of cheap entertainment tend to prosper in hard times. Movies were big during the great depression, but the price of tickets have gone up since then. Virtual worlds are cheap or free for most players, so it is possible they may continue to grow during hard times.

Basically, 2009 is going to be a bad year to launch new Virtual Worlds, many unprofitable ones will likely drop out as well. But, older established worlds will likely see growth in traffic.

Here’s the dark side as I see it: Today’s established 3D Virtual Worlds (principally There and Second Life) are already “old” technology by today’s gaming standards. I know of at least four 3D Virtual Worlds that will be going into at least beta this year, maybe into full release, with superior graphics and (hopefully) smoother game play. In today’s economy, do any of them stand a chance? The principle goal for all new games from now on is: MAKE MONEY FAST!! Spending five years being unprofitable while you build an audience is no longer an option in today’s economy. We are likely to see more products appear and fizzle out like Google’s Lively did.

Part 3: 3DVWs failure as an advertising platform, and what to do about it.

Metaverse News future, virtual economy, virtual worlds