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InteroperabilityOctober 10th, 2007 |
Some of you may have seen the announcement that IBM and Linden are looking to work together on creating standards to move avatars between worlds.
In fact, there was a whole “virtual worlds interoperability summit” that happened yesterday, with a bunch of folks at it, including Linden. I have a rough liveblog of Zero Linden’s talk on the matter which I will post up eventually. Many thanks to the folks like Peter Haggar of IBM who gathered everyone together to talk about the issues.
I think interoperability is a noble goal, and federations of worlds is an inevitable development. But aspects of the discussion made me nervous. Never mind the question of whether moving avatars across worlds is already patented or not, I was a bit bothered by assumptions that seemed to exist in the room (and said so, which made me somewhat unpopular, I think).
Among them:
- That moving avatars or objects across virtual worlds is actually much of a market need. The word “inventory” was used. What does that mean, exactly?
- Tied up in this is the assumption that there will be a minimum rendering bar that defines the metaverse; and not just a rendering bar, but a unified display standard. There were discussions about standard 3d file formats, for example. Eep.
- The whole phrase “3d web,” which to me is just wrong. Several folks seized on this phrase negatively, so I wasn’t alone, but Zero Linden actually disliked the word “web” in it, rather than the word “3d.”
- Entertainment, which accounts for 98% of all virtual world users and revenue, was not really represented well in the room. In fact, comments were made like “there aren’t that many virtual worlds right now” (there are almost certainly over 2000 in operation — gotta count muds!).
- Much time was spent on discussing things like a federated identity system that can cut across world operators, something which may actually be illegal in Europe. Several folks seemed to come in with the assumption that avatar = identity = user.
Bottom line, as I commented to some folks afterwards — if you asked me right now what an industry trade body should be working on, I would answer “public policy and lobbying,” not “technical standards.” For one thing, the level of interest in virtual worlds from policy quarters has been steadily rising for several years now.
For another, this is the highest period of ferment in technical reinvention of virtual worlds that I can recall happening in quite a long time. Virtual worlds architectures have only really evolved significantly and with widespread and lasting effects twice before — in ‘89 with the user content revolution and in ‘96-97 with the clustered server “massive” worlds. Today we’re seeing such broad experimentation with everything from browser-embedding and web integrated models to PHP systems to peer to peer systems and so on, that it seems like a period where standards might hinder more than help.
That said, I’m definitely going to remain involved — the only way to affect the course of stuff like this is to be an active participant and contribute. The group decided to continue talking about what shape a consortium might take, and the plan is to do it publicly so anyone can contribute, including users. Hopefully, we’ll see this come to fruition. Really, my only reason for blogging my qualms is to encourage others who have opinions about this subject to participate in the process as it develops.
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The majority of users has different ideas, IMHO.
” stands for “Multi-User Dungeon”) – how much more difficult might this be when trying to convert 3D graphics and scripted objects? Raph Koster, CEO of Areae, was in attendance at the original meeting and hadconcerns of his own. No real market research has been done, which might mean that even if these interoperability standards were functional, they might not be something consumers want in the first place. Most of what was being proposed was based on assumptions that weren’t
Virtual World Interoperability” (Link) – Julian Lombardi “Open Avatar Announcement a Great Move” (Link) – Tim O’Reilly “IBM, Virtual Worlds and Standards – a roundup” (Link) – IBM’s Roo Reynolds“Interoperability” (Link)- Raph Koster “Linden Lab and IBM Collaboration on Virtual Standards” (Link) – Second Life Insider Posted in cyberspace | No Comments » October 4th, 2007
IBM vill ha öppen standard i virtuella världar Läs mer här Open borders sought for virtual worlds (Reuters) och från enbloggsom bevakade “virtual worlds interoperability summit”.
Interoperability [Raph’s Website]
[...] “What do you reckon? Will it work?” No. I could expand, in fact I probably will as this thread develops. For now, I’m drinking my coffee
Here is an interesting, if short link. For those that don’t know, Raph Koster is one of the most experienced guys out there when it comes to community and online games. http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/10/10/int... [...]
[...] Koster, of general game punditry, remarks on the interoperability agreement to do with avatars for 3-D worlds. I love the idea of making avatar building a standard as common [...]
Teh future of MMOs…
Raph Koster just posted to his blog; here’s the link.
http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/10/10/interoperability/
One of his paragraphs really jumped out at me:…
[...] IBM and Cisco Virtual World Puzzle Why are IBM and Cisco playing in the Virtual Worlds space? Raph Koster has an interesting discussion about IBM and Second Life’s Interoperability initiative, but I think [...]
[...] between virtual worlds. No joke. Coverage in the New York Times and everything. Raph has some considered commentary on the ideas brought up by this [...]
[...] Interoperability [Raph’s Website] Raph chimes in on the idea of avatar interoperability, raising some excellent points. As I blogged earlier, I think the technical aspects of cross-platform avatars are dwarfed in comparison to the “soft” issues. Raph seems to agree. (tags: raphkoster synthetic.worlds avatar technology logistics systems discourse) [...]
[...] There was also some talk about interoperability (see a good post from Raph Koster on this topic here). I think we need optional information bridges around identity, experiences, and reputation [...]
[...] Eightbar, Crave, Mercury News, Metaversed, Mindblizzard here, here, here, and here, Out To Pasture, Raph Koster (on interoperability) SLNN, here, here, Virtual Worlds News, Vintfalken, Virtually Blind, Games On [...]
[...] движения аватар по мирам разной архитектуры) [...]
[...] Koster, CEO of Areae, was in attendance at the original meeting and had concerns of his own. No real market research has been done, which might mean that even if these interoperability [...]
[...] or objects across virtual worlds is actually much of a market need'. Hij vervolgde in zijn blog dat 'it struck me as odd that at the meeting, entertainment, which accounts for 98 percent of [...]
[...] than that, people are grumbling about Linden being the wrong company to spearhead this initiative. It seems there’s some [...]
[...] Koster, who also attended the meeting, blogged that standards were less important than political issues. Others, like Multiverse Co-founder, Executive Producer and Marketing Director Corey Bridges, who [...]
[...] http://www.reuters.com/article/techn…s&pageNumber=1 http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/10/10/interoperability/ [...]
[...] projet d’univers Metaplace, Raph Coster était toutefois présent lors de l’annonce. Il émet de sérieuses réserves sur la représentativité des parties engagées. “Le domaine du [...]
[...] “Interoperability” (Link) – Raph Koster [...]
[...] The question to my mind is: what are the actual benefits of this interoperability? Raph Koster voiced his concerns on this issue on his blog, the comments provide further insight into the [...]
[...] RSS: Interoperability [...]