Raph’s Website » Virtual Worlds 2008 Wrap Up

Virtual Worlds 2008 Wrap Up

April 9th, 2008 (Visited 1736 times) Tags: 3d web, cory ondrejka

Virtual Worlds News has a great wrap-up article covering all of the major blog posts and reactions to the show. Sounds basically like lots of dealmaking and announcements, but also some tentativeness from many commentators. Be sure to read the takes from Prokofy, Christian Renaud, Cory O., and others. Some echoes of my “high windows” keynote at the GDC Worlds in Motion Summit.

However, what really struck me walking around the show was how constrained the virtual world dream has become. There are a bunch of projects that look like less populated and less functional versions of Second Life, usually with some marketing material promising a “safer” or more “corporate” environment. A few other companies are promising rapid and cheap creation of advertising worlds, leveraging outsourced production.

Is this really the Metaverse? Is this even the 3D internet?

-Cory Ondrejka

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West Karana » Neopia World, and why I’m not excited about Free Realms wrote on April 9th, 2008 at 11:51 am:

[...] be browsing the post-mortem of Virtual Worlds 08 (about which I made some posts on Massively), that Raph pointed to and saw this crumb about Nickelodeon making World of Neopia — finally! Pet-raising, [...]

Morgan Ramsay said on April 9th, 2008 at 11:12 am:

Is this really the Metaverse? Is this even the 3D internet?

Is the Metaverse, or 3D Internet, or whatever it’s called now, even viable in today’s marketplace? I haven’t seen anyone address that question, so I thought I’d ask.

JuJutsu said on April 9th, 2008 at 11:48 am:

I’d like to second Morgan’s question.

Raph said on April 9th, 2008 at 11:55 am:

I think that a lot of the articles I linked basically say “not quite yet.”

len said on April 9th, 2008 at 12:50 pm:

If not quite, then when? I don’t think it is a technology waiting to happen. It happened. What is the gnawing sense of disappointment all about: The Crash from the Sugar High.

A LOT of money was pumped into the market but there is no scaling market yet. Interoperability forums are so far just chest thumping. The sweet spot is in the language-standards as far as that goes, so somewhere between Collada and X3D.

You will not see a 3D Web. You are seeing a web with lots more 3D than there was ten years ago. You’ll see more. As I said elsewhere, it is like old age. One day you look in the mirror and it’s just there.

Morgan Ramsay said on April 9th, 2008 at 1:21 pm:

I think this Metaverse shebang seems like a case of flying cars. One of those “it’d be cool to see it happen” things, but also one of those things that will likely never attain critical mass. Some things are better left in fiction.

len said on April 9th, 2008 at 2:40 pm:

You might, Morgan, but by then, it will have a new brand.

SGML: Sounds Good Maybe Later.

Matt said on April 9th, 2008 at 3:38 pm:

You might be right, Morgan, but you probably want to be more choosy with the articles you quote. That one’s main talking-point was that combination smartphone/MP3 player would be “niche” and could never replace the iPod.

Oops. iPhone where?

Amaranthar said on April 9th, 2008 at 4:42 pm:

I see it happening, but I think it’ll actually take longer to go mainstream than one might expect. People will need to buy into it (in stages of course, as it evolves).

I think the tech will be here soon though, with all this fiber optics and whatnot, and all that super computer and etc., that’s being built right now.

And I recently read about a nano tech of some kind that can allow much better energy transmission with no resistance and very little heat loss.

Artificial atoms, fungi processing audio signals, E. Coli storing images, DNA acting as logic circuits, quantum computers, entangled photons, quantum teleportation…in ten years things will look more like Star Trek than not, on the tech end of things.

Amaranthar said on April 9th, 2008 at 4:51 pm:

I’d better get started on my new clothing line, I’ll call it Federation Fedora.

Repeat after me….
“Link Federation Fedora hologram.”

Morgan Ramsay said on April 9th, 2008 at 7:44 pm:

Matt wrote:

You might be right, Morgan, but you probably want to be more choosy with the articles you quote. That one’s main talking-point was that combination smartphone/MP3 player would be “niche” and could never replace the iPod.

Oops. iPhone where?

Al Ries also pointed out that “it’s true that whenever convenience is a major issue, you’ll find some examples of convergence.” Ries cautions that we ignore the hype and look at the numbers.

The iPhone is an up-sell of the iPod. The iPhone doesn’t cannibalize iPod sales and so the iPhone has not replaced the iPod product line. The iPod line remains dominant in the MP3-player market. The iPod line, by the way, has diverged into several, more strongly differentiated products. (Trivia: iPhone reportedly cost $150M to manufacture. Net sales of the iPhone, and related products and services, is currently around $364M with 3.69M handsets sold since Q3 2007.)

Does the Metaverse have a major convenience factor? What does the Metaverse give us the ability to do better or more easily? Is the Metaverse viable in today’s marketplace? How about in the future? (I’m not referring to the future in the sense of fantasy.)

H said on April 15th, 2008 at 9:25 am:

Oh, I’d wait till virtual world gets popular among its players.
How can you place money and expect a return when its not populated with enough players.
Before talking about marketing in virtual world and getting disappointed, I’d wait and see if this thing gets any bigger.

Virtual Worlds 2008 Wrap Up

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