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The Hills in Times Square

April 6th, 2007 (Visited 1988 times) Tags:

I was in NYC over the last day (only on the ground for 16 hours or so! Apologies to all my New York friends whom I didn’t get to even call to say hello). I got up yesterday morning and it snowed on me.

Among other things, I was there for an interview for CNN International. Expect to hear about a Future Summit show on virtual worlds in June… current tentative date is June 13th, and it’s supposed to be a 20 minute package. I did 25 mins or so of interview, which I am sure will be trimmed to 45 seconds.

I also now know about TV pancake makeup first-hand. No fun. My lower eyelids still feel bruised.

Anyway, I snapped the following in Times Square; the giant video screen right next to it showed clips of avatars frolicking, but alas, I snapped the shot a bit too late and managed to instead get an advertisement with someone cutting a cake instead.

It was definitely a zeitgeist sort of moment for me — a “we’ve arrived” kind of sight.

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The Forge · Crepes, Soccer Moms, and Dopamine wrote on April 8th, 2007 at 3:49 pm:

[...] The Truth in her mind) but decided to focus on what kind of crepe to get instead. Raph mentioned a zeitgeist moment he had in Times Square in NYC recently and this felt very much the same thing to me. The Marin [...]

Crepes, Soccer Moms, and Dopamine wrote on April 9th, 2007 at 6:11 am:

csven said on April 6th, 2007 at 4:01 pm:

Frolicking?

Raph said on April 6th, 2007 at 4:07 pm:

That’s what there is to do in those spaces. Well, that, shopping, and making out.

Mike Rozak said on April 6th, 2007 at 6:05 pm:

A few years from now you may find yourself wishing that “we HADN’T arrived”, and that the general public had taken no notice of virtual worlds whatsoever.

Psychochild said on April 7th, 2007 at 2:05 am:

Too late, Mike.

Tomas said on April 8th, 2007 at 4:50 am:

@Mike: yeh…It definitely won’t ever be the same again. But maybe something even better will come along?

Andrew Wooldridge said on April 8th, 2007 at 11:08 am:

The great thing about something coming into mainstream like this is that it makes way for whatever is the new “next thing” which always builds upon the past. Perhaps come combination of mobile, virtual world, casual/passive gaming, social network, and search engine will be the “next - next” thing.

Derek Licciardi said on April 9th, 2007 at 6:27 am:

Everyone here knew that the government would eventually get involved. WoW’s a billion dollar a year game. RMT is a huge new market. All this and no one’s paying taxes and some might be committing fraud. Its not long before ID thieves use virtual worlds to launder money in large sums through automated means.

Arriving is a good thing but we need to be prepared for the law, the accountants and the regulators because they come with the package for better or for worse.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on April 10th, 2007 at 6:10 am:

Great! Too bad I don’t watch TV (nor do I have access to one). Will it be available on the web?