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Metaverse U: Metaverse 2.0, Tony Parisi

February 16th, 2008 (Visited 1989 times) Tags:

Metaverse 2.0: There, I Said It
Tony Parisi, Media Machines

Was one of the creators of VRML, currently at MediaMachines.

It’s good think about this as Metaverse 2.0 for one reason: it’s time to do some rethinks, we are stuck in a rut, there’s a chasm to cross. So I am not going to talk about warm fuzzy potential, though we share those visions here in this room. It is going to talk about tech, how it crosses adoption barriers.

There was a soup commercial, “is it soup yet?” We’re wondering why this isn’t soup yet. It’s interesting to see where pundits put it. On the left we have a quote saying that Secon dEarth comes with SL avatars in Google Earth - Tech Review 2007. And it’s portrayed as simple. And then there’s “Metaverse? It’s already here.” - Will Wright, with a very different sort of take on what the metaverse is.

But that latter one isn’t quite what we think about here… we think about the picture on the left here.

To give some history. This has all happened before. [Shows a graph with the last cycle of boom and bust in the 90s]. There was futurist flimflam. Just because this is all new doesn’t mean it will ALL be different. Right now we’re at risk of Santayana: those who don’t know history… Last time, with Chip & Randy with Habitat, and with VRML, we fell right into the adoption chasm.

Where I see us now, we’re in a trough of disllusionment with virtual worlds. We believe we are going to climb the slope of enlightenment.

here’s where we are today: wallaed garden virtual worlds, not integrated with their daily life. Communities with 100k’s in size. Then a wall, and the rest of the web is over a billion on the other side.

There’s two ways to break through the wall: explore the long tail of virtual worlds, and putting a bit more of the web into the web3d.

Long tail: Chris Anderson. SL is a great Long Tail example, actually. He popularized the notion from a statistical distribution: there are a few hits that move many units. There are many many many more things that a few people use/see. In the old days of distribution, you could only stock 4500 titles, so you only got the stuff at the head of the curve. Today you can sell many units down the far end of the tail.

At the top of our tail is entertainment, shopping, news, then mapping, and down in the tail we have education, travel, design, culture, etc.

Anderson lays down three rules:

1) democratize access. As much as we are enamored with SL, it needs to be made much easier, and relevant to the daily life on the web. Virtual worlds are a media type, not an application.

2) democratize production. Mor eimportant, but doesn’t make sense without the second rule. It has to be fast cheap and out of control, serve the needs of the artists. This gives the broadest choice for consumers, and then creative freedom for developers. And that is why open standards and technologies rule. HTML, XML, Ajax, X3D, COLLADA, XMPP, SWMP… consumers don’t care, but developers do.

3) more subtle: provide filters. Open directories, real search engines, good UI. If you integrate with the web, directories will just happen. Build it all with XML and you can search it. Someone should take a look at the last 20 years of game design and web user interface design.

More web! This is what made the web take off. they wrapped tech that was therealready: groups, gopher, etc. Subsume, leverage, innovate, collaborate, repeat as necessary.

But you might say “3d is harder!” Well, no it’s not. Sure, it’s harder, and gotta stream it, and render it, and blah blah. But you didn’t have to reinvent content delivery and networking…! Focus onthe real problems.

Questions:

Q: I like the fact that you pointed to Spore, which fascinated me when I saw the demo. Can you talk about what Wright did with Spore and what it means for us with virtual worlds?

A: If we could do a tiny fraction of what Will Wright is able to do with simulation, tools, and open environment, that would be incredible. That project is a paradigm of design and an enormous undertaking, and we will be digestig the results of that innovation for a long time. They UGC to heart, and what to give people tools for making creatures and environments… in terms of deployment and specifics, is where the similarities end.

Q: So I’ve been studying VRMl. What happened, why did the promise not get delivered?

A: A matter of timing. Different technologies have different right times. I don’t think it was the the being bad. Like Moore says: don’t introduce a disruptive tech while another disruption is already going on; the Web was what was going right then.

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Gamedev Planet wrote on February 16th, 2008 at 10:38 pm:

Metaverse U: Metaverse 2.0, Tony ParisiPosted on February 16, 2008 by Raph

mbf tod@y wrote on February 18th, 2008 at 5:16 am:

The Stanford Humanities Lab and featured some of the most innovative thinkers and practitioners in the field of virtual worlds. Read more about the conference at: Rapk Koster’s websiteDimitri Williams’ research on MMOMetaverse 2.0: Tony ParisiVirtual Worlds and the future of Work Metaverse Roadmap at Stanford University Virtual Worlds NewsBeth Coleman and Parvati Dev with Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs A Conversation with Brewster Kahle and Henry Lowood on Preserving Worlds

MetaverseU round up | Digado wrote on February 19th, 2008 at 5:25 am:

[...] Metaverse U: Metaverse 2.0, Tony Parisi [...]

Blog posts - Metaverse U Wiki wrote on February 21st, 2008 at 2:04 am:

[...] On the Go Metaverse U is Happening Raph Koster’s website Dimitri Williams’ research on MMO Metaverse 2.0: Tony Parisi Virtual Worlds and the future of Work Metaverse Roadmap at Stanford University Second Thoughts [...]

Out to Pasture » Blog Archive » Metaverse Roadmap notes wrote on February 21st, 2008 at 2:25 pm:

[...] Raph Koster’s notes from future of work talk and Tony Parisi’s talk [...]

Virtual Worlds for Business - IBM creates OpenSIM Data Center at Daikon Forge wrote on February 25th, 2008 at 10:15 am:

[...] a very long way to go, and some very thorny issues to resolve. Fortunately, people much smarter than me are working hard on such issues. There are likely to be any number of stumbling blocks along [...]

Virtual Worlds for Business - IBM creates OpenSIM Data Center « Samurai Pickle wrote on February 25th, 2008 at 10:16 am:

Metaplace - Metaplace Announcement wrote on February 25th, 2008 at 10:07 pm:

’s panel with Cory Ondrejka (former Linden Lab) and Howard Rheingold (online community guru). Raph also wrote notes on a couple of the other presentations at Metaverse U: Dmitri Williams’ ResearchTony Parisi (creator of VRML)Virtual Environments and the Future of Work Next up was the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, CA. Raph participated in a keynote in the Worlds in Motion summit and there was plenty of postmortem coverage:

Topic Digest: Metaverse U Conference wrote on March 21st, 2008 at 9:09 pm:

Raph’s Website :Metaverse U: Metaverse 2.0, Tony Parisi

Dave Rickey said on February 16th, 2008 at 2:31 pm:

The “metaverse” is not a web replacement, or even a web expansion. The metaverse is a platform for virtual LARPs. It’s a interesting environment in which to study what kinds of alternate realities people want to experience, but the people who think it is more than that are “Larping the metaverse.”

As a social environment in and of itself, it’s a dead end.

–Dave

m3mnoch said on February 16th, 2008 at 4:08 pm:

so, according to you, dave, amazon.com isn’t part of the metaverse? after all, it has an active community participating is various activities throughout the site. tho, maybe you’re right.

in that case, myspace for sure isn’t part of the metaverse.

and, since web sites with groups of people of similar interests aren’t part of the metaverse, then, there goes travian because, well… it’s a website with guilds and alliances and forums and such.

hmmm… speaking of. i guess there goes runescape too. if travian’s 2d spatial world representation and community aren’t good enough, neither is runescape’s. after all, it’s basically the same thing — a browser-based mmog.

and then there’s the maid marian stuff too. after all, we’ve already ruled out browser-based mmogs. that’s exactly what the sherwood dungeon is.

i guess since running around in a 3d fantasy rpg isn’t really part of the metaverse, then world of warcraft can’t be part of it either.

and, since wow isn’t part of it, i guess that rules out second life too. millions of people have crazy-intense real-world interactions in both — making friends, marriage, selling in-world stuff for profit.

let’s see? where were we then?

that’s right! the metaverse isn’t part of the web, therefore it’s got nothing to do with second life either.

m3mnoch.

Dave Rickey said on February 16th, 2008 at 6:13 pm:

Okay, then please enlighten me on what definition of “metaverse” you would like to use. Because it seems to be “anything electronic that isn’t a phone call”. Although that certainly includes a lot of things that certainly are part of the future (and current) social environment, it’s such a loose definition as to be meaningless, IMO.

The one I was using was the one that says the metaverse will be like Second Life, a virtual 3D environment people interact with as if they were characters in a Gibson novel.

Michael Chui said on February 17th, 2008 at 1:19 am:

“anything electronic that isn’t a phone call”

Actually, I’d include phone calls.

Michael Chui said on February 17th, 2008 at 1:29 am:

Sorry, should’ve added something:

I’d say that any technology that warps geography via communication is part of the Metaverse. That would include, yes, music CDs and photographs: which means we’d need a far more nuanced division to make heads and tails.

But saying the Metaverse is going to be a Virtual 3D Environment just seems thoroughly restrictive and disabling.

zarkov said on February 17th, 2008 at 8:17 am:

Metaverse have to be in 3D, the rest is plain Cyberspace:)

sean said on February 17th, 2008 at 12:18 pm:

People have to stop trying to build the vision of the “metaverse” from the eighties. It’s like trying to build spaceships from a Jules Verne novel or flying cars from a fifties pulp comic book.

The web is already here. Embrace it, don’t try to build a semantic wall between it and an aging legacy picture of monolithic virtual worlds.

JuJutsu said on February 17th, 2008 at 12:42 pm:

Well put.

Dave Rickey said on February 17th, 2008 at 1:36 pm:

Then why called it the “metaverse” and act as if the 3D environments are somehow an especially important part of it? My point is that those people who refer to Second Life as the beginning of the “real” metaverse are LARPing the metaverse, in much the same way that the Star Trek fans, the Goreans, and all the other subcultures in Second Life are engaged in a “virtual LARP”.

IOW, “metaverse” carries too much baggage, and it’s not a useful term used outside of that context.

guyal said on February 18th, 2008 at 9:28 pm:

I’m just trying to figure out why I agree with Michael Chui…

Let’s see - the term “metaverse” comes from “Snow Crash”, so its no surprise that systems that seem “Snow Crash-y” on the surface are hyped as “the metaverse”. The Stephenson concept didn’t seem philosophically restricted to 3d worlds to me. But, certainly, it and similar books have a strong “3d avatar acting in a virtual 3d space” element, in which that virtual reality was really similiar to our physical 3d world, except it could be warped on command. Ooh, instant, exciting fantasy for most readers.

“the metaverse must be a 3d virtual world” is what I’ll call the biblical view of the metaverse. Trace it from the literary source to your favorite overt software implementation. I’d like there to be more to the story than “the tablet from the mountain says the metaverse is 3d. End of discussion.” If “metaverse” must be limited to 3d, give me a logical reason why, beside, “well, the rest of our days are in 3d, and it would be really cool if we could warp that.”

It’s a limited fantasy. Billions will partake in it, at least from time to time, as it matures in entertainment value (pun, as well as no pun, intended), but its still limited. The reality warping that’s taking place via cyberspace outside of virtual 3d spaces is much more profound at this point, IMHO.