Thanks to Ben Medler, who supplied an audio recording, I was able to concoct a video that shows the slides and videos I showed in synch with the audio. It’s a little over an hour long.
As usual, there were some places I misspoke (that is what happens when you don’t use notes at all!) so I superimposed errata directly on the video as captions. 🙂
No, not KOTOR. McDonald’s, the world I predicted at Sandbox would be bigger than WoW. 🙂
Today McDonald’s announced that the movie would be featured in its physical Happy Meals, which feature special codes to unlock content in the virtual world. It seemed inevitable that the physical Happy Meal promotions would get virtual tie-ins, and, just as in the real world, you’ll find Star Wars characters in your virtual Happy Meal for a limited time only.
Through September 10, users can play in a new space-themed area, complete a Jedi quest with Yoda, and unlock six exclusive Jedi characters with codes from the meal. It looks like the space station and Republic gunship haven’t arrived yet, though.
“In the Sandbox with Raph Koster” is IndieCade’s take on the talk. It’s interesting to see it getting a different slant from Ben Medler’s — part of what happens when you deliberately give a diffuse talk, I suppose! 🙂
Virtual Worlds News points to the latest Gartner report, which shows virtual worlds (primarily from an enterprise adoption point of view, maybe?) as being on the trough of disillusionment, but going mainstream in 2 to 5 years or so.
I wonder where Gartner would put the gaming worlds?
Ben Medler has a decent summary of my keynote speech at Sandbox/Web 3d. I will see about getting the slides posted up, but honestly, I am holding out for video or audio because I suspect the slides won’t make much sense on their own — this was a highly verbal talk, with mostly static images and hardly any text on the slides.
Most attendees are probably still at SIGGRAPH proper, so more summaries might trickle out over time.
One question that came up at the cocktail party, and also in Ben’s summary is the issue of advancing technology. Isn’t it true that even the postage-stamp-sized screens are going to get more powerful? Yes, to a degree. But we shouldn’t forget that tech often gets powerful enough for a niche, then stops. Indeed, for many consumers, PCs are currently “powerful enough” and there isn’t a compelling reason to upgrade at the same rate as we have seen in the past. I don’t know where that line is for mobile devices, but I do know that the answer is typically less than techies want it to be.
There is also the question, I think, of Moore’s Wall, and whether people are empowered to use that tech in creative fashions.
Finally, there’s the question of whether powerful 3d tech on a postage-size screen actually looks and acts the same as the same tech on a large screen. I submit that the answer is no; there are affordances and restrictions provided by the cultural context in which the devices are used that must alter our design approaches, and there are plain old usability questions as well.
