speaking

  • VW08: Business Guys Debate the Future, one take

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 5 Comments

    Dusan Writer has a take on the panel I was on, casting it as Metaplace vs Linden Lab — though to my mind that leaves out the contributions of Mike Wilson of Makena and Corey Bridges of Multiverse. That’s because Dusan is interested mostly int he clash of philosophies about where virtual worlds are going:

    But it leaves a question: are virtual worlds places? Or will the technologies that enable 3D spaces become so ubiquitous that we’ll stop thinking of them as distinct places? Because in Raph’s view, the tools and technologies to create 3D artefacts, the system for managing your avatar and identity should be EXPRESSION-agnostic. In other words, we should have the tools for creating content and then be able to seamlessly publish that content to cell phones, browsers, Flash, separate clients – whatever, it’s not the viewer, it’s in the engine from which content is derived and creating standards and tools for expressing the content from that engine.

    FWIW, virtual worlds are definitely “places” in my mind. But to me, clients and devices are merely windows that look onto that place. That doesn’t preclude rich 3d “windows” — I merely happen to think that multihead, flexibly represented VWs is the future. I would swap the word “engine” for “server” perhaps, or “world.”

  • At VW Expo Wednesday

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 1 Comment

    I’m driving up to LA tomorrow morning for the Virtual Worlds Expo. I’ll be on a panel. If you’re there, say hello!

    1:00 – 2:00 pm Business Visionaries Panel: Where is the Business Headed Next?
    Innovation is coming fast and furious on multiple fronts from multiple vendors. This one-of-a-kind session brings together the business visionaries of major virtual world companies for an interactive discussion on the future of the industry. Join us for a session you won’t want to miss.
    – Ginsu Yoon, VP of Business Affairs, Linden Lab
    – Corey Bridges, Executive Producer, Multiverse
    – Michael Wilson, CEO, Makena Technologies, Inc.
    – Raph Koster, President, Areae
    – Joey Seiler, Editor, VirtualWorldsNews.com & Virtual Worlds Weekly (moderator)

  • First Sandbox/Web3d Keynote reaction

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 7 Comments

    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.

  • SIGGRAPH Web3d/Sandbox keynote

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 8 Comments

    If you are attending SIGGRAPH in LA over the next few days, I am doing a “joint keynote” for the Sandbox games event and the Web3d Symposium tomorrow (I think that means you can get in regardless of which of those two you registered for). It was kind of challenging coming up with a topic that would fit both, until I realized that they’re kind of converging.

    Putting the World in World Wide Web

    It’s been predicted for a long time that the Web would go “3d.” But many of our predictions about the Internet have been wrong. As a class, the digerati predicted interactive libraries, not MySpace; 3d navigation of sites, not widgets. Users have a habit of taking the best-laid architectural plans and turning them inside out, developing different uses for our closely held technological dreams.

    So what is actually happening? Games and social media are converging at a rapid rate, and our whole digital world is about to be reinvented via new technologies that are just now starting to be commercialized. Come take a glimpse into a possible future — one that is almost certainly wrong in many details, but is at least extrapolated from today’s events, rather than old dreams.