1. Information Week (USA) – U.S. Armed Forces Look To Second Life For Training. “The Second Life role-playing and gaming communities are home to dozens of make-believe armies and navies. But you can find the real thing in virtual worlds too. The Air Force, National Guard, and Navy are using Second Life and other virtual world technology for collaboration and training. The armed forces are looking to virtual worlds to reduce the time and costs associated with travel, and create more realistic experiences for users than those provided by flat-Internet applications.”
2. VentureBeat (USA) – Facebook platform developers could see $500M in revenue this year. “A growing number of game makers on Facebook are making money from virtual goods — from poker chips to virtual clothes that users can buy or earn while playing gaming applications with their friends on Facebook. The combined ecosystem of these game developers and other companies supplying services to them could generate half a billion dollars in revenue in 2009. That’s significant, considering third-party applications on Facebook have been viewed as gimmicks making no significant revenue. Facebook itself appears headed toward the $500 million revenue mark this year, mostly through advertising.”
3. The Economist (UK) – Of dragons and dungeons. “HAVING once lost badly at three-card brag—poker’s brutal ancestor played in the pubs and clubs of Britain—your correspondent worked double-shifts to pay off his gambling debt, and vowed never again to play games of chance. The only exceptions he has allowed himself over the years have been the odd video game or two, where the stakes are measured more in terms of satisfaction than hard cash. But even his early forays into the grinding world of monsters and loot favoured by “massively multiplayer online role-playing games†have dwindled since parenthood. Such virtual worlds are far too immersive and addictive—and keep getting more so with every increase in the number-crunching power and graphics of personal computers and game consoles. Better to stay clear of online communities like “EverQuest†or “World of Warcraft†if you are perpetually running out of time in the real world.”
4. Business Week (USA) – Studying Epidemics in Virtual Worlds. “A day after news reports about an outbreak of swine flu in Mexico, health officials in Allegheny County, Pa., huddled to discuss contingency plans. How should they respond if the virus came to their part of the world? By closing schools? With widespread vaccinations? To test different courses of action, they turned to computer scientists who had built a working model of the county. “It helps come up with recommendations of when and how to intervene,” says Dr. Ron Voorhees, chief of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Allegheny County Health Dept.”
5. ICT Results (European Union) – When virtual reality feels real. “Despite advances in computer graphics, few people would think virtual characters or objects are real. Yet placed in a virtual reality environment most people will interact with them as if they are really there. European researchers are finding out why. In trying to understand presence – the propensity of humans to respond to fake stimuli as if they are real – the researchers are not just gaining insights into how the human brain functions. They are also learning how to create more intense and realistic virtual experiences, opening the door to myriad applications for healthcare, training, social research and entertainment. “Virtual environments could be used by psychiatrists to help people overcome anxiety disorders and phobias… by researchers to study social behaviour not practically or ethically reproduced in the real world, or to create more immersive virtual reality for entertainment,†explains Mel Slater, a computer scientist at ICREA in Barcelona and University College, London, who led the team behind the research.”
6. The Gazette (UK) – Godfather of online gaming: Inventor of Mud Dr Richard Bartle. “Virtual worlds are a global industry worth tens of millions of pounds a year. Eleven million people pay an annual fee of $15 – a bit less in poorer countries – to play the adventure game World of Warcraft. Twenty five million players have at some point entered the kids’ on-line universe Habbo, and players spend an astonishing average of 38 Euros a month buying imaginary possessions for their on-screen characters.”
7. MediaPost (USA) – Are Media Companies Missing The Virtual World Mark? “Many traditional entertainment media companies are missing out on huge opportunities to market and monetize their content libraries in Casual Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) worlds. Some forward-thinking companies have dipped their toes into the interactive entertainment pool, but there are many obstacles to successfully extending your brand into an engaging interactive experience. As innovative brands explore developing Casual MMOs, a number of important lessons can help lead them to success.”
8. Business Week (USA) – Virtual Currencies Gain in Popularity. “Make way, Zambian kwacha. There’s a hot new exotic currency on the market, only it’s not from any country on earth—at least not one in the material world. This currency is called the Project Entropia Dollar (PED) and it’s used to buy and sell goods on the planet Calypso, in an online gaming world called Entropia Universe. The PED is among a growing number of alternative currencies changing hands in virtual worlds, social networks, and other Web sites eager to make it easier for users to spend money and carry out other transactions while online.”
9. Information Week (USA) – Rumors Of Second Life’s Failure Are Just Lousy Journalism. “As a journalist and Second Life enthusiast, I’m annoyed by irresponsible articles that take it for granted that the virtual world is dying, or already dead, or a failure. In fact, Second Life is healthy and growing — I say this based on personal experience, and statements made by officials of Linden Lab, the company that created, develops and operates Second Life. Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon described a couple of the signs of Second Life’s health in an interview Wednesday conducted inworld at Metanomics, an interview program hosted by Cornell University, conducted inside Second Life. The number of active users now stands at about 600,000, Kingdon said; that’s up from about a half-million last year, and it follows a period of roughly a year when Second Life’s user base had plateaued. Blogger Wagner James Au analyzed the growth last month at GigaOM. Monthly repeat logins — people who logged in more than once per month — were 731,000 in March, climbing upward since August. Active users — people who’d spent more than an hour in Second Life — were 650,000.”
10. Times Online (UK) – Free Realms is latest children’s craze. “Forget the youth club — record numbers of children are spending their leisure time exploring online worlds that combine the fantasy element of traditional games with social networking. The games mark a shift in the industry away from adult-oriented virtual reality adventures and towards less gritty and more fun titles aimed at pre-teens. The popularity of these games has surged in recent months as word of mouth spreads. Two sites stand out: the Disney-owned Club Penguin attracts an estimated 4m primary-school-age children every month, and Habbo Hotel has signed up 120m teenagers worldwide. These are figures that dwarf much-hyped adult worlds such as Second Life, which has never drawn more than 2m users in a month.”
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