The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. The Australian (Australia) – When games start playing you: cyber addicts. “Obsession, fantasy and the internet can be a destructive trio, as a South Korean couple learned last month. The pair were sentenced for negligent homicide after allowing their three-month old daughter to die of malnutrition. In the cruellest irony, the couple apparently neglected the infant for up to 12 hours a day while they were in internet cafes playing Prius Online, a fantasy game in which players rear a virtual girl called Anima. The disturbing case not only hit headlines worldwide, it highlighted the seemingly addictive allure of the internet. Although the medical world is divided as to whether internet addiction exists, Online Gamers Anonymous offers a 12-step program to help players wean themselves from games such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest and Final Fantasy. David Smallwood, addiction treatment program manager at The Priory in London, believes such games are particularly addictive for young men, who gain status through online prowess they couldn’t get in real life. But University of Sydney psychologist and clinician Andrew Campbell isn’t convinced.

2. VentureBeat (USA) – Sulake’s Habbo virtual world for kids keeps growing at fast clip. “Virtual worlds aren’t fashionable in the age of social networks. But Finnish virtual world operator Sulake reported strong growth in the first quarter as its Habbo Hotel expanded quickly despite the lingering recession. Helsinki-based Sulake said its revenue grew 25 percent to $20 million in the March quarter compared to a year ago. Thanks to cost savings achieved in part through layoffs in the fourth quarter, the company reported earnings before income taxes and depreciation (EBITDA) of $3 million, compared to $1.3 million a year ago. Habbo Hotel is a virtual world for kids and teens. Its more than 15 million monthly unique visitors (11.8 million a year ago) spend a total of 45 million hours playing each month versus 36 million a year ago. The simple Flash-based world is available in 32 countries and 11 languages.”

3. MedCity News (USA) – Mayo Clinic explores the virtual world of Second Life. “Mayo Clinic is a world famous hospital and research institution. But owning a tropical island seems a bit excessive, especially for a non-profit organization. Alas, “Mayo Clinic Island” isn’t real, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. The island only exists in the virtual 3D world of Second Life, where avatars, online personas of real people around the world, freely mingle and attend lectures on cancer and heart disease.”

4. afaqs! (India) – Turner Interactive to launch Tom & Jerry virtual world. “Turner Interactive, the digital arm of Turner Entertainment, is developing a 3D online virtual world which will be based on the popular cartoon characters Tom and Jerry. The virtual world will be available as a dedicated website and will enable users to create their own cartoon characters such as ‘cat’ and ‘mouse’. There will be many environments or destinations such as parks and malls inside the world, where users will be allowed to roam and socialise. The company will embed various games inside the world to raise the level of engagement. The virtual world will be launched across various parts of the world. “India could be the first market where Tom & Jerry virtual world will go live in the second half of 2010,” says Benjamin Grubbs, regional director, interactive media, Turner Entertainment, during an exclusive conversation with afaqs!.”

5. The Irish Times (UK) – Avatars play starring role at virtual seminar. “The programme for the recent Metameets conference at Dublin Institute of Technology – flagged as Europe’s Premier 3D Internet and Developer Conference – carried an unusual little note after each speaker’s name: “live” or “virtual”. For a conference about 3D and virtual worlds, perhaps it isn’t odd at all that about a third of the presentations were given not by someone standing before the audience, but by their avatars in some online virtual world like Second Life. That a good proportion of the audience was scattered across cyberspace too is the norm for this international event, now in its second year (it debuted in Amsterdam last year). Add to that the oddity of having the conference organisers listed by both their real-life and their avatar names, and you get the picture. These are people passionate about the virtual, who do not consider it just an amusing pastime, or a hobby, but a significant element of daily life and for many, their chosen area of entrepreneurship and business.”

6. Gamasutra (USA) – Analysis: Being Characters In Game Worlds. “To what extent do we embody the characters we play in games? That question was on my mind at the GameCamp in London event, at which 150 attendees spent the day discussing, debating and theorizing video games. With sessions run by a variety of games industry veterans and interested outsiders alike, the event sparked a series of enlightening conversations between a group of people fiercely passionate about the medium. This question in particular emerged from a session on video game narrative, chaired by Rock, Paper, Shotgun editor Kieron Gillen. During the discussion, Kieron invited me to speak about “context as narrative”, and the ways in which I attempted to utilise this method while creating my Half-Life 2 mods, Post Script and Nestlings, which I’ve written about on these pages before.”

7. Reuters (USA) – “R U There” moves too slowly for gaming crowd. “The films in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes seem to be holding a special sub-competition of their own, to see which will have audiences checking their watches most often. The topical story and strong leads in David Verbeek’s “R U There” feel like a great short stretched into a feature that cannot sustain the tension for which it so earnestly strives. The best target audience for this film about a young gaming champ should be the enormous gaming/”Second Life” community. Yet gamers, for one, inhabit virtual worlds that are far faster and far more action-filled than the slow-paced, moody “R U There.” Ominous music throughout sets up a thriller, but it’s actually a “boy meets girl but does better with her avatar” story.”

8. Businessweek (USA) – Alcohol Companies Use New Media to Lure Young Drinkers: Report. “Alcohol companies are increasingly using the latest new media technologies — including cell phones, social networking sites, YouTube and other features of the expanding digital universe — to reach young drinkers, a new report contends. And existing regulations may not be keeping up with the marketing trend, the report’s authors added. They’re calling on the Federal Trade Commission, state attorney generals and others to investigate the phenomenon and examine whether current mechanisms to protect youth from alcohol marketing still work effectively in the digital era.”

9. AFP (France) – Teen dramas in virtual worlds darken Cannes. “The dark side of the virtual world descended on Cannes Sunday in teen suicide dramas playing on the potentially dangerous blur between reality and the Internet. “Chatroom”, the first of a trio of cyberspace thrillers chilling the film festival, sees a dysfunctional youngster (upcoming British star Aaron Johnson) obsessively watching Japanese suicide videos in a dark locked bedroom. He sets up a chatroom with four other troubled teenagers, but seems only to want to mess with their heads.”

10. CMS Wire (USA) – The Next Wave: Enterprise 2.0, Immersive Workspaces and Virtual Worlds. “When Second Life first appeared on the web in 2003 I never got into it in a big way because it appeared to me to be more distraction than useful. My work with the disabled soon made me aware of the potential of virtual reality as a means by which those with immobility impairment could walk or even fly using this technology. But it was a remark by Dr. Cheryl Shavers, former Undersecretary of Technology and senior advisor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration, at a speech she gave in Toronto last week that got me thinking about avatars, virtual reality and enterprise once again. Dr. Shavers had said no one knows what you look like in a virtual reality environment. They measure you by your communication and your intelligence, not by the color of your skin, or the shape of your eyes. Dr. Shavers, an African-American woman, saw in Second Life a means to eliminate race from the conversation of business.”