The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. LiveScience (USA) – Virtual Behavior Labs Discover What Gamers Want. “Imagine the power to know every consumer purchase ever made, big or small, or the gory details of any crime ever committed. That’s the new reality in the worlds of video games. Tens of millions of gamers inhabit virtual worlds where behaviors or actions can be tracked and tallied, creating some astounding statistics. In the first two weeks of release for the cowboy-themed “Red Dead Redemption,” for instance, 13,250,237 virtual U.S. soldiers were killed (or about the same number of actual German and Soviet military deaths combined during World War II). Players also committed a total of 131,904,068 counts of in-game murder and hunted down millions of virtual critters, including 55,813,649 wolves. The rabbit hole goes deeper. Developers of the futuristic sci-fi game Mass Effect 2 found that 80 percent of the game’s players used the face customization system to change their appearances, rather than use the default hero or heroine. Some games even track giggleworthy player behaviors; Mafia II records how long players spend staring at in-game Playboy centerfolds.”

2. TechCrunch (USA) – Moshi Monsters Aims To Become The Facebook for Kids (TCTV). “Mind Candy CEO Michael Acton Smith came to my office today to tell me about Moshi Monsters, his company’s virtual world for kids that is signing up a new member every second. Moshi Monsters was his “last roll of the dice” to save his virtual worlds startup in 2008, and it worked. Moshi Monsters is up to 35 million registered users, with about 7 million of those active every month, says Smith. And it is projected to generate $100 million this year from a combination of subscriptions and gross retail merchandise sales. The site is geared towards kids between 5 to 12 years old. Each kid gets a monster pet and a room that can be decked out with virtual goods. But instead of trying to create “just another bloody virtual world,” Smith wanted it to be more like a safe social network. “Instead of copying Club Penguin,” he says, “we focused more on Facebook and tried to re-imagine that for kids.”

3. Gamasutra (USA) – Image Metrics Acquires Big Stage. “Facial animation tech company Image Metrics has acquired Big Stage, creator of the avatar creation platform Portable You. Big Stage’s tech lets users translate photos of themselves into 3D animated characters for use in virtual worlds, video clips and online communities. Image Metrics says it’ll merge that avatar creation platform into its existing animation tech to create a new product suite to launch in the second half of this year. The company says the merger will help its licensees integrate more realistic avatars into consumer-facing projects.”

4. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Even Better Than the Real Thing. “‘It’s the real world—only better.” This is how Jay Wright, business-development director at technology company Qualcomm Inc., describes the latest buzz technology to grip the digital world. So-called “augmented reality” is the overlaying of digital information onto the real world, and everyone from games designers to retailers to health-care companies to estate agents are gearing up to use it. While the potential for such technology to change the world is vast, the biggest challenge for its backers will be to convert this virtual revolution into rock-solid profits. Fortunately, there are countless ways this can be achieved, but not all are immediately obvious.”

5. ars technica (USA) – Lord British on what games can learn from Ultima Online. “My job allows me to meet many interesting people, and meeting my childhood heroes is definitely a huge bonus. When I found myself speaking with Richard Garriott for 45 minutes, I felt the need to pinch myself. This is the man who created Ultima, crafted one of the earliest virtual worlds in Ultima Online, and then used the money to go to freakin’ space. We’ll have more from the fascinating discussion a little later, but I wanted to share his answer to my most pressing question: is he playing the games he dreamed of while working on the Ultima series?”

6. FierceVOIP (USA) – Vivox sees massive user growth for gaming VoIP. “Today, Vivox, a social networking and gaming VoIP prvider, announced its worldwide user base has surpassed 45 million. In 2010, Vivox saw its user base rise from 18.5 million users to over 45 million users. Companies including Wargaming.net, IMVU, Runewaker Entertainment and Bigpoint.com use Vivox service for high-quality, reliable voice chat services within their games. Vivox enables users of social sites, online games and virtual worlds to communicate in HD quality voice and within Three Dimensional environments. It also allows unique audio advertising and virtual goods capabilities for social and gaming sites.”

7. GigaOM (USA) – Working Together: How My Virtual Team Collaborates. “In an effort to better understand the dynamics of distributed teams, I decided to interview my own virtual team members at the social media marketing agency I co-own, Conversify. I wanted to move beyond my own personal preferences and opinions, both as a virtual worker for the last eight years and as a co-founder of a virtual company.”

8. Huffington Post (USA) – Video Games: An Hour A Day Is Key To Success In Life. “The single biggest misconception about games is that they’re an escapist waste of time. But more than a decade’s worth of scientific research shows that gaming is actually one of the most productive ways we can spend time. No, playing games doesn’t help the GDP – our traditional measure of productivity. But games help us produce something more important than economic bottom line: powerful emotions and social relationships that can change our lives–and potentially help us change the world. Currently there are more than half a billion people worldwide playing online games at least an hour a day — and 183 million in the US alone. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be a gamer — 97% of boys under 18 and 94% of girls under 18 report playing videogames regularly. And the average young person racks up 10,000 hours of gaming by the age of 21. That’s almost exactly as much time as they spend in a classroom during all of middle school and high school if they have perfect attendance. Most astonishingly, 5 million gamers in the U.S are spending more than 40 hours a week playing games — the same as a full time job! ”

9. Develop (UK) – “Hardcore social games can be lucrative”. “Social networks were developed and popularised by young people, and they are still their heaviest users. But, ironically, the booming social network games market is dominated by middle-aged housewives because younger people don’t play there as much there as they do elsewhere. Why has this come about and is there an opportunity for core games targeting traditional gaming’s heartland audience on social networks? The demographic mismatch of Facebook gamers to Facebook users overall has long been one of the great incongruities of the Facebook games market.”

10. Massively (USA) – New RIFT trailer shows off dynamic invasions. “Ho hum, another day, another RIFT reveal. Trion is carpet-bombing the MMORPG battlefield with an all out marketing assault as the March 1st launch date for its fantasy opus draws near. Today brings us a new trailer titled Cry Havoc, and in it we are witnesses to an interesting time-lapse presentation that shows off various in-game battles featuring large contingents of players on screen.”