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The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

November 8, 2009 by Leave a Comment

1. CNN (UK) – Virtual businesses: Going to the office in Second Life. “As travel budgets are squeezed and slashed in the recession, companies are increasingly seeking innovative ways of bringing employees together for conferences and meetings remotely. Virtual community Second Life is seeking to tap into that market by creating a new tool that allows businesses to have virtual meetings on their own computer networks. The company’s Enterprise tool will let employees’ avatars — animated alter egos — meet in virtual worlds from the privacy of a company’s own network, rather than the public networks used in standard Second Life. That extra security could encourage more companies to take up the technology.”

2. Boston Globe (USA) – To build up real business selling virtual goods, firms change tactics. “ust after Labor Day last year, Pano Anthos flew out to San Francisco to unveil his new start-up, Hangout Industries Inc., at a major technology conclave, the TechCrunch50. It was an opportunity to show off the three-dimensional virtual environment his Boston company had been working on, intended to attract young Internet users and allow them to deck out online rooms with all sorts of branded merchandise – some of which they might also decide to buy in the real world. Then, they could invite friends over to socialize. Hangout, Anthos told the crowd, would combine some of the best elements of MySpace and Facebook, the two massive social networks, and The Sims, a popular video game. After his presentation, Anthos got feedback – much of it positive – from a panel of on-stage experts that included Marissa Mayer, a senior executive at Google, and Ron Conway, one of the investors who bankrolled the search company in its earliest days.”

3. Reuters (USA) – Can Virtual Worlds Provide Support to Military Amputees? “Virtual worlds can provide military amputees with an opportunity to enhance their overall quality of life, expedite their reintegration into society, and improve their physical and mental wellness. ADL Company Inc. (ADL) and Virtual Ability, Inc. (VAI) announced today the start of a project to establish best practices and protocols for the provision of on-line peer-to-peer support services to this community, with funding from the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) of the US Army Medical Research and Materiel
Command (USAMRMC). “For individuals with disabilities, virtual worlds are a powerful way to connect with others, to access peer support, and to participate in activities that might not otherwise be possible,” said Alice Krueger, President of Virtual Ability, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation. “This project will establish the best way to adopt this technology for the unique needs of the military amputee community.”

4. New York Times (USA) – Virtual Estates Lead to Real-World Headaches. “Two avatars, Leto Yoshiro and Enchant Jacques, met in the virtual world of Second Life in 2005. They married online the same year and built a house together on an island they had brought out of the waves that covered much of that world. In real life, Leto was a film producer from Michigan, Enchant an accountant from England. In 2008, after three years together for the couple, several real-life encounters and thousands of hours logged in, Leto died of liver failure while awaiting a transplant. About six months later, the island where they had lived, along with everything on it, was erased under the terms of service that Leto had signed with Linden Lab, the company that created the platform for Second Life. It had been bought in his name in Linden dollars — on Friday, $1 bought 259 Linden — and Enchant decided she could not pay the fees to maintain it. All that remains are a few objects of which she had copies.”

5. New Scientist (USA) – How your brain sees virtual you. “As players who stay up all night fighting imaginary warriors demonstrate, slipping into the skin of an avatar, and inhabiting a virtual world can be riveting stuff. But to what extent does your brain regard your virtual self as you? Brain scans of avid players of the hugely popular online fantasy world World of Warcraft reveal that areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgement seem to behave similarly when someone is thinking about their virtual self as when they think about their real one.”

6. VentureBeat (USA) – Max Levchin on Slide’s big virtual goods bet, scams and — mating. “Slide, which started in photo-sharing, moved into Facebook widgets and then raised funding at a reported $550 million valuation last year, shifted gears this year and went aggressively into virtual goods. The company’s looking to become a mainstream version of Second Life, where there’s a virtual economy at work of real people buying and selling goods. Instead of churning out new apps like many of its competitors, the company has focused its existing ones — including seven on Facebook like SuperPoke, Top Friends and FunSpace, with about 27 million users between them. Slide introduced a virtual currency into its SuperPoke! Pets application, where you can raise and care for a virtual pet. You can earn gold through the game or you can purchase 10 pieces of Slide Gold for $1.”

7. Massively (USA) – Exclusive interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon. “Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab’s CEO, has been a bit of a mystery figure since his appointment about a year and a half ago. While he has not been uncommunicative, it’s been hard to get a very good sense of the man at the helm of Linden Lab, his passions, interests and direction. We were very pleased, therefore, when he took the time to sit down with us and answer a whole grab-bag of questions, about himself, about Linden Lab, and – of course – about Second Life. Bear with us, because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

8. Kotaku (USA) – Visually Impaired Gamer Sues Sony. “GameSpot reports that a man has sued Sony, Sony Online Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment of America, contending the company violates the Americans with Disabilities Act for not making its virtual worlds more easily navigable by the visually impaired.”

9. Data Center Knowledge (USA) – Virtual Goods and the Cost of Infrastructure. “In an economy built atop virtual goods, how do you manage capacity and sort out whether the business model is able to pay for the infrastructure required to power it? That’s an important questionas as virtual item purchases become a key revenue stream for fast-growing social networking platforms like Facebook. Managed hosting specialist GNi, which offers an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) hosting platform for online games, offers a window into the evolving infrastructure requirements of virtual economies. In the U.S., popular understanding of online gaming has been shaped by the popularity of World of Warcraft and other virtual worlds that generate through monthly subscription fees. That approach is increasingly yielding to a “free-to-play” business model.”

10. TechCrunch Europe (Germany) – 20 years on, explore the Berlin Wall in Twinity’s virtual Berlin. “With only days away from the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, how best to mark the occasion? Rebuild it or at least a virtual two kilometer stretch. That’s the approach being taken by Metaversum, the Berlin-based company behind virtual world Twinity, who have constructed a replica section of the wall in-world. Visitors to Twinity’s virtual Berlin will be able to travel back to 1989 to explore a two km-long, true-to-scale section of the Berlin Wall, from the Reichstag, past the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz, ending with a realistic replica of Checkpoint Charlie. Along with the wall itself, visitors can also access various multimedia content, including video and audio guides at seven key points describing the building of the wall, important dates in its history, witness accounts and, of course, the climatic events of 1989. The exhibition is a collaboration between Metaversum, the Berlin Senate and media partner Berlin.de.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

Weekend Whimsy

November 7, 2009 by Leave a Comment

1. Halloween in Second Life® on Info Island (Community Virtual Library)

2. [Second Life- Burning Life 2009] Hahaha-SNSD

3. Aion Halloween – Koala Vlog

Filed Under: User-generated, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

November 6, 2009 by Leave a Comment

warcraft_deadspider 1. The announcement of Second Life Enterprise has certainly sparked some discussion. There’s some interesting debate here and some barely amusing coverage here – surely the ‘flying penises’ anecdote has been flogged to death a few dozen times by now?

Finally, here’s a great example of how the standalone offering is already being used (although it could just as easily have been done on the main Second Life grid).

2. World of Warcraft continues its work on extracting as much money out of players as possible. fatfoogoo argues it’s the next step toward microtransactions in the MMO. I’ve already had one guild member fork out US $10 for Lil’ K.T.

3. UK-based Second Life resident Tyche Shepherd does some amazing work crunching data over at her Grid Survey site. On the SL Universe forums a few weeks back, she posted some interesting information about the level of private ownership of mainlaind sims in Second Life. 70% is privately owned, the rest by Linden Lab.

4. Lost amongst the clamour around Second Life Enterprise, Linden Lab have released Q3 economy statistics. More than a billion hours have now been clocked up in-world by Second Life residents and Australia continues to be a significant player in terms of user-to-user transactions and hours spent. All the details here.

Filed Under: Events, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Interview – Denise Wood, University of South Australia

November 2, 2009 by 1 Comment

unisa-oct2009-2-smlDenise Wood (SL: Denlee Wobbit) is Senior Lecturer in the Bachelor of Media Arts program at the University of South Australia and the Teaching and Portfolio Leader of the School of Communication, International Studies and Languages. As one of Australia’s many educators who are utilising virtual environments in their roles, I was aware of Denise’s work in regards to disabilities and accessibility, so I asked her to have a chat about her efforts to date in Second Life.

As you’ll see below, that discussion covered a number of areas in detail. It’s yet another example of the promising work being done by Australian educators. I was particularly struck by the growing level of collaboration between institutions, which is imperative for ongoing success.

If you’d like to see the University of South Australia’s Second Life presence for yourself, here’s where to go.

Lowell: To start off, can you give a little history of how you got involved with Second Life at first?

Denlee: Sure – We initially became involved out of interest in the possibilities that virtual worlds offer for experiential learning. As an educator in the field of media arts, I was interested in exploring possibilities for engaging students in problem solving activities within a flexible environment that facilitates collaborative learning activities. So we applied for a University of South Australia (UniSA) Teaching and Learning Grant initially to fund the purchase of the island and to maintain it for a year while we conducted trials with some identified courses. That grant was successful and that is how we initially funded purchase and upkeep of the UniSA island.

Once I was teaching in Second Life (SL) I became concerned at the issues for students with disabilities. As someone with many years experience working with people who have disabilities and as an educator teaching in a University that prides itself on access and equity that was a concern. So we applied to the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) for a grant to develop an open source environment to enhance accessibility in virtual worlds

Lowell: So how much experience with SL did you have prior to making the grant application i.e. was there a key event or experience that ‘turned the light on’ so to speak?

Denlee: I had very little experience in SL prior to applying for the grant. Most of my knowledge was based initially on review of the literature. I spent some time exploring SL prior to applying – and enrolled in building classes and so on, and of course visited education sims, but most came from reading case studies and my own knowledge of simulated learning environments.

Lowell: So how were those first days and weeks in SL for you – did you find it an incredible eye-opener for its opportunities or did it seem a natural extension for you on previous work you’d done?

Denlee: It was a wonderful experience – naturally a little overwhelming initially. Having applied for the grant and received the funding close to the end of the academic year was rather fortunate as it meant that I was able to spend many, many hours over the summer break immersed in SL – I was in SL every day – 7 days a week for about 6 weeks and really did become part of the community through that process. Knowing that we would be trialling courses the next semester was also great motivation to spend the time and make the commitment. I knew I would need to feel very confident myself before attempting to teach students in this environment. And attending building classes gave me the skills but also ideas about what works and what doesn’t in teaching in this context.

Lowell: Let’s talk about the first courses you taught involving SL – what were the educational objectives you were looking to achieve?

Denlee: I trialled two initially. One was a course focusing on games design so SL seemed a perfect environment for achieving the learning objectives relating to that course, which focused on problem solving, team work, collaboration and communication. Students (5 or 6 per team including external students) created immersive games using holodecks on sky platforms.

The other course was one in which students create online portfolios to market their design skills. They created Websites and built complementary portfolios (kiosks) in SL that linked to their websites. The aim was for the students to understand the changing nature of designing for electronic media and the relationship between Web design and the future potential of virtual worlds as an extension of that. What surprised me was that students at first seemed to enjoy the activities and they did some fabulous work, but they were not as positive about the learning experience as we had anticipated.

Lowell: What were the issues they seemed to be unhappy with?

Denlee: Some of the issues seemed to be about the platform (buggy issues and so on) but that didn’t explain it all. And when we really analysed the evaluation data it appeared to be related to their inability to see the connection between the learning activities and their future career aspirations. Many said they would prefer to have created the game in another platform like Flash or Director or another gaming platform. And some of the web design students said they couldn’t see the value as they didn’t believe the future predictions that 3D virtual worlds would become more popular for businesses and marketing.

Lowell: Did they perhaps see SL as less graphically appealing, so more like ‘work’ than play?

Denise-woodDenlee: Actually it was the reverse. Some saw it as inappropriate because it was too much like play – almost as if they had preconceived ideas about what is a valid or authentic learning environment.

Lowell: Ok that’s interesting! So are those courses still being taught in that context – has SL become part of the core work done given the mixed feedback?

Denlee: Well after that experience I was unsure of how to next proceed. But I decided to try again with a different course this semester, only this time I gave students the option of choosing to work with a “real client” in actual life or a client in SL. So in this course, students learn how to create accessible Web sites that are W3C compliant. They are required to work with a client organisation and either redesign an existing website or create a new site that meets very high standards in accessible design. Out of the 20 students in this course, 7 chose to work in SL and that course has proved very successful. The seven students meet with their clients in SL every week and attend a tutorial I facilitate in SL every Saturday. They are also working with disability groups in SL. And some of the tutes are conducted with Gentle Heron from Virtual Ability Island.

The difference – and this is the eye opener for me about virtual worlds – is that they are not focusing on the platform but using it as a conduit to engage on “real” work with “real” clients. What is particularly interesting is that in the previous trials we put enormous effort into running tutorials on how to use SL and we had mentors to help the students, yet they still complained it was hard to navigate and so on. However, in this class the students have had no training in SL at all – I left them to their own devices. They have taught themselves and helped each other. This has shown me that students will engage in learning activities when they are focusing on “real” world issues and not on the technology. The previous courses focused a lot on building in SL, and it appears that perhaps the students would have been more engaged in those courses if they had undertaken projects for clients and not focused so much on learning to build and script. In other words, problem solving can be more effective when students are focused on the project not the skills required to achieve the overall aim of the project.

Lowell: So let’s move over to your area of interest, accessibility. What specifically led you to that research area?

Denlee: I worked in the disability sector for many years prior to being appointed as an academic at UniSA. I was a researcher for an organisation that provides services for children with disabilities and then moved on and established a Govt funded organisation providing training in multimedia for young adults with disabilities. We provided contract work on multimedia projects to graduates of that program. While working in the field I was also actively involved with other organisations providing training in accessible web design. So when I came to UniSA it was only logical that I would want to redesign courses so that our students (future designers) would be equally skilled and committed to accessible Web design and I was able to progress my research at the same time.

Lowell: So did SL seem a natural progression for the work you;d been doing in that area?

Denlee: Yes, very much so. Many of the same principles apply – but we do need more creative solutions to tackle some of the challenges imposed by such highly graphical and multimedia rich environments. Once we received the ALTC funding, we embarked on ethnographic research with people in SL who identify as disabled. I leased an apartment on the Wheelies SIM and conducted many interviews from there. I was interested in identifying the benefits experienced by people with disabilities in virtual worlds as well as the accessibility challenges.

Lowell: Virtual environments are often touted as a boon for individuals with disabilities that may restrict some real world experiences. What’s the more objective view on the challenges and opportunities?

Denlee: The virtual communities provide a wonderful place for people with disabilities to socialise, gain information and for advocacy. The virtual environment also provides a place for people to experiment with identity and so they can choose to represent themselves as someone with a disability or not. It’s their choice – and those who choose not to appear “disabled” find they are more likely to be accepted for who they are, not judged by appearances. For those who are not able to get out of the house much, environments like SL provide a wonderful means for meeting others and also for providing the opportunity foe people in that situation to contribute to the virtual communities in SL. And what really fascinates me are the ways in which these communities have worked together to create their own solutions to some of the challenges.

Lowell: And on the other side of the coin, what are the accessibility challenges that stand out?

Denlee: Obviously SL is a very visual environment – so those with significant visual impairments find it difficult or impossible to navigate. Those who use screen readers for example, can’t access SL without assistive technologies in world as objects and inventory, and locations are not exposed to a screen reader. Then of course most multimedia is not captioned in SL. As voice has become more popular, the environment has become less accessible for those with hearing impairments when they are communicating with residents using voice and not text chat.

Lowell: So with these shortcomings, is there significant momentum toward solutions? And if so, is it primarily community driven or are Linden Lab actively driving some enhancements?

Denlee: Linden Lab has started to show greater interest of late because of the initiatives taken by residents themselves. A good example was the awareness raised by the Helen Keller Day event hosted by Virtual Helping Hands.

Lowell: What are some of the community driven activities that have inspired you?

Denlee: Well, groups like Virtual Ability Inc (VAI) who set up Virtual Ability Island, and of course Virtual Helping Hands and their virtual guide dog you see here. Wheelies and Cape Able (now owned by VAI) and the Health Support Coalition – all these groups show the power that comes when people who share common goals work together on solutions. What we are doing is building on that knowledge using the funding from ALTC to design an open source client that is accessible and can be used with SL and OpenSim. So we are working with these groups to ensure what we create is suitable and informed by their significant knowledge.

Lowell: Ok so how’s that progressing? Can you give a synopsis of key groups involved in its development?

Denlee: We are working with all the groups really – Virtual Ability, Virtual Helping Hands and members of Wheelies. Our contracted programmer is a member of VHH and we meet regularly with others from VHH as we proceed with design and development. We are also working with ReactionGrid, which is based on OpenSim, and they have provided us with four sims for our development work. They are very supportive of the importance of accessibility in virtual worlds.

Lowell: What does OpenSim offer that appeals in lieu of SL?

Denlee: The fact that it is open source. We can work with the open source community on solutions. Everything we do contributes to that open source community as well. We can work on the open source client when it comes to SL, but not at the server level, whereas we can tackle both with OpenSim. But, we are very mindful of the very large following of SL so we want to work at both levels since SL is still a wonderful conduit for linking people together given that large population base. The ideal solution is what I believe Linden Lab always envisaged, a grid with various virtual worlds linked together.

Lowell: Onto UniSA’s presence here – can you give an overview of what’s offered here and what any future plans are?

unisa-oct2009-1-smlDenlee: We will no doubt continue to maintain our UniSA island here – we are planning to trial using our island to facilitate career building – running careers fairs and so on. We are also undertaking research in the area of performing arts and hybrid performance. Intermediality – where actors on a “real life” stage perform with actors in SL.

Lowell: Is the UniSA presence a cross-faculty collaboration or predominantly your faculty?

Denlee: UniSA island is managed by me, but there are several other faculties (we call them Divisions), which plan to trial courses on our island including education and health sciences, and our computer science school also has a presence on SL. We are also doing collaborative work with many other universities. Our ALTC project is a collaboration involving UniSA as lead institution with Monash University, Edith Cowan University, the University of Sydney, RMIT and Flinders University, as well as the University of Sheffield in the UK. And we are also in communication with other Australian universities which have ALTC grants relating to this area.

Lowell: What’s your perspective on the Australian research momentum in relation to virtual worlds – are we leaders or followers?

Denlee: I think Australia is certainly undertaking significant research in this space – so definitely not just following the lead of international universities. We have a very strong presence in virtual worlds in both teaching and learning, and innovative research. Australia is certainly an important international player and making a significant contribution to the field. I think we will see that activity escalate in a short space of time as so many universities are now collaborating and sharing their expertise across many diverse disciplinary areas. A good example of the level of this activity is evident each year at the annual ASCILITE conference, which has attracted a rapidly increasing number of high quality research papers focusing on teaching and learning in virtual worlds.

Lowell: Do you feel there are solid collaborative structures in place to support the growing interest in a way that will be effective?

Denlee: We are seeing that happen I think at a number of levels. Firstly, the ALTC has funded quite a few projects relating to teaching and learning in virtual worlds so this is recognition of the importance of these environments. The ALTC requires universities to collaborate and so these projects bring together teams from universities across Australia. They also provide a mechanism for bringing projects together – so all that bodes very well for supporting collaboration. Also, we have seen a growth in interest in the informal networks recently established and AARNET is playing a major role in supporting collaboration among universities – it is well positioned to do so as the major internet service provider to universities across Australia. Education.au is becoming very active in this space as well and has shown great interest in working collaboratively with us.

Lowell: One area that seems to have a long way to go is public-private partnerships, including research. Do you think Australian business is being too hesitant or are there some structural issues more broadly that make collaborations like that difficult?

Denlee: Many of us are looking at the opportunities in that space and one obvious funding source that can assist research in this area is the Australian Research Council (ARC) through their linkage funding scheme. While the ARC does not fund teaching and learning projects, there is considerable interest from academics in undertaking high quality research relating to virtual worlds in partnership with industry groups, and I think you will see increasing uptake of research in this area in the foreseeable future.

Lowell: A final question. What are your plans over the coming 12-18 months?

Denlee: We will be continuing our research into accessibility solutions – that project is funded until the end of 2010. We will also be trialling careers fairs and industry engagement in the coming few months. I will be continuing to teach in SL focusing more on using SL as a platform for facilitating interaction between my students and clients via SL. We are furthering our research into mixed media performance in virtual worlds and we are currently working on a pilot project with the University of Adelaide focusing on entrepreneurship training in virtual worlds. I am working with Professor Noel Lindsay from the Entrepreneurship, Commercialisation and Innovation Centre at the University of Adelaide on that project.

Lowell: Any last words?

Denlee: I guess for me the most powerful thing about a virtual world like SL is that it provides a medium by which researchers, academics and students can come together to collaborate, undertake research and also for providing experiential learning opportunities for students within a global platform. The other significant aspect of this environment is the flexibility it affords for engaging people who might otherwise not be able to meet, whether due to disability, geographical location or other circumstances.

Check it out in-world

Filed Under: Australian News, Education, Profile, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

November 1, 2009 by Leave a Comment

1. The Hindu (India) – Brave new worlds beckon. “Everyone has indulged in a little escapism sometime in their lives. The need for an outlet from the relentless glare of reality is felt by many and the possibility of an alternate lifestyle hidden from public view can be a powerful attraction. This a lternate role-play starts at childhood with girls playing make-believe games with dolls and boys dreaming up war games with their action heroes. As age advances, the need for fantasy it seems, does not always diminish, it sometimes gets hidden under the wraps. In the past, people’s fantasy world went as far as books or movies could take them. Today the Internet can transport you to worlds beyond your wildest imagination.”

2. TechCrunch (USA) – PlaySpan Strikes Deal With Nickelodeon To Power Microtransactions. “We just wrote about PlaySpan’s recent study showing positive growth in the exchange and e-commerce of virtual goods exchange. PlaySpan powers micro-payments across over 1,000 video games and virtual worlds and has virtual goods storefronts on Facebook, MySpace, within games and on its standalone site. Today, PlaySpan is announcing a fairly significant deal with Nickelodeon to power payment services for virtual goods and microtransactions for the Nickelodeon Kids and Family Virtual Worlds Group.”

3. PhyOrg.com (UK) – Researchers bring noise to virtual worlds. “When you kick over a garbage can, it doesn’t make a pure, musical tone. That’s why the sound is so hard to synthesize. But now Cornell computer scientists have developed a practical method to generate the crashing and rumbling sounds of objects made up of thin “harmonic shells,” including the sounds of cymbals, falling garbage cans and lids, and plastic water-cooler bottles and recycling bins. The work by graduate students Jeffrey Chadwick and Steven An and Doug James, associate professor of computer science, will be presented at the SIGGRAPH Asia conference in Yokohama, Japan, in December.”

4. CNET (USA) – Virtual-goods resellers on the rise. “Gamers are not just making purchases to enhance their gaming experience but also selling virtual assets to other players, according to new research from video game market research firm VGMarket.
Sales of virtual goods are expected to reach $1 billion this year and already generate near $4 billion annually in China. But there are some challenges, primarily the fact that once you convert your real money to virtual cash you can’t readily get the dough back out.”

5. The Guardian (UK) – Google Earth beware: the Brits are coming. “I intended to give the 3D internet a miss for a while after writing last week. But that was before Mike Fotoohi, a freelance software engineer from London, emailed me. When he told me that he and a few friends, working for five years in their spare time, had built a 3D version not just of capital cities, as others have, but of the entire planet that was better than Google Earth, my first reaction was to get off the phone pronto.”

6. Reuters (USA) – Shapiro Negotiations Institute Opens New Training Centers Inside the Sistine Chapel, at the North Pole, at Camden Yards, and on Mt. Everest. “Shapiro Negotiations Institute (SNI) today launched a new online, 3-D approach to corporate training and education that delivers dramatic results and has the potential to change perceptions and expectations of such programs worldwide. Virtual Training Partners moves the experience of learning from conference rooms to the online, virtual world of Second Life, where participants and instructors interact as avatars in dynamic, ever-changing environments. The result? A program that costs dramatically less to provide, avoids lengthy time out of the office, and delivers effective new skills for participants that can be implemented immediately. ”

7. The Straits Times (Singapore) – Street cred in a virtual world. “I AM a midnight voyeur. But it’s not what you are thinking. Not the type that stares out of the window in the middle of the night, through high-powered goggles, searching for live porn action. My time is spent flipping through the profiles of my friends on Xbox LIVE – the online part of the Xbox 360 game console, which among other things, lets me connect to my friends and challenge them to virtual death matches. And this I usually do at the stroke of 12, which is when I get my free time in my daily busy working schedule. What I am looking for? Xbox Achievement points.”

8. VentureBeat (USA) – China’s growing addiction: online farming games. “A new agrarian revolution has occured in China, but only in the virtual worlds of social games. Social farm games now dominate all major Chinese social networking sites — RenRen (formerly Xiaonei), Kaixin001, 51.com, and QQ’s QZone. The May launch and 2H 2009 adoption of QQ Farm — a version of China’s already popular Happy Farm game built to run on Tencent’s estimated 228 million active-user QZone platform — may very well have transformed China into the leading country of online farmers. According to Five Minutes, Shanghai-based game developer of the first and largest social farm game, Happy Farm has now surpassed 23 million daily active users (DAU) across QZone, RenRen, and 51.com.The DAU count is the total number of users who log in during a 24-hour period.”

9. The Guardian (UK) – The rise of urban gaming. “Although we’d all like to think that we can completely separate our virtual and real-world experiences, it’s never quite as simple as that. Who hasn’t, at one point or another, emerged from a ten-hour Counter Strike session only to scour the street for camping spots? And conversely, surely you’ve had moments where you spot a cool building or rundown industrial area and think, ‘that would make a hell of game level’. I think, through the omnipresence of game culture and conventions, and the growing popularity of virtual worlds in general, our sense of reality is becoming more plastic; our interactions with the world around us more playful. I don’t think parkour could have evolved in a pre-videogame world – it’s games that have taught us to see scenic objects as potentially interactive components. ”

10. Christian Today (USA) – Brick-and-mortar pastor defends virtual churches. “The Christian church is engaging far less than one per cent of the 70 million people who are active in the virtual world. This means the virtual world is by far the largest unreached people group on planet Earth, says one pastor. Douglas Estes, a pastor from San Jose, California, has no vested interest in virtual or internet churches – a relatively new phenomenon – but given the large “unreached” population on the internet, he says he has a desire to see healthy churches proliferate “regardless of context”. Although he leads a brick and mortar church – Berryessa Valley Church – Estes defends virtual churches against critics in his new book, SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World, maintaining that they are real churches with real people.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

Weekend Whimsy

October 31, 2009 by Leave a Comment

1. The scariest house in Second Life by Ulysses Cabaret & Anthonys Republic

2. Casamento DjTroy Paulino & Rachel McDonnell Second Life

3. Jazz at Botanical Gardens in Second Life

Filed Under: General News, User-generated, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Virtual worlds as lawn mowing

October 29, 2009 by Leave a Comment

lowell_mowingthelawnAlthough it’s mostly a throwback to the mid to late 20th Century, there’s still a significant cohort of Australians who associate mowing the lawn with the ‘Aussie lifestyle’ (I hate generalisations, but bear with me). There’s no shortage of people who still dream of owning their own land, on which they can inflict the weekly spring and summer routine of mowing the lawn. Last weekend I had the opportunity to do some lawn mowing, and it occurred to me that for widepsread adoption of virtual environments to occur, the in-world experience needs to be a lot more like mowing the lawn. Keep reading to see a metaphor beaten within an inch of its life.

Experience

Lawn mowing, like any experience, is for most people a combination of sensory input that creates a memory. For the person cutting the grass, it’s everything from the smell of the mower fuel, the noise of the mower, the physicality of starting it up and pushing it, the visuals of the enviroment you’re partially decimating and finally the odour of cut grass.

It’s no surprise there’s heavy research into the development of interfaces that integrate the senses as part of the virtual world experience – it may not be a must-have for effective interaction but it will ensure it gets as real as possible for those wanting the richest in-world experiences. The day I can smell petrol fumes as an avatar is when I know the revolution has occurred. Whether that’s a good thing is another lengthy argument.

Achievement

Ask any devoted mower of lawns and they’ll confirm one of the big rewards for their activity is seeing the chaos of long grass turned into a controlled, neat expanse. Yes, it’s a maddening perspective for a lot of people and there’s a lot of fence-sitters (like me) who enjoy seeing the neat results but like the unruly option as well. What underlies the mowing fetish is the sense of achievement of physically pushing a machine around that makes a difference to the look of your abode (and no, I will not divert to vaccuum cleaner metaphors as well). Gaming worlds have had this nailed down beautifully for years, and I can vouch for the fact World of Warcraft have polished that nail to a dazzling sheen. Social-oriented worlds like Metaplace and Farmville also have some pretty well fleshed out achievement systems. This is one aspect where the lawn mowing analogy comes into its own: we’re quite happy to push or ride the mower around the same circuit week after week, year after year if there’s a reward. Ring a bell, MMO grinders?

Ownership

Unless I have no choice, I don’t want someone else mowing my lawn. Sure, I’m happy to do someone else’s if they need me to, but it’s my lawn I’m passionate about and I want everyone to respect that and to also enjoy their green patch in their own way.

Virtual environments are struggling to come to grips with how best to achieve harmony with content ownership – you only need to look at this week’s Burning Life content theft issue in Second Life to see the ongoing challenges. There are still a lot of individuals quite happy to bring their plough over univited and rip a large channel through your prize turf. Part of the answer is governance and law enforcement, but the larger challenge is inculcating an acceptance of content ownership and rights across the entire virtual worlds sphere. Sure, the majority of us have that respect, but I’d wager there’s more plough-toting avatars than real-world equivalents.

Usability

If you’re lucky enough to own a lawn mower manufactured in the last 10 years or so, you’ll know how well they work now. Startup tends to be a breeze, they’re lighter to push around, emptying the catcher is easier and the days of choking on exhaust fumes are pretty much over. Most virtual environments are better than a 1954 Victa but most are still essentially 1988 models. They work fairly well but are heavy on the resources and make for a frustrating experience if used for long periods of time. To flog the analogy to death, there are still people who collect or even use old mowers, and the same applies to virtual worlds. Niches are good but the better model is always going to attract the bigger support.

The Last Word

If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably had enough of the lawn mowing analaogy. But whether it’s that or another human experience like first love, the smell of freshly baked bread or the birth of a child, the point remains the same. We all want a lot more out of virtual environments and we’re likely to get it eventually. The trouble is, by that time I may be old enough that I’m yelling at kids to get off my lawn.

Filed Under: Australian News, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

October 28, 2009 by Leave a Comment

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1. Virtual London is coming soon to Twinity and they’re asking for people to apply to create some innovative spaces. There’s 200 Euros in prize money up for grabs plus your own space in Twinity. All the details here

2. Volume 2, No. 3 of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is out. The theme of the issue is Technology, Economy and Standards.

3. If you want a comprehensive summary on accessibility and virtual worlds, then you can’t go past this post by Education.au’s KerryJ.

4. Another study has been published on the link between gaming and violence, and not surprisingly the results aren’t black and white.

5. The US Government is revising their National Educational Technology Plan. Anyone interested in having a say should head to ISTE Island in Second Life on the 5th November at 6pm SL time (Midday AEDT).

The full details:

The federal government of the United States of America has assembled an 18 person team to update and revise the National Education Technology Plan. Their report deadline is November 11, 2009. There will be a community meeting in Second Life for educational technology stakeholders to provide input into the planning process. Currently, we expect that a representative of the national team will be present as an observer at the SL event.

The event coordinator is Perplexity Peccable (RL: Patricia F. Anderson, patriciafanderson@gmail.com). Perplexity is the University of Michigan Emerging Technologies Librarian for the Health Sciences, and the community manager for Wolverine Island in SL. Contact Perplexity for more information or to volunteer support or services for this event.

Information on prior versions of the plan is available here.

Information on the current planning process is available here,

The team is seeking input from the public. You can join the conversation on their website here.

“If you had five minutes to talk with President Obama about educational technology, what would you say?”

The key topic discussion points are these.

* Learning: Providing unprecedented access to high-quality learning experiences.
* Assessment: Measuring what really matters and providing the information that enables continuous improvement at all levels of the education system.
* Teaching: New ways to support those who support learning.
* Productivity: Redesigning systems and processes to free up education system resources to support learning.”

Filed Under: Events, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , , ,

The sins of the world

October 26, 2009 by 2 Comments

‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned.
I have been with a loose girl’.

The priest asks, ‘Is that you, little Joey Pagano ?’
‘Yes, Father, it is.’

‘And who was the girl you were with?’

‘I can’t tell you, Father. I don’t want to ruin her reputation’.

“Well, Joey, I’m sure to find out her name sooner or later
so you may as well tell me now.

Was it Tina Minetti?’

‘I cannot say.’

‘Was it Teresa Mazzarelli?’

‘I’ll never tell.’

‘Was it Nina Capelli?’

‘I’m sorry, but I cannot name her.’

‘Was it Cathy Piriano?’

‘My lips are sealed.’

‘Was it Rosa DiAngelo, then?’

‘Please, Father, I cannot tell you.’

The priest sighs in frustration.

‘You’re very tight lipped, and I admire that.
But you’ve sinned and have to atone.
You cannot be an altar boy now for 4 months.
Now you go and behave yourself.’

Joey walks back to his pew, and his friend Franco slides over and whispers,

‘What’d you get?’

Joey turns with a smile and says,
‘4 months holiday and five good leads’.

Filed Under: Religion, Virtual Worlds

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

October 26, 2009 by Leave a Comment

1. Business in Vancouver (Canada) – Virtual worlds now delivering genuine business opportunities. “As video games, social networks and virtual worlds increasingly star as stand-ins for reality, development shops are exploring new ways to monetize fantasy by creating virtual marketplaces replete with digitized goods and services. Fuelled by micro-transactions in which users buy virtual goods and services for as little as pennies, virtual marketplaces are not only driving user engagement for technology companies, but also adding new revenue streams. During a recent panel discussion at the Mobile Monday Vancouver event, where local Internet entrepreneurs gather monthly, roughly 90 attendees heard how B.C. companies are monetizing virtual goods.”

2. Gamasutra (USA) – The Effects of Imaginary Value in Real Virtual Worlds. “Like, I feel, a large portion of my generation, most of my learning has been through books or the internet. I think that’s helped, or maybe forced, me to parse through things logically. And an unexpected outcome of pushing myself to write more is that I find out what I really think about something when I’m forced to type out the facts and read them back to myself. So with that preface, I’ve been trying to figure out why I like Warhammer Online. In a previous post I think I gave the impression that it was a nostalgia fix, and it is to some extent. But sheer nostalgia shouldn’t hold my interest like this, so there must be something more concrete here that’s affecting me. It’s confusing because I think I’m done with the MMO. WoW was my first, and I hopped on that bandwagon right away out of Warcraft fandom. I deposited years into that beast, and I don’t entirely regret it. But after WoW I was worn out — never again would I trudge through a world so huge that I was made as powerless as I am in the real world. Because in reality I’m in the lower tax echelon, work all day and don’t own a badass axe.”

3. New York TImes (USA) – No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You. “IT may be raining pink slips, and some people may be hard-pressed to make the rent, much less splash out on a pagoda-shoulder jacket from Balmain, but Vixie Rayna is hardly feeling the pinch. Not a month goes by in which she isn’t spending as much as $50,000 on housing, furniture or her special weakness: multistrap platform sandals, tricked out in feathers and beads. Recession or no, Ms. Rayna isn’t reining in her fantasies, or her expenditures — at least not in the virtual world. In a simulated universe like There.com, IMVU.com or Second Life.com, the granddaddy of avatar-driven social networking sites, Ms. Rayna, an avatar on Second Life, and her free-spending cohort can quaff Champagne, teleport to private islands and splurge on luxury brands that are the cyber equivalent of Prada waders or a Rolex watch.”

4. The Guardian (UK) – The real-world boom in online cities. “The internet has been evolving into three dimensions for years without most people noticing. The change has been confined to niche activities, even though some – such as World of Warcraft or Second Life – are big niches. Now there is a worldwide move to bring the 3D web to a mass market, led by the building of “virtual” cities where avatars can walk, shop, club or whatever with links to “real life” activities. From Tokyo to Helsinki and from Paris to Philadelphia, cities are being constructed at a pace that recalls 19th-century railway mania; except, mercifully, it is a lot cheaper and won’t have serious economic effects if there is a crash. ”

5. New York Times (USA) – A Virtual Clinic to Treat the Stresses of War. “Many veterans are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with serious problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder, but only one-third get medical help. One researcher has built a healing center for veterans in a virtual world, where she hopes they will be more comfortable seeking care. Jacquelyn Ford Morie is a senior researcher at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. She formerly did animation for Disney. She calls her current project, which she presented at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday, Coming Home.”

6. INSEAD Knowledge – Capitalism thrives in virtual world: Second Life gives commerce a second chance. “In the beginning, the online virtual world was a place for action video games such as Grand Theft Auto, or hanging out and chatting. Today, it’s a very different place. Commerce and capitalism have entered the picture. “A big change happened when the virtual worlds decided to give ownership to assets (there), which gave rise to an interesting and thriving economy,” says Miklos Sarvary, the new Dean of Executive Education at INSEAD and creator of the school’s campus in a virtual world called Second Life.”

7. VentureBeat (USA) – With 3 million fans, Fantage formally launches virtual world for kids. “While many kids virtual worlds have come and gone, Fantage has quietly built an audience of 3 million registered users. Today, it is formally launching its web site. The company has managed to do what lots of other kids sites have failed to do: get an audience by offering fun games and social activities in a safe, parent-friendly setting. And they did so just by observing kids, building what they like, and starting over when things didn’t work, said Peter Bae, vice president of marketing, in an interview.”

8. InformationWeek (USA) – Is There A Business In The Virtual World? “Much has been made of the premature obituaries for Second Life, but while the virtual world manufactured by Linden Labs has prevailed long beyond its presumed expiration date, the business model seems too arcane and forbidding to inspire many imitators. His unprecedented ability to manipulate individual atoms signaled a quantum leap forward in in nanoscience experimentation and heralded in the age of nanotechnology. After all, a business that depends on writing dauntingly complex code running on giant server farms to lure users to a bandwidth-hogging digitized playscape where they can flirt or do business — all in the hopes that they will purchase so-called “in-world” Linden Dollars using actual American dollars for the privilege of purchasing pink see-through blouses and imaginary islands — is a little bit daunting to say the least.”

9. Financial Times (UK) – Social games to change the world? “Social games are oft criticised for being little more than drivel. It’s a fair charge. After all, there’s not much intellectual value in games like Sorority Life and Mob Wars. Nonetheless, they have become among the most popular activities for users of social networks. Zynga, the largest maker of social games, says it has 50m daily active users of its various games, most of those on Facebook. In turn, Zynga is raking in cash through the sale of virtual goods.”

10. Huffington Post (USA) – Augmented Reality: Here to Stay. “There’s a new phrase around town — “Augmented Reality.” For a period of time, Virtual Reality (VR) was the hot new thing. Folks could create avatars, pretend to be other people, and buy and sell ‘virtual’ goods. You know, fake stuff. But alas, for most of us, there was just too much to get done in our daily lives to allow us to vanish into the ‘virtual worlds’ of Second Life or such. But now the combination of the web and technologists seem to have found a way to bring the ‘virtual’ world of the web into the real world of our daily lives. And shockingly – it’s pretty darn helpful.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

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