Virtual Worlds Forum, Part 2: the Future
Yes, I know, I am a terrible person for mentioning the future of virtual worlds, then leaving you hanging. But would you rather read a blogpost or a novel? There you go.
The panel on the Future of Virtual Worlds was interesting. I shared it with a writer from CNet, a gentleman who has the task of building the largest virtual world project ever—in China, of course, and the professor who invented the MUD back in 1978. Yes, as in, he has been working in shared virtual spaces for almost 30 years. Text to start, yes, but shared spaces are shared spaces. The 3D is only the furniture.
It was funny, because there was this undercurrent of warning. Paraphrasing: “Be careful what we make virtual worlds into—if we eliminate the gaming and fantasy elements, then we may create a world that is stunningly useful, but in so doing, we can make it banal. We may wonder why people willingly spent 3-4 hours a night in virtual worlds today, 20 years from now."
And yes, I can see where this perspective comes from. I’d expect the first breakout virtual world results to come from one of two or three places, and the most likely one is in business applications. After all, we aren’t that far from a credible WebEx replacement in virtual worlds.
But if your virtual world is only for business meetings, how fun is it?
So if we get a big success in virtual worlds, and business rushes in to build its virtual worlds, do we kill what they could become?
Of course not. This single-track thinking is exactly akin to what happened in 1994-1995, when the internet first entered the public’s consciousness. Back then, many, many internet users wanted to Save the Intartubes from the Evil Corporations! While early web developers wanted to Pave the Way for Corporate Uptake! Both were single-outcome scenarios. Either the potential of the internet to unite humanity and give us unlimited opportunity would be destroyed by the corporations, or the internet would never become a valuable marketing medium.
Well, we know what we got. Both.
Today’s internet gives us opportunities unimaginable when I was growing up. I can talk for free to virtually anyone in the world. I can share my art with everyone. I can shoot video and put it on a network that has reach and engagement greater than any television network. In minutes, I can set up a blog with articles or stories that can be read from Tokyo to London. I can start an online business and immediately begin selling stuff. I can develop code, and build a company around it. And, at the same time, it is a corporate garden, filled with marketing.
So let’s not be so negative about virtual worlds, and about corporate involvement. It’s unlikely that today’s internet would have been what it was without the large corporate investments which drove awareness, uptake, and content. Virtual worlds need investment to drive awareness, uptake, and content—and that will drive the fun, creative, and visionary applications of virtual worlds at the same time.
“That’s great,” you’re saying. “This guy is a helluva politician. You haven’t told us one single concrete thing about the future of virtual worlds.”
Okay, okay. I’ll share some of my pre-conference notes on virtual worlds in the 2, 5, and 10 year timeframe.
2 years out:
- There are still a lot of different worlds, but we know who the gorillas are going to be
- There will be at least one major breakout, in terms of RL corporate $ sales, possibly coming from fashion or business enablers
- The line between social networks and virtual worlds begins to blur even more, with social networks moving into, or becoming, virtual worlds
5 years out:
- There will be at least a half-dozen major companies that have IPOed who started as metabrands
- We will have made major strides in quantifying an attention/propagation economy balanced by a widely-accepted reputation metric
- We will have some businesspeople using AI-backed avatars as proxies, extensions of their “real” self. Don’t talk to me, talk to my avatar—and convince it that I should talk to you. Formulae for “getting past the avatar” will be the new SEO of the day.
- Several purely user-created storylines in virtual worlds have now spread out into the real world, becoming linear movies, television/mobile series, comic books, and novels
- We’ll see the first wear-it-always augmented reality overlays (eyePods) and inexpensive, compelling immersive interfaces for entertainment and gaming
10 years out:
With accelerating change, the next 10 years may have the same amount of change as the last 20. In 1987, computers had 80286 processors struggling to display 16 colors at 640 x 480 resolution, cellphones weighed 20 lbs and were carried on shoulder straps, fax machines were thousands of today’s dollars, and there was no Internet as we know it. It would be difficult to explain the most basic concepts of a world-spanning data and communication network, let alone the fact that the largest “television” network consists of short user-generated video shared on it. Heck, you’d have a hard time explaining that the USSR was gone. But hey, here’s a shot at a couple of things:
- By this time, the virtual world revolution will be larger than the internet revolution at its 10 year birthday
- AI may be good enough to have our avatars stand for us
- We may have made significant progress in “uploading” personalities into virtual spaces
- We may see breakthroughs in personal fabrication, leading to a design economy/near post-scarcity economy
- The propagation/reputation economy may be the de facto standard for marketing and transactions—to the point where some people make all their money by sharing
If you want the complete scoop, IM Fallon Winnfield in Second Life or JasonS in HiPiHi.
