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Cover
Virtual Worlds
Apart from being popular social networking platforms, virtual
worlds are turning out to be an immense business opportunity for those who like
to invest in upcoming technologies, writes Varun Aggarwal.
 Whenever
I would hear the song ‘Video killed the radio star’, the 1979 chartbuster
by the Buggles, I would always wonder how could Video ever lead to the demise
of some of the most popular radio stars. While, it may not have been demise
in literal terms for radio stars, but television surely affected the number
of people who tuned into radio channels. With the advent of television, the
sound now had a face and a body attached to it, which provided a whole new dimension
to the experience for the audience. The comparison between virtual worlds and
today’s Internet is also quite analogous to the radio and video war as
the virtual worlds give a third dimension to the existing Internet.
Now, before you start to wonder, how a virtual world can be compared to the
Internet let me make it clear that a virtual world (e,g. Second, Life, ActiveWorlds,
Moose etc) is not a game. Social virtual worlds are a particular subset of massively
multiplayer online spaces that focus on social interaction rather than traditional
gaming activities. Most of them allow users to customize their experience by
decorating a personalized space or running their own events. The settings tend
to be realistic, modern environments. Gartner estimates 80% of active Internet
users will have a “Second Life” in the Virtual World by the end of
2011.
Started as a means to collaborate, socialize and build upon ideas, virtual worlds
are shaping into a new age of Internet. They offer (almost) everything that
the Internet offers, be it information about various topics, chatting (audio
as well as video apart from text), an opportunity to showcase your products,
a selling platform or even an online education center. Apart from the usual
Internet like features, what makes virtual worlds unique is the three dimensional
effect. You do not have to scroll over pages inside the virtual world; you instead
fly or walk around it. Imagine having a business meeting or a classroom session
in a game-like environment.
Leveraging the opportunity
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 "Currently,
though the collaboration capabilities of virtual worlds are more widely
in use, the 3D modeling and conceptual research capabilities of virtual
worlds are highly underutilized. This will definitely see a great increase
in use in the coming days for educational purposes"
- Sundararaj S
Partner at Anantara Solutions
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 "From
our perspective, virtual worlds like SL represent the next
generation of peer-to-peer platforms. They create a rapidly growing new
public that we need to address as a public relations consultancy"
- Rishi Seth
Managing Director,
Text 100 India Pvt. Ltd
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 "India
Research Laboratory
We have been working at the
frontiers of the many technologies that have coalesced around virtual
worlds as we believe that these 3D, immersive and social environments
will have a huge impact on the Web as we know it, and on business"
- Dr. Guruduth Banavar
Associate Director, IBM
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Everyone’s trying to leverage the vast business potential
that these virtual worlds hold, be it IT giants like Sun Microsystems, Intel,
IBM, Public Relations companies like Text100 or even consultancies such as Anantara
Solutions. While, companies have invested in various virtual worlds, the most
sought after virtual world for investment purposes came out to be Second Life.
When Second Life opened in June 2003, there was nothing there,
nowhere to go, and nobody to see. CEO Philip Rosedale had made the surprising
decision to leave Second Life empty. Colleagues argued for inventing a game
to show what was possible, but Rosedale, thought the service would work best
if it let users create their own world.
Sun Microsystems launched its presence in Second Life in
October 2006, becoming the first Fortune 500 firm to hold an ‘in-world’
press conference at the opening of the company’s new virtual Sun Pavilion.
Since then Sun has been publicly active in Second Life by providing tools and
enabling open-source knowledge sharing.
Sun currently owns six islands in Second Life. The first island showcases Sun’s
technology and solutions with virtual products, product information, and a link
back to www.sun.com for more information. Sun’s second island has an area
dedicated to ecological responsibility. There is a library that houses information
about Sun and this area will soon include a technical resource library.
Sun’s third and fourth islands are solely for its employees.
Employees registering for Second life go through orientation here. Rather than
holding conference calls, employees can attend in world meetings with the benefit
of voice, instant messaging and the ability to view active participation. “Our
islands boast of more traffic than those hosted by our competitors. The primary
aspect that connects Sun and Second Life is open platforms. Linden Labs, the
founder of Second Life just provided the infrastructure that would enable users
to build their own world. Linden Labs’ role was not trying to create the
future—they were using next-generation hardware and software to develop
an open platform that would make an immersive, participatory world possible,”
said Jagannath AL, GM- Marketing, Sun Microsystems India.
Text 100 opened its Second Life office in August, 2006. According
to Rishi Seth, Managing Director, Text 100 India Pvt. Ltd., “We did this
as we have always closely followed the world of peer-to-peer media such as blogs
or social networks. From our perspective, virtual worlds like SL present the
next generation of peer-to-peer platforms. They create a rapidly growing new
public that we need to address as a public relations consultancy.” To introduce
SL to employees in the company’s 30 global offices, Text100 held a worldwide
meeting to celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary. The meeting included
a presentation by our CEO, accompanied by a slideshow, a video featuring an
interview with the company founders and a Q&A for employees with the CEO.
IBM is serious about virtual worlds and the 3D Internet.
Dr. Guruduth Banavar, Associate Director, IBM India Research Laboratory revealed,
“We have been working at the frontiers of the many technologies that have
coalesced around virtual worlds as we believe that these 3D, immersive and social
environments will have a huge impact on the Web as we know it, and on business.”
“While Second Life may only be a harbinger of a virtual world’s future,
its model does include a few elements that reflect the open nature of the Internet
and suggest how a 3D Net and v-Business might take shape: relatively easy-to-use
tools that participants can harness to build the environment and create assets
that they can own and sell. We are also working with many other virtual world
platforms, in fact, in nearly 85% of our client engagements, we are working
with platforms other than Second Life,” he opined.
A recent effort includes IBM’s joint development project with Linden Lab
announced on April 3rd. Currently in beta, the joint development project will
allow IBM to host regions of the Second Life Grid behind IBM’s firewall.
With this, for the first time a portion of the Second Life Grid will be deployed
behind a corporate firewall, with the goal of creating a solution that businesses
can quickly deploy to get work done in a new way. Dr. Banavar said, “Our
development agreement will allow us to experiment with the technical issues
and help lay out a roadmap for addressing the best route to take in developing
the key technologies necessary for enabling interoperability of virtual worlds.
Our research and analysis shows that to make Virtual Worlds real for business
use requires that the varying technologies interoperate. The general idea is
to be able to take your avatar to various locations on the 3D Web, without having
to worry about multiple clients, inventories, and incompatibilities. In the
future, moving about the 3D web should follow a very similar model to how we
move about the existing 2D web today.”
Building a business model around virtual worlds is
no simpler or easier than in the real world, i.e. there are no short cuts.
You still have to do all the things you do in the real world. Taking an
iterative approach will provide a lot of insight and will also provide the
visibility of results required for all new initiatives. While there is no
one best approach that suits all businesses, a good approach is given below
in steps.
- Plan: Identify the end goal of your business model in the
Virtual World. Do your homework on how to go about achieving it.
- Prepare: Prepare to implement your plan in the virtual world.
Do some research and identify the best way of implementation of your
plan in the virtual world. Communication with the residents in the virtual
worlds helps here.
- Execute: Once you have all the details worked out, implement
your plan in the virtual world. Take the help of available resources
and re-use wherever possible.
- Evaluate: Evaluate the success of your investment against
your plan. Identify areas of improvement based on inputs from residents
and trends of target audience.
- Feedback: Feedback the findings of the evaluation to your
plan and to continually improve the virtual world experience.
It is a good idea for every business to do some
research and analysis for their own business before investing.
Source: Anantara Solutions
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Education in Virtual Worlds
Educational institutions and universities are among the most active users of
virtual worlds. Virtual worlds offer possibilities of collaboration and modeling
in a way never before possible. Students, teachers and those pursuing research
from across the globe can now utilize this platform to collaborate and effectively
take education to a new level by means of illustrations, simulations and testing.
Sundararaj S, Partner at Anantara Solutions said, “Universities such as
Stanford, Harvard, etc. are currently using virtual worlds for everything from
research to regular virtual classroom education. NASA is currently running a
project for collaboration between scientists and engineers to help moon and
Mars exploration. Currently, though the collaboration capabilities of virtual
worlds are more widely in use, the 3D modeling and conceptual research capabilities
of virtual worlds are highly underutilized. This will definitely see a great
increase in use in the coming days for educational purposes.”
At IBM, new employees separated by thousands of miles are able to mingle, interact
and share ideas in the virtual world before their first day on the job. They
can learn real-life working skills such as signing up for benefits, developing
code as part of a global team, and ramping up sales skills before they meet
with IBM’s clients. “We believe that the 3D virtual world is proving
to be effective distance-learning environments, where you can use your avatar
to attend classes and connect with experts and teachers from around the world,”
said Dr. Banavar.
“We have more than 5,000 employees worldwide who are
members of IBM’s Virtual Universe Community. We are using virtual environments
for things such as virtual meetings, education and training, events, customer
interactions, and product development,” he added.
Last January here in the Asia Pacific, IBM announced an expansion of IBM Business
Centers in Second Life with additional staff in India, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan
and Korea, as well as dedicated pavilions for China and Japan. The expansion
was made possible through the addition of another island. This growth of the
Virtual Business Center offers multi-language support across the world, allowing
customers to visit IBM virtually and see products and solutions in 3D. It offers
a place for IBM sales people, clients, and partners to meet, learn, collaborate,
and conduct business together, virtually, without the time and cost of travel.
Intel has also opened Intel Software College in Second Life. You can get trained
on building applications for Intel’s multi-core platforms, get lessons
on game threading and architecture and even learn about managing emerging technology.
Intel has also tied up with Orange County Choppers (OCC) to open its first factory
at SL. The custom motorcycle manufacturer, featured on the hit reality TV show
“American Chopper”, is ready for you to create an elite chopper of
your own. You can build an Intel-powered chopper from the ground up, hang out
with the OCC cast or just grip your ape hangers and ride into the pixilated
sunset.
- First Law: Virtual worlds are not
games, but neither are they a parallel universe (yet). The initial reaction
of many business leaders when faced with virtual worlds is to dismiss
them as a mere “game” of no benefit to the enterprise and
something to be banned for wasting compute resources and time. Growth
in virtual worlds is significant but lower than it appears; the overall
population of non-game virtual worlds is still small compared to massively
multi-user online games (MMOGs) and the totality of community-oriented
and niche-targeted environments.
- Second Law: Behind every avatar
is a real person. Gartner said that people can not be fooled by the
fantasy elements in the virtual world. There are unwritten rules and
expectations for behavior and culture are developing. Enterprise users
must consider their corporate reputations.
- Third Law:
Be relevant and add value. Many commercial companies have established
a virtual world presence, but none have converted it into an effective,
profitable sales channel. There has been criticism of early corporate
entries into the virtual world, Second Life, related to the showrooms
usually being empty and lacking atmosphere. While there have been a
limited number of individuals who have earned more than $5,000 per year
from their virtual world businesses, most corporations will see minimal
revenue gains in the market at this time.
- Fourth Law:
Understand and contain the downside. Enterprises face serious questions,
such as “Could activities in the virtual world undermine or influence
my organization/brand in the real world?” With significant portions
of the virtual economy based on adult-oriented activities, questions
of appropriate behavior and ethics also arrive. In-world behavior can
be a problem in public areas; annoying interruptions can range from
unintentional arrivals and erratic behavior from new residents whose
avatar control is still suspect to misdemeanors such as graffiti, to
concerted protest activities designed to disrupt.
- Fifth Law:
This is for the long haul. There is significant probability that, over
time, market pressures will lead to a merging of current virtual worlds
into a smaller number of open-sourced environments that support the
free transfer of assets and avatars from one to another with the use
of a single, universal client.
Gartner recommends that enterprises should experiment with virtual
worlds, but not plan massive projects, and look for community benefits
rather than commerce. Find enthusiasts within your enterprise and support
them. Understand the implications for access to open virtual platforms
from within the enterprise and the risks involved.
Source: Gartner
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Considerations
Investing in Virtual Worlds is similar to making an investment in the real world.
Almost all the considerations apply. While every investment warrants an analysis
on a case-by-case basis, there are some considerations that might be crucial
to the success of the investment.
- Target Audience: Have a carefully put together
plan to attract your target audience to your investment in the virtual world.
- Infrastructure: Although this issue might
be solved over the coming years, it is definitely worth considering right
now. Confirm if your target audience has access to the infrastructure required
to get access to your virtual world presence. A high-configuration computer
(2 GB RAM, Accelerated Graphics card) and a broadband Internet connection
(512 Kbps or greater) are required for a proper virtual world experience.
- Time: Like any real world investment, it takes
time for a Virtual world investment to be implemented and returns to be visible.
While having a long-term plan is definitely helpful, take an iterative approach
and look to make short term quick benefits. What you see happening while going
for these short term targets might actually impact the long term plan considerably.
Though the virtual worlds try to draw a parallel universe, they are not really
a threat to the present day Internet (not for a few years at least). However,
if you tend to ignore the potential of this new world, you may lose out vast
business opportunities to your competition. So be there, and give a ‘second
life’ to your business.
varun.aggarwal@expressindia.com
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