IBM Questions Second Life #2

This is "part 2" of an earlier post about IBM's mixed reality Virtual Worlds global “think tank” in Second Life, held on November 30. The purpose was to think out loud about the potential of virtual worlds.  As promised in my earlier post, here are a few additional questions we tossed around.  I've noted my opinions on each.  Please add your own!!

Roo Reynolds blogged about the event here and provides links to the complete chat transcripts.

[Clarification 12-29-06:  The responses to the following questions are mine, not Roo's. The questions were posed - these are my answers.  Poor Roo should not have to take the blame for them. You can see eveyone else's answers on Roo's chat transcipt.]

What would slow/stop the growth of Second Life?

• Lack of reasonable scalability; lack of web interoperability. 
• More competitive introductions of virtual worlds. 
• Overlooking the “user” part of “user generated content” and focusing too much on mapping the environment to enterprise requirements.  For either Linden Lab or enterprises to capitalize on the benefits of UGC (lots of content with little or no incremental cost and social networking behaviors), the environment must continue to stimulate user-ownership.

How to make it attractive to more people?
Interoperability, identity permeability and a better 3d engine will make SL more attractive, but ease-of-use that is critical.  Right now there is a heavy burden on user literacy.  Over time, “game babies” will be the dominate force in the work and market place, but in the near future, UI is vital – as well as less demanding user generated content building tools.

Is the Second Life culture anti-corporate?
I don't believe it is, in general.  The biggest fear is intrusive advertising and competing with the resident businesses. Arrogance is also a frequent complaint. 

The nature of SL sims is that they are “opt-in” and therefore they don’t intrude on most residents.  Some do feel threatened by the competition and the lack of cultural understanding.  They fear losing the culture of SL.  I think that is a very legitimate concern, and one that probably will likely take the same path as the web…some people collaborate, others compete, but overall crowds win.

There is still far too much “first world” thinking going on with brands – they need to step back and rethink the consumer and their marketing within this specific context – and within 2D social worlds, for that matter.

Enterprises need to understand the hyper-self that exists in virtual worlds.  They need to rethink/reconfigure the 4P’s of marketing (product, price, placement, promotion) for these spaces.  Gamers and virtual world residents look at “self” very differently – and that influence will only become greater and touch more areas in marketing and workplace as virtual spaces expand.

December 27, 2006

Comments

[gabriele]

I'm very friendly