BlackCherry Blogs

At the recent GameON Finance event I met Karen Lee Hall of Heroic Interactive. We had a brief but interesting discussion of the work both our companies were engaged in regarding kids and virtual worlds. Karen Lee's company is working in 2D FLASH while BlackCherry's direction is in the area of 3D immersive experiences.

GameON was a great event, if somewhat lacking in investor interest. One thing that did surprise me about the IO event was the general lack of discussion surrounding virtual worlds. Karen Lee tried to fill that gap with a question to one of the discussion panels titled ‘The Future is Now.' Her question was something along the lines of ‘Do you see a future where users will be able to transmit their avatars between different virtual worlds?' After some vague references to OpenID, the question was glossed over by the panel (all respected and active game industry professionals) as somewhat naive and unrealistic. This viewpoint seemed to underline again the general lack of familiarity or interest in current activities and thinking in the virtual world space.

The question Karen Lee brought up is a big question the virtual world communities are currently struggling with. How to interconnect the Metaverse and allow cross world migration is a puzzling technical dilemma but it's one that must and will ultimately be solved. The most likely solution will come from an open source, standards based philosophy and approach. Linden Lab had the opportunity to lay the foundations for this effort when they created Second Life. While the world is incredibly open and flexible they failed to adopt open standards for content integration. Many point to this proprietary approach to content creation as a major limitation on SL's growth.

OpenSim combined with OSGrid are steps in the right direction but it is early days. These tools are compatible with Second Life viewers but differ by being open source with an open ended architecture. These efforts are also being embraced by the big blue behemoth IBM. In a partial reversal of strategy, Linden Lab has taken steps to open up the Second Life API.

In the summer of 2008 Linden labs established the Open Grid Protocol. Working with IBM an avatar was successfully teleported from OpenSim to Second Life. Not much has happened since this event. The current focus of development appears to be business and corporate virtual worlds. IBM is leveraging OpenSim to create a business oriented virtual world offering. Others like Cisco are offering a proprietary solution in an attempt to capture market share in what is likely now a hotly contested space, the so-called 3D internet. Linden Lab has recently announced their own proprietary business tool 'Behind the Firewall.' There are big dollars at stake for sure and that being the case, competition is driving a desire to carve up the virtual space. This is of course, short term thinking. What emerges over the long term, as technological advance drives user adoption, is anyone's guess.

Will all virtual worlds eventually talk to each other, certainly not. Over time, perhaps decades, dominant players will become established. The most likely scenario is any emerging Metaverse will be divided as the world and increasingly the internet is now, across political and socio-economic lines. But the logical conclusion, over the long term is a dominant standard for virtual world creation will emerge. Such a system of standardizing can only be driven by international agreement and political will. While the human race has been less than successful, over the short course of human history, to find general consensus, there exists the possibility to start all over again in the virtual space.

Will there, in the future, be a dominant technology or standard that allows the creation and linking of large scale virtual worlds. My feeling is, it's a long way off, but it's as inevitable as having internet protocol standards. As virtual worlds evolve and become more immersive, we will ultimately all participate. When we reach the tipping point of user adoption, standards will have to emerge. Our ability to take advantage of these standards will depend on our ability to transcend the divisional lines that have existed in the world for centuries. If nothing else, virtual worlds and the Metaverse offer the potential for a new beginning.