The pre-meeting to big industry conferences like the Virtual Worlds Fall 2007 convention in San Jose is often more important than the actual pre-set speeches and trade booths. And from various Twitters and Facebooks and hotel lobby chit-chat, the word on the street is that the pre-meeting involved a closed session of game and world makers like Linden Lab and Metaplace together with large companies like IBM, Cisco, and Samsung about interoperability -- starting the conversation about making standard protocols for 3-D virtuality on the Internet, and ultimately realizing the geek dream of walking between worlds, of having one identity or one log-on to reach the soon-to-be numerous virtual worlds, and being able to port content among the worlds.
The meeting evidently didn't get that far beyond outlying some basic common denominators. Some of the giant business companies hadn't even heard of some the game-gods that we avatars believe are our heroes, like Raph Koster, and the for their part, the game-gods marveled that a conversation about standardizing protocols that they have had been holding among themselves for more than a decade since MUDs was only now getting attention from the guys who want to make sure to sell them the widgets to connect their worlds -- as if men in tights was the only activity somebody would want to universalize.
This may be one of those occasions, to paraphrase Adam Smith, when the public has to worry when large competitors finally start to cooperate. Why? Because the diversity and integrity of individual worlds and games are at stake, and the RMT economies of some of them may depend on their makers being willing to keep tough protectionist legislation and strict customs inspection at borders. Real-life globalization has devastated the economies of the developing world and, Americanized content all over the planet. Will virtual globalization be as bland or even destructive? While developers and advertisers might like to see convergence and globalization, and an end to "walled gardens" and "silos" as the games and worlds are scornfully dubbed in order to sum up the problem of lack of passports and portability, no serious studies have been made of the consumers desire -- and willingness in practice -- to cross over among their worlds and games. Obviously an Eve starship jars the story line for the orc in World of Warcraft on the moor (of course, some will want to deliberately mix and mash these genres).
Aside from world-hopping, however, standardization not only of technical aspects but policy aspects of virtual worlds are an inevitability as more and more individual, corporate, and educational users are attracted to virtual worlds. For example, US government and publicly funded websites are mandated to be "Section 508 compliant" in conformity with a law to enable access for the disabled, so the government already legislates standards in some areas. If the industry doesn't make its own standards, government regulators may do it for them.
Eager to stay on top of the standardization race, Linden Lab issued a breathless press release today in San Jose saying that have launched a collaboration with IBM "to develop new technologies and methodologies based on open standards that will help advance the future of 3D virtual worlds." Evidently they didn't find any other takers at the pre-meeting for such announced collaboration, though surely other world-makers will be avidly following the LL claim that they have "built the Second Life Grid as part of the evolution of the Internet" as Ginsu Yoon, VP of Business Affairs claims. The standards contemplated include "universal" avatars to cross into multiple worlds, security-rich transactions of virtual goods, platform stability, integration with existing Web and business processes, and open standards for interoperability with the current Web -- all of it total blue-skying for the avatars of Second Life, who are lucky to hang on to their inventory from one log-in to the other, let along across the Metaverse.
I don't know, it just seems silly to me.
I had a big rant typed out but I'll just say that when LL starts using industry-standard 3D formats, I'll start to take these initiatives at face value. Prims and dodgy sculpties are actually de-evolution for serious content creators who have been around a while.
I have a lot to say about it, actually, but I'll stop now hoping I don't get my head chewed off.
Peace and Love
Having written code for MUD avatar transfer, I can safely say that the hardest part isn't the transfer of the avatar (or p-file data in those days). The problem was how you handled the clash of races, classes, item abilities and unsupported features from one system to another. By the time you distilled things down to the lowest common denominator, you were happy that your name and description survived the trip.
Second Life brings an additional complication to the table: the economy. Even if you can find common formats, the permission systems have to be compatible enough to limit transfered items *at least* as much as they were limited in the original world, or copy-bot will look like a kids toy.
Having written lots of corporate integration code, I can say that integration points are *fragile*. Keeping one system running is a challenge. Updating that system without breaking all your external linkages is *far more* challenging than updating a system without such constraints. So much so that corporate integration points are usually "fixed in stone" and thus become boat anchors for business process change if you aren't careful. In rapidly changing environments like virutal worlds, more boat anchors are *not* needed.
At the end of the day I expect "avatar portability" to mean that you get to keep your name (as long as it wasn't already taken); gender, height, some vague body shape, and maybe your items that came from the library. This means most avatars will be ugly and mostly naked upon arrival in a new world. Exactly the new user experience that system providers *won't* want to give.
The Lindens' participation in this interop exercise could be the strongest possible signal that they don't care about their internal inworld economy ultimately, and would sacrifice it in a New York minute, now that it has done the job of boot-strapping their initial beta, for the greater prize (seemingly) of providing grid-level services to larger companies who will inevitably have more control over residents in their company towns, and who have absolutely no need for any inworld economy, as they exist from the outworld economy where their business machines are sold.
John, the avatar isn't just the static outlines of a body in cyberspace. The avatar *is* his inventory, his social networks, his landmarks, his skills, etc. So obviously all those things have to be welded to him. And that's why trying to have all of that baggage port is nuts. I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to have, like real life, merely a visa that allows you some access to a place, say, viewing platforms, temporary hotels, try-mes, etc. and a suitcase that lets you keep images, notepads of ideas, etc. that is always accessible in any world.
AH finally the light shines,
something for nothing....the valley mantra of the tech religion.
not "could be" ...is.
ready for HOMER Linden......?