We've seen a real surge of virtual worlds over the last year. Prokofy Neva's observation that a full 30 worlds are showing off demos at the Virtual Worlds conference in San Jose is evidence enough that there's growth in this area, but there might not be a direct competitor for Second Life. How many of these upcoming worlds will be able to provide a space for independent businesses to thrive?
One contender is attempting to do just that. NOVOKing has opened to the first group of 500 Alpha testers, and will roll out another 1000 Beta accounts shortly. It's the newest virtual world out of China set to compete directly with HiPiHi and Second Life in the virtual world arena. How does it compare, and will it be a place that businesses will call home?
Answering this question turned out to be a real challenge. I'm one of the very few English-only speaking people to have "set foot" in NOVOKing, and the language barrier was pretty difficult. For the time being there is no English version of the client, and most buttons are labeled in text only. I decided to just start clicking things. The very first thing I did was permanently delete my pants.
Mental note: that's the wrong button.
Even though I had to guess at how to do things, exploration of NOVOKing was relatively easy. Walking, running and flying were all simple and intuitive, and soon I was exploring a pre-fabricated city center. Several companies have already set up with NOVOKing, putting billboards up and selling branded virtual goods in the same way that we see it done in vSide. Spending time around these ads is encouraged by the smooth integration of dance animations and other interactive social tools.
The sale of virtual goods is, according to the website, something that every avatar can engage in the same way they do in Second Life:
Novoking's Terms of Service agreement recognizes Residents' right to retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create in Novoking, including avatar characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs. This right is enforceable and applicable both in-world and offline, both for non-profit and commercial ventures. You create it, you own it – and it's yours to do with as you please.
Content creation in NOVOKing has an edge over Second Life in that it enables direct import from professional tools like 3dsMax and Maya. We can expect to see small businesses in not only scripted objects, furniture and clothing, but also professionally designed custom avatars built from the skeleton up. Companies with existing 3D warehouses will have an edge here, as will independent artists who are familiar with advanced design tools.
There are things that aren't yet clear. We know that the in-world currency can be freely exchanged for real-world currency, but we don't know if the exchange rate will be flexible or set. We know that every avatar gets their own apartment to furnish and invite friends to (similar to how Kaneva handles it), but we know nothing about how real estate will work outside of these private areas - or if those areas can be traded.
Despite these mysteries, NOVOKing seems set up to accommodate the creation, sale and trade of virtual goods and has integrated billboard-style advertising schemes. It definitely looks like a promising candidate as a direct competitor to Second Life, and a tempting venue for businesses. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for English versions of the client to become available... then maybe I can find my pants.
yes,novoking should prepare an English versions of the client for us.chinese is so difficult ,i think maybe I can't find my pants in this virtual world just like you.
Caleb, you should go back to the exercise you began once defining "what is a virtual world" before you were beaten down at Terra Nova. More and more, I'm finding that if it does not have RMT, flying, geographical contiguousness, persistence of inventory, IP, and probably six other things I'm not thinking of, it just isn't a world, it's a browser with a flash game, it's a scene, it's a game, it's a passtime, it's a simulation, but not a world.
I still think Second Life is king, and I have actually gained even more appreciation for the real estate aspect of it, oddly enough, because I am really becoming more and more convinced that despite its political incorrectness as a concept among geek and academic socialists, private property is the foundation of economic freedom. It's not only "freedom of the press belongs to him who owns one"; it's "my land is my bastion against the encroachment of the state [game/world company]" and land as an alternative source of wealth/power/stake that creates a bulwark against the excesses of power accrued from from artistic designers and programmers, I've always seen this played out in Second Life. Some tend to define land as merely another form of artistic/programming development, since you have to landscape, put content on, do events, etc. But...I'm sorry. Land is land. It is a form of property and capital that is alternative to intellectual property, even in the virtual world, and the plurality of kinds of property also increasingly seems to me to be a basis for economic and civil liberties.
I think the SL real estate model has been so compelling as a revenue generator for companies that these other even very much more constrained games and worlds are adding real estate. So that's why Kaneva, Red Light Center, Metaplace are all talking about how you will eventually have apartments or rooms or roll-your-own worlds that you can trade and sell (it gets hazy for me how much this is RMT).
There.com has recently implemented a real estate aspect for "neighbourhoods" -- going to blog about that next as I got a demo of it at VW07.
I would say that "30" is a little bit of an inflation now that I've actually gone to see them as in fact, some of the things in that list are tools to make worlds, not worlds themselves, although some of the tools are so elaborate and complex, like the Icarus mo-cap, and have so much more to them than just mo-cap, and have such an enthusiastic community around them, that you think ,but...that's getting to be like a world...
Hi Caleb.
I am hoping that you can help me out. I am another one of the English speakers accepted into the Novoking beta. Unfortunately I am not able to log in. I get an error message that has been translated as being a timeout message.
I'm not convinced there's a technical problem, though that might well be the case. I think there might be some step I haven't followed.
I'm registered and can and have posted in the Novoking fourms. The installation went alright once I uninstalled an old copy of Ageia physics.
The error message I get can be one of two
or
I'm thinking that there might be something I haven't done needed to get my account authorized.
I am in North America.
So if there's any advice or help you can give, I would greatly appreciate it.
I've started a wiki at http://novoking.wiki.zoho.com so any useful info I get will go in there and hopefully maybe be able to help others as well as me.
Thanks.
Ah I know what that message is! You actually define two separate logins during the signup procedure. I have no idea why. At one point you define an account name, and then later there's a login name. I used to get this exact same error, and the only reason I figured it out that I was typing the wrong thing in was that my avatar name, "Onder", was too short for the account name field.
Oh, also, they make you define multiple passwords... like 3 of them. I still have no idea why...
Hope that helps!