new worlds

In just a few short weeks, Berlin based Metaversum will launch a closed beta of their new virtual world, Twinity, which they describe as a mashup for virtual and real life, where alternate reality games will thrive. I had a chance to catch up with Jeremy Snyder, Metaversum's VP Community & Operations, and get the lowdown on what sounds like a very exciting new virtual worlds project.

Here are some of the key facts. I've not seen Twinity yet, but I think if they can live up to their claims, it's gonna make a big splash in this space.

1. Twinity is a Real Cash Economy

Like forerunners Second Life and Entropia Universe, Twinity residents will be able to buy and sell inworld currency, (the name of the currency is still under discussion) and trade virtual goods and services.

2. Twinity Uses a Mix of Proprietary and Open Source Systems

Twinity will be tightly integrated with the 2D web, using technologies such as Ruby on Rails and MySQL and Postgres to power such things as web based inventory management. They also use some of these Open Sources DB systems and such, including Linux servers for the 3D environment. Sadly, Metaversum are not prepared to release details of the proprietary middleware application they use for their 3D, though I'm sure we'll be able to make educated guesses once we see it!

3. Twinity Residents will not have as much Creative Freedom as Second Lifers

Right off the bat, there are no inworld modelling tools in the Twinity client, but you will be able to import 3D objects made in Maya, or Blender for example. You also wont be able to make your own buildings, not at first at least, but you'll be able to buy an apartment in a Metaversum built structure, or perhaps a whole building. In that space, or zone as they put it, you'll have more freedom, being able to import and place objects.

4. Items Marked for Sale, Must be Approved

Driven by concerns of copyright infringement, Metaversum will not let you place items you've created for sale untill approved. They say that they think this will scale, as they intend to use offshore partners to handle much of this, but also freely admit that it will be a case of "we'll see..." when the time comes.

5. Twinity Will Run on a Fairly Standard Virtual Worlds Business Model

The way Metaversum intend to make Twinity pay will be familiar to many Metaversed readers:

• Currency sales
• Real estate sales
• Premium accounts - Details still being finalized

With such an emphasis on currency, I wonder just how those creative and entrepreneurial restrictions mentioned above will impact the company, and the worlds growth.

Trilogy Studios, formed in late 2005 by ex EA and VU Games execs, has been making announcements about moving into the virtual world business with the construction of a Pimp My Ride online game for MTV. While this isn't MTV's first virtual world experience (they have both Virtual Laguna Beach and The Hills operating on the There platform), Trilogy Studios CEO Michael Pole has been pushing for this to be more than just a way for people to interact with a brand:

"We've developed a business model that enables media companies to successfully monetize their franchises through virtual world networks including micro-transactions, in-game advertising and sponsorships, premium subscriptions and e-commerce."

A brand's presence in virtual worlds has largely been seen as a promotional tool in the past, but the accent on making the promotion itself into a viable business may gain Trilogy Studios clients that other virtual world companies couldn't access. The platfrom of choice, in this case, continues to be Makena Technology's software bundle most famously used on the There.com platform. Pole has, however, been implying that the Pimp My Ride game will be stand-alone and not necessarily available to There residents:

"Why co-mingle a brand like the NBA in a virtual world like Second Life when you can create your own virtual NBA world?" asked Pole. "We think we can attract 10 to 20 million mainstream consumers to a focused virtual world site and deliver a full brand experience."

The obvious hubris of assuming that they can double World of Warcraft's subscription numbers aside, the idea of building a separate and profitable world for each brand's marketing campaign is a unique one. The plan to use micro-transactions and premium subscriptions has been successful in the past for narrowly-focused worlds, so one could argue that a branded world would fit the bill.

As for the rest of the plan: will advertisers will want to place their messages in another brand's world? Also, how many separate, branded virtual worlds can the market bear?

And that question is: Just how long will it be before we see photo real virtual worlds come to the full? Not long says Michael Arrington linked above, and judging from this video of Everyscape's technology, a company Onder Skall covered last month, I'd say he's right.

This video, and the other, of Microsofts Photosynth, which is a similar technology used on this colab BBC project is what gets me excited about the future. It's what drives me to spend hours on this blog every day, and hours in Second Life talking to anyone that will listen about the 3D web. It's what it's all about. It's beautiful, and it's the future.

Many Metaversed readers will already be familiar with the Chinese HiPiHi world that was recently funded to the tune of around $10M, but now there appears to be a Japanese version of Linden Lab's 3D streaming world. Meet Me, a new virtual world that replicates Tokyo and simulates shopping and all the other activities and functions one associates with virtual worlds is set to debut this fall, if an admittedly unreliable translation of a Japanese article is anything to go by.

Virtual world news brings us these tidbits of rumor and guesswork, we can only thank them, and wait for some official release in English before bringing you more information.

It certainly seems like "....version of Second Life" is getting a bit old doesn't it though? Every social network worth its salt says it's the "MySpace for...[insert vertical here]" and that's tedious beyond belief. There will most like be, and hopefully be, many virtual worlds. I hope they're not all versions of Second Life, variety after all is the spice of life, and it would be nice to see some thinking in this space that doesn't necessarily model itself on existing projects.

Multiverse, an ambitious project from some of the original Netscape folks including Bill Turpin, to provide a 3D virtual worlds platform and trigger the kind of explosive growth we saw in the www back in the mid ninties has just completed series A funding for $4M led by Sterling Stamos Capital. Bits and pieices of news and rumor keep bubbling to the surface surrounding Multiverse, and indeed 10,000 development teams worldwide have signed up to beta test the platform when it becomes available late this year or in early 2008.

The wild west nature of the virtual world of Second Life, where leather clad Goreans flanked by their harems mix with photo real business Avatars in swish suits and sweater wearing educators with brown leather elbow patches, is all a bit too much for some companies it seems. As companies, political institutions and educators continue to stream into Linden Lab's virtual world, some are looking to regain control over their messaging, the environment and those that are permitted within it according to Business Week. For most companies building a private virtual world won't make sense, but for brands like MTV pitching at a much younger demographic I can see the point, and possibly even for banking and financial environments, though you'd wonder why they wouldn't simply use a secure website for such services.

A unique virtual world is now available for preview that works right through your browser. EveryScape is a virutal representation of the real world that you can walk through and interact with, and the best part is that you don't even need to download extra software to do it.

Wandering through a virtual representation of the real world may not be anything new, but it's the interaction with the environment that's impressive. You can comment on different places, post reviews, add rankings, or simply leave one or two-word "tags". This makes everything searchable through EveryScape's search engine and makes walking through a virtual world much more efficient.

They go a step further by accepting uploaded pictures from users as well. If you paint your house, you can take a picture and upload it so the world can see the new look. You can even post a "for rent" sign in your window and make it clickable so that people can get more information.

It's all pretty slow and touchy at the moment, as the official launch isn't due to start until September 2007. Still, this is well worth a look as an excellent example of the possibilities the metaverse offers us.

In an as yet unconfirmed rumor buzzing around Chinese tech blogs, the Second Life like Chinese virtual world Hipihi appears to have just received it's first big round of funding. According to insiders at the firm, the amount, provided by three venture firms is said to be between $7 and $10M.

Founded in 2005, Hipihi is a virtual world that resembles Linden Lab's Second Life closely. Not a great deal is known about it, other than it's in closed beta, and nearing general release. If you've not seen Hipihi, you might like to check out this video released back in March this year.

Ambient Sound Investments has announced a major investment in the virtual world Frenzoo, which is currently in closed beta. Frenzoo will be a social networking site for teens within a virtual world with customizable avatars. Players will be offered a variety of branded clothes, footwear, accessories, furniture and lifestyle items.

The target audience is teen fashionisas.

"Traditional web advertising is a push model focused on browser. In contrast, a pull model, with 3D branded products which are a natural part of the user experience, can greatly increase user engagement and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns" said Eda Chow, Director – Marketing & Business Development of Frenzoo.

Ambient Sound Investments was originally established by four founding engineers at Skype Technologies to manage a minority stake in Skype, which they then sold to eBay. Ever since then they have been investing in a variety of communications and web technology endeavors.

Icarus Studios has announced the release of a new "next generation" development studio for creating virtual worlds. Six years in the making, it promises to put world-building in the hands of creatives.

Regardless of whether you are building a MMO, simulator, collaborative or social environment, using the Icarus Developer Tool Suite will allow most of your project to be completed by non-programmer staff [...]

User-created content is a feature integrated into the tool set, along with a series of tools to cover various financial, social, and entertainment design philosophies.

Although this may be the first tool of its kind, it won't be the last. The MMO market is about to get quite a bit more competitive... and you thought there were a lot of MMORPGs out there already!

(via GameDailyBiz)

I've had this video sitting in tab in Firefox for a day now, but this morning I finally got round to hitting play. Man, I'm soooo glad I did! That's Sun's new beta virtual workspace you can see, with Sun Lab's principle investigator Nicole Yankelovich giving the virtual tour. Nicole's job currently involves "a project to improve the effectiveness of distributed meetings". Pretty impressive isn't it?

Thanks mobil avenue.

A week or two back I mentioned some upcoming virtual worlds for kids, and it seems that it's becoming a very hot area right now. IAC, the company that owns Search engine ASK, and feed reader Bloglines among many other web properties, just announced that they will build a new virtual world for kids called Zwinktopia on their Zwinky site. Zwinky as it stands, is a toolbar and widget site that allows young users to create custom avatars from thousands of different clothes and body settings to embed on their MySpace profiles and similar pages. The new world will literally add a whole new dimension to Zwinky, giving users the opportunity to hang out with friends, earn and spend ZBucks and generally do a whole bunch of stuff kids already do on sites like Gaia and Club Penguin.

Mike Arrington has the full details of the release from IAC.

Though it freaked me out just a little bit registering for a kids world, I took a brief look at newly launched (mentioned in Barbie girl in a barbie world earlier on Metaversed) BarbieGirls.com today. The Flash based 2D "world" was almost impossible for me to use as my eyes are old and feeble and you can't adjust the damn font size on a Flash game, but even once in, I found it horribly difficult to use. I had vague plans to see if my 2yr old would like it if I did the controls for her, but it was just too damn tough. Maybe it's me being old, maybe im just not very bright, but just possibly, you have to really, really love Barbie to get it. Either way, I didn't.

If you don't get thrown at the first hurdle as I did, apparently you can shop at the mall (the picture is me visiting the pet shop..), decorate your room, chat with other kids and generally hang out. In July though, there'll be a 4 1/2 inch portable device that plays music and "unlocks" content in BarbieGirls.com -- No word on whether that device can actually function as the controller though.

I remember the girls in my street some 25 or more years back that liked Barbie, Sindy and similar things. Spiteful little horrors they were, im sure they'll have bags of fun blocking eachother and forming little preteen gangs in BarbieGirls :)

VCRatings have a writeup on a panel at O'Reilly's Web2.0 Expo where a panel on virtual worlds discussed 3 projects you may not have heard of before:

1. Club Penguin
2. Gaia Online
3. and Areae

Club Penguin is aimed at six to ten year olds and is billed as a safe, fun and educational hangout for preteens. It appears to be a 2D browser based affair with an emphasis on making parents feel secure. The company is canadian, and apparently pretty popular.

Gaia Online is aimed at an older set. Aimed at teens, it already boasts 2M unique visitors a month, with an average visit time of 1hr and claims to host the second larget forum on the net. I've not tried to join/test but it again appears to be a browser based 2D world.

Areae is under development, but funded. From the report on VCRatings, it appears founder Ralph Koster is a bit of a nutter, but it takes all sorts...

Kids and teens worlds are HOT right now, with Mattel's Barbiegirls due to launch later this month, expect this space to get even more attention.

TheStreet.com has an in-depth look at virtual worlds today that takes a close look at Kaneva, the would be MySpace meets Second Life 3D social net. Sony PS3 Home gets a look as well. Sony have a large network to start with, so are well placed to follow in Second Life's footsteps and is certainly a space to be watched:

One of Home's strong points is that Sony will bring the service to PlayStation 3 owners free of charge. Gamers need only an Internet connection. However, the price of a PlayStation 3 console carries a hefty price tag of $500 or $600, depending on the hardware configuration.

While pricing hasn't been discussed yet by Sony, the company has said that additional items and clothing, as well as downloadable video games, will be made available.

For now Second Life is still king, but there are a wealth of new worlds out there and the 3D web is still very much in its infancy, making it anyone's game potentially.

Thanks to Mark Wallace for the cute picture below and the heads up re a new world that kids into Barbie (my two year old isn't quite there yet, thank god..) can enter as part of the marketing for a new product line: "Barbie girls". According to press releases Mattel are claiming this is the "first online community aimed exclusively at girls". This isn't true, Conde Nast's Flip.com predates it by quite a margin.

Interesting stuff though. BarbieGirls.com is in live beta, and the whole thing will kick off on the 26th - For what it's worth coming from a grown man rather than a preteen girl, it looks like fun!

Endemol, makers of wildly popular TV shows aimed at the terminally stupid and clinically insane, such as Big Brother, are teaming up with EA Games to create a virtual extension to their horrific broadcasts. Sad, gibbering idiots with nothing better to do than gawk at other sad gibbering idiots will now be able to socialize in a 3D virtual environment full of sad gibbering idiots. The exact format for the new virtual venture isn't known, but according to Ars Technica it should launch sometime this summer. Heaven help us all...