Metaverse Identity Crisis, Part 1: Virtual Worlds 08

A couple weeks ago, I attended the Virtual Worlds 08 conference at the Javits Center in sunny Manhattan. Along with 1200 or so other people, I mingled among a variety of virtual world platform developers and third-party virtual world developers, both end-to-end solution providers like myself and more specialized, like CyberExtruder.

Coming out of the conference, I had a good talk with my contractor / lead programmer, Andy. I noted that there seems to be a divide between immersive social virtual worlds and enterprise-solution type virtual worlds. Andy went one step farther, and added traditional online video games as a third space. He noted spaces like Gaia and Habbo Hotel were much less like immersive virtual worlds, and much more like traditional online video games. Further, he predicted that worlds like these, and worlds that were similar to these but still claim to be "Metaverse" spaces, would soon throw up their hands and declare, "Okay, we're games. We're focusing in the game-space."

The three divisions Andy had noted made a lot of sense.

It made a lot of sense - and - did so on a variety of levels. We continued our discussion and I realized it explained many things:
- Why Linden Lab was still behind on Enterprise use
- Why 3rd Party developers like ESheep and MoU were abandoning Second Life
- Why the media didn't understand the point of immersive, social virtual worlds
- Why there's a game vs. platform debate at all and why it is so fierce sometimes
- Why different virtual worlds specialized in different things but still called themselves "Metaverse"

And the crux of the matter, the thing that wraps all of these up into one simple statement:

"The Metaverse is undergoing an identity crisis."

Loyal readers, consider that media, different virtual world platform creators, third party developers, role-players, educators, and the average person who's heard of virtual worlds and never been, there exists a whole host of different understandings of what virtual worlds might be good for. More importantly, there is no single, abiding definition of what the "Metaverse" is. If the Metaverse lacks a definition, well naturally there is going to be a lot of confusion, debate, and disagreement.

Let's look at how different people view the Metaverse:

- Linden Lab believes the Metaverse is an alternate world, supplementing and connecting to our own, but ultimately separate. This is evidenced by my last post where I respond to Philip's telling Freudian Slip when he said the appeal of Second Life was escapism.
- Qwaq, Forterra, and ActiveWorlds see the Metaverse as a business-space, professional, working, tuned to users needs.
- Metaplace, Multiverse, and others see the Metaverse as being an extension of the Internet, to fully integrate and yet maintain a strong level of immersion. (I like this approach, by the way.)
- Habbo Hotel, Gaia, and others see the Metaverse as an online game-space.
- Electric Sheep Company believes the Metaverse is an extension of the Internet. It must be stable and good, and content is delivered to users.
- Millions of Us demonstrates their understanding of the Metaverse in their projects: event- driven, social, and corporate.
- The media is split. Some, like Wired, GQ, ValleyWag, and others, see it in the game-space fashion, mocking furries, griefers, and such, disillusioned that virtual worlds could offer Enterprise space. Not surprising, media like PCWorld, BBC, Fortune, and Gartner all view virtual worlds from a very corporate approach, but realize the infancy of the Metaverse in general.
- The general public? They're all over the map. At the same time, the majority surely see it as game-space, with World of Warcraft and others as their closest reference point.

And yet, they're all referring to "The Metaverse".

I will cover defining "The Metaverse" in Part 2 of Metaverse Identity Crisis, but for now, allow me to describe why it is that resolving this crisis is important.

A Matter of Expectations

First, it is clear that to properly market something, you need to know what it is. If we developers, both behind platforms and third party vendors, want to further grow our industry, we need to be clear what it is we are growing. Are we growing a game-space, a business-space, an Internet extension, or an alternate world space? Or perhaps multiple / all of them? For those not fitting the definition of Metaverse, we should insist that they have another term, to be clear to media, the public, and customers exactly what their expectations should be. Virtual worlds are getting slammed in the media, and this is a direct result of not properly marketing them to their appropriate uses.

Second, in order to properly develop something, the developer needs to clearly understand the context in which it is used. That is, I believe, a common failing of many of the projects in Second Life. For example, if you go into Second Life expecting it to be a one-way marketing conversation, like a traditional website, then you're wrong, and you are letting down your client. I see third party developers leaving Second Life because of this very reason - they don't understand the context, and they instead blame Linden Lab for not adjusting their platform fast enough.

Don't get me wrong - I am very vocal, (well, duh, here) about my suggestions to Linden Lab and other virtual world developers. At the same time, I do my best to understand the capabilities of the virtual worlds I work in, and every one of my projects works within the framework provided. I don't promise my clients more than the platform can deliver, and occasionally, my company says "No thanks". While there's a temptation to take every client that knocks, some clients just have very different expectations, and they would be impossible to meet all of them, or even most of them.

On the other hand, the more a platform developer like Linden Lab understands what "The Metaverse" means and how people want to use it, the more user-base and usage-base they can pull from their technology, and that means more money.

Now, with the importance of resolving this Metaverse Identity Crisis described, Part 2 will expand on the three aforementioned areas of virtual worlds and attempt at pinning down a definition.