Over at eBizQ, Peter Schoof's got a podcast (and transcript) of an interview he did with Dave Cole, Director of Security Response at Symantec, in which the digital security vet discusses the evolution of computer security's needs in an era of Web 2.0. Salientely, Cole comments on virtual worlds and social networking sites in this excerpt:

The last couple of things I'd mention is the trend toward virtualization that is just starting to be understood from a security perspective. It's fairly early in that arena so as organizations move to wholly adopt virtualization for a number of reasons, for costs purposes, management purposes and so forth, we've yet to fully understand the impact of what virtualization is going to have on the security landscape. So that will be interesting to watch.

And lastly, we're starting to see the evolutions of threats that are service-specific. So, take a look at the wild world of Web 2.0, and social networks like MySpace, or Facebook, take a look at things like Second Life and these virtual worlds that are out there. We've seen some pretty interesting custom worms that exist only inside those services and only affect people using those services so, again, attacks in the future may not just be regional specific but they may also be specific to the online communities and services you're using.

[Via EbizQ]

The University of Edinburgh has already announced a few virtual worlds-specific panels at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, to be hosted August 12-14th. Now they've added an additional symposium on August 15th, which will feature sessions specific to combining video games with academia, aiming to "generate new insights into the industry and culture of interactive digital media, computer games and virtual worlds."

The symposium will be keynoted by online games consultant and producer Jessica Mulligan, and Ofcom strategy manager William Garood and IBM's Chris Francis are also set to speak. Other sessions will include "Computer Games and Innovation," "Regulating Virtual Worlds," and "Industry and the Role of Education."

Speakers include William Garood, strategy manager at Ofcom, and Chris Francis, from government programmes at IBM.

Registration for the event costs GBP 50,($100 USD) or GBP 40 ($80) for attendees also registered for EIF, and there is no registration fee for full-time students.

The event is being organised by Hanna Sommerseth, of the University's Visual and Cultural Studies Unit, and Ren Reynolds of Terra Nova.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

It's time for a closer look at Nexon's MapleStory, so let's have an in-depth tour!

Great discussion going on at the Terra Nova blog, started by Robert Bloomfield. He's set to moderate a panel called "From the Laboratory to the Virtual World" at the annual meeting of the American Accounting Association, and he's prepping for the big question: "I figure that over the three days of the conference, I will be asked 300 times 'What in G-d's name is a virtual world??'"

Bloomfield and lots of others struggle to describe the phenomenon in less than 100 words, and I think he makes a good run of it:

You can think of many virtual worlds as video games that thousands of people can play at once, together. Each player controls an animated character, called an "avatar." But other virtual worlds don’t even have something you would recognize as a "game." Instead, they are more like three-dimensional spaces in which you can get together with friends to talk, watch movies or listen to music. These worlds tend to have very active economies, because they allow residents to create and sell their own content, from clothing for their avatars to software that will animate objects and store data.

A little more tongue-in-cheek (but perhaps no less accurate), blogger Jeffrey Freeman suggests: "Tell 'em they could get rich by investing in virtual property, if they play their cards right."

It's definitely an issue we should expect to confront a lot in the coming months, as virtual worlds don't seem to be ceasing growth -- what are the most salient points about the use and value of virtual worlds for play, socialization and enterprise, and how will we explain them as more and more users inevitably catch wind?

Though, if growth takes place at the rate some predict, it could be that they'll just learn by doing!

Club Penguin is now Disney's Club Penguin. The Walt Disney Company has announced its acquisition of the successful, snow-laden virtual world for kids, as part of its stated objective of "establishing clear leadership in the kids and families online virtual worlds space around the globe.”

PaidContent.org is reporting the acquisition to the tune of $350 million up-front, with the opportunity to earn out an additional $350 million by 2009.

“This acquisition is consistent with our strategy of leveraging technology to create and deliver high-quality entertainment around the world and our commitment to investing our capital to generate growth and value for our shareholders,” said Bob Iger, Disney president and CEO.

“We have been actively searching for an organization that not only shares our values and concerns for children, but also has the ability and desire to help us bring Club Penguin to more children throughout the world. We’ve found that partner in Disney,” said Lane Merrifield, one of Club Penguin’s three founders. “As a former employee of Disneyland, I’ve always had a great respect for what Walt created. When he first envisioned Disneyland, he wanted to create a safe place that he and his daughters could enjoy. In the process of creating Club Penguin, we shared that passion and often pulled from Walt’s vision in the hope of creating a unique place online that we would be comfortable letting our own children visit.”

Disney’s Club Penguin will retain the original URL (www.clubpenguin.com) and its home base in Kelowna, British Columbia. The company’s three founders, Lane Merrifield, Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe, will join Disney and continue as Club Penguin senior management; Merrifield will also become an EVP ofThe Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG), reporting to WDIG President Steve Wadsworth.

“Club Penguin is going to continue to exist as is. ... The experience will not change at all. It will continue to evolve.” Iger said. “We really don’t intend to get in the way of that or do anything by virtue of the way we own it.”

With the help of WDIG resources, though, Club Penguin's poised to go international, with plans to create versions in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, as WDIG and Club Penguin management aim to integrate Club Penguin into the Disney-connected entertainment network over time.

Worlds in Motion toured Club Penguin as part of our ongoing Online World Atlas -- you can see our comprehensive tour here.

The Multiverse Network, Inc., which builds networks for MMOs and 3D virtual worlds, has released version 1.0 of their platform, a software solution for online worlds developers. The Multiverse Platform has been in beta until now, and the company says that over 11,000 development teams participated.

The Multiverse Network has also launched an initiative it calls "Worlds in Progress," a collection of early prototype games and worlds built on its platform, with the aim of providing consumer access to the network. Four worlds have been launched, and all of them are accessible via Multiverse World Browser, a free downloadable that enables consumer access to any game on the network.

Among the Worlds in Progress currently launched, the featured MMO is Dark Horizons Universe, built by indie game studio Max Gaming Technologies (Lore Invasion, Kachinko). The other new prototype world is Doomsberg Entertainment's Forgotten Legends, a skill and power-based fantasy game,

Two other offerings that Multiverse calls "sample worlds" are the Multiverse Social World, which provides a basic environment for people to chat and dance, and the Multiverse Fantasy World, which puts players into a basic MMOG-style game.

Also on the horizon for the network is Wardog Studios' Force of Arms, a futuristic hero RPG, and RETRO Laboratory's LunarQuest, where players, as cadets, are tasked with colonizing the moon.

Multiverse says it expects production-quality versions of these worlds to become available on its network in late 2007 or early 2008, and that they will continue to launch new prototype games and worlds as they become available.

Included with the Multiverse Platform, development teams receive the complete source code for both sample worlds, which they can use as a starting point for their own products, or as training material. Multiverse says it has no plans to continue developing either world beyond their current state.

"By providing our technology without upfront fees and eliminating many technical barriers, we've made virtual world development faster and less expensive than ever before," said Bill Turpin, Multiverse co-founder and CEO.

Be-Bratz, MGA's new online world with its own line of Bratz dolls, has announced its beta debut. The target audience, girls aged 6 and up, will be able to create their own virtual Bratz character, interact with other users, play games, raise virtual pets and explore the world.

The world is accessible with a special "glam necklace" USB key that comes with one of three new Bratz fashion dolls. The dolls also come with a mouse and mouse pad, and each doll has her own pet. The package will retail for $29.99.

The company says that monitored text messaging chat is currently available, with live chat to come later this year. Also coming later in the year is Mac and Vista support for the Be-Bratz world, which is presently only compatible with Windows OS 2000/XP.

"The online experience is ubiquitous in play patterns of today’s young girls, so this connection between doll and web is a natural for MGA, especially given the success of our past toy/web initiatives,” said Isaac Larian, CEO of MGA Entertainment.

A new article in The Engineer explains how researchers at Queen's University, Belfast, are making strides toward developing technology that will bring the sense of touch to virtual worlds. According to the article, a new study in the field of haptic technology makes feasible a future where shoppers can feel the products they want to buy online, or get a sense of force when the ball hits the racquet in a digital tennis game.

The researchers will spend the next three years working on the network architecture needed to support such technology. Specifically, they need to find a way to compensate for network delays that affect the quality of haptic performance -- in other words, the sense of the ball hitting the racquet might be delayed on a slow network connection.

Professor Alan Marshall, the principal investigator of the project, says that haptics can cause an even greater delay than the approximately 50 milliseconds associated with voice. "We know that when we put echo cancelling on voice it can reduce delay time, so what we need to do is to develop the equivalent of an echo canceller for haptics," he explains.

Marshall explains that the stereoscopic images used to create 3D worlds are actually ideal for haptic technology, because they create the dimension of depth essential to touch -- which has exciting implications for adding another of the real human five senses to virtual environments.

At the panel, Rosedale predicted that in ten years, virtual worlds will outpace the Web as the primary form of connection and access. “The technical infrastructure will be some sort of highly open and decentralized architecture,” he said. “The network of machines will be larger than the Web architecture today. Google has a couple hundred thousand machines–the virtual world will have tens of millions of hosts.”

Panelists discussed the hot-button question: whether virtual worlds will truly become a "real" business, or merely a tool for socialization and casual play. "Meetings, learning and training may be the killer apps of the virtual world. Don’t underestimate any technologies that help us do that in a more human way,” Wladawsky-Berger advised."As a result, we'll be able to do a tremendous amount more. Enterprise resource planning will be reinvented for virtual worlds."

Melissinos agrees, calling virtual worlds "critical to adoption of next-gen services," and "a multimillion-dollar marketplace across the board."

Lanier asserted that people are more courteous and better-behaved in virtual worlds-- as opposed to chat rooms, blogs and IMs-- because economic or deeply-vested emotional ties to their property means "more to lose if they're creepy," he said. He also theorized that seeing others, even as avatars, causes an empathetic response.

So, what's the big "killer app" of the virtual world? According to Lanier, it's that human civility.

[Via CNET]

We caught up with executive producer Chris Waldron at Comic-Con to discuss Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall, an intriguing Korean-developed action-multiplayer MMO featuring a multitude of Cartoon Network characters.

The game itself, which is being developed by Seoul, Korea-based Grigon Entertainment, is a blend of massively multiplayer online role playing games such as Phantasy Star Online and a more conventional 3D platform game. During the interview, Waldron answered questions about the company's business model, its kid-friendly features, and what makes FusionFall stand out from a sea of rapidly encroaching online games.

Has long has FusionFall been in development?

We started development early last year, I think in April of 2006. Before that I have been trying to get the project green-lit for about four years.

Why did it take so long for FusionFall to get green-lit?

We had a lot of business responsibilities to do. We work for Turner / Time Warner and it’s a big company. We had to make sure the business model was right and to find a partner, honestly. We looked all over the world for the right partner and finally found Grigon Entertainment in Seoul, South Korea who is the perfect match for us.

Why did you eventually choose a Korean developer to work on FusionFall - perhaps an unconventional move in some ways?

We talked to a number of people here in the United States. But when we went over to Korea to look at what gaming was going on over there, we were blown away. By the number of games, the number of types of business models they had over there, the different styles they were doing. In the United States we tend to focus on just the fantasy genre, but Korea had a lot more going on.

When we were there, we met with a number of different companies. When we saw the style Grigon had, the animated style and the sense of humor. We talked with them for a while and found out we would make great partners.

Speaking of business models, Korea is one of the pioneers of alternative models for online games. Have you thought about using alternates to monthly subscriptions?

We've definitely thought about it, but we haven’t made a decision finally about what the business model is going to look like. We need more a little more testing to figure out what people in the USA are comfortable with. We definitely like the idea of a cash-item model and our developers in Korea, they prefer the idea of a cash-item model.

The problem is that, since this is a game targeted to kids, it is a little risky to assume parents are going to be OK with it. You know, I have a kid. I’m not sure I want my kid to come up to me all the time saying, 'I want a little bit more money, a little bit more money, a little bit more money.' The subscription may be easier on the parent at the end of the day. We’re still deciding that, figuring it out, doing research to determine what we want to do.

Regardless of which business model we choose, we have a competitive advantage in the United States over something like Maple Story where the characters aren’t as well known here. We are working with Cartoon Network characters that are pretty well liked by the kids. Plus, we have the power of the network and CartoonNetwork.com to drive people to the game.

At the end of the day, my hope is that when people try the game out, because there will be a free component to the game, they will be hooked.

Do you plan to do any on-air Cartoon Network promotions for the title?

In a certain way, yes. We've got to be careful. There are laws set around that so we don’t use our characters to sell products. We need to be very conscientious about how we’re positioning this product as a pay-based product. But there will certainly be stunts, and there will be cross-promotion back and forth with the network.

How about parental controls for the game, since it's obviously kid-focused?

We've made FusionFall as safe as we possibly could by adding a lot of features. A parent can administer their child’s account, to make sure the parent has complete control over how much their kid can chat with other people, and monitor what their kid is doing.

We are going to announce later this year some really specific details about how we are going to keep the game safe. But the goal is that parents and kids can play together, or if the parent is not there they know their kid is safe in the game.

What the story hook for kids that allowed you to bring in all of the Cartoon Network characters into this world?

The first thing to note is this is the Cartoon Network Universe. So all of the Cartoon Network characters like Dexter, Ben 10, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and the Powerpuff Girl - they are all in this one world. But it is a different world from what you would see on TV. In some cases the characters are a little bit older; it's set a little bit into the future.

The characters have been reinterpreted with a more anime style. This world is a very kid friendly world, but it is being invaded by the planet Fusion. That is a giant massive planet that is eating other planets and is coming after our planet. Of course, your job is to jump in the game, and partner with your friends and all the other players to save the world. That is basically the storyline - you are fending off a galactic threat.

We saw some Cartoon Network characters like Mojo Jojo and Mandark. But do you plan to bring back some more obscure characters like Sheep from Sheep in the Big City or the Time Squad?

If you keep going back to fusionfall.com we will show you more and more characters as time goes on. I can't announce those specifically, but I will say we are going to reach pretty deep into the library to bring characters that make sense in the game and people like.

How is FusionFall different from other MMOs?

The thing that we’re excited about is we are taking the best [elements] of MMORPGs. The character development, the world exploration, the playing with other people, grouping up with other folks, creating guilds or clubs as we call them, the stuff that really makes it fun in the multiplayer world and combining that with what we like in console gaming.

We're also including platform action, solving these puzzles where you need to jump a lot, slide down slides, zip lines, those kinds of games. We’re merging them together in a way I’ve never seen before. I think this may be a new kind of MMORPG. That is the basic gameplay. There is combat, collecting and there is also this platform gaming element.

But also, we are introducing our characters in an additional way into the game with the creation of the things called nanos. The nanos are super deformed, little versions of our characters that you collect and carry with you throughout the game. Each one gives you a different power. Your skill system is based on what nanos you have with you.

Think of it like Magic: the Gathering, Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh, where you can collect a lot of different characters, but when you go out in the world you have to choose which ones you want to take with you. If you want to take the ones to make you a healer, you can do that. If your buddy in the group wants to take the ones to be a tank he can do that. You can group up and play off each other like that.

Or if you don’t want to play with anybody you just take the ones that make you a better solo-er. Or if you don’t care about any of that, if you just like the Powerpuff Girls, take the Powerpuff Girls and call it a day.

How do you collect nanos?

The “real characters” are in the game and you are going to get quests from them, go on missions with them. They are basically going to give you assignments. Throughout the course of the game, they will give you assignments that will allow you to unlock or collect one of these nanos. For example, if you want a Megas XLR nano you may need to do a mission for [Megas XLR character] Coop who can help you build a Megas nano.

[This interview originally ran on WorldsInMotion's sister site Gamasutra.com, and was conducted by Spencer Yip.]

The cards come in two different designs for the $10 card, and one for the $25 card, and feature a scratch-off code that users enter in the "vouchers" section of their Habbo purse. The cards will be sold out of the Music/Movie section at Target, and the Habbo website even provides the Target SKUs of the cards so that users can get help from employees to find them.

With the announcement early this year at the Game Developers Conference that the PlayStation Network's virtual world, Home, would be launching in the fall -- followed up by a presentation conducted in the Home world at this year's E3 -- Sony's demonstrated a strong interest in the virtual worlds space. Now, Sony Europe has set up a new website as a touchstone for its pet Blu-ray hi-def format, and it takes the shape of a 3D environment that showcases Blu-ray films and upcoming PlayStation movies.

There are two interactive areas on the site; the MoLR (Museum of Low Resolution), a minimalist riff on New York's MoMA, features a stylish projection of a woman's face presenting an in-depth FAQ and history of the Blu-Ray format, while the MMG Venue presents the front of an alleyway jazz club with a sports car and projection screen, where users can select upcoming Blu-Ray releases, both PlayStation 3 games and movies, to preview.

It's fairly simple, but another example that seems to indicate that the web format of interacting with 3D objects instead of text and link lists is continuing its trend of prevalence.

[Via HDTV UK]

Organizers at New York Law School in partnership with Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Trinity University, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore will host a global conference on virtual worlds, focusing on the impact of online social environments on education, law, politics and society. State of Play V: Building the Global Metaverse will be held on 19-22 August 2007 at the Marina Mandarin Hotel, Singapore, the event's first time in Asia.

From the press release:

"State of Play V looks seriously into virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online games," says Dan Hunter, conference co-chair. "We have expert panels who will talk about how these worlds create legal challenges for real world governments, we will examine how they can be used in education and for learning, and we will ask what are the philosophical implications for the widespread migration of users into these worlds. In addition, we also have a series of discussions about how to make a buck from these worlds, and the challenges of building them. In the workshops at the end of the conference we will have focused sessions on issues of identity, commerce, and the opportunities for ASEAN nations in the development of these worlds."

Experts from around the world will speak about:

• Cross-cultural communication and avatar-to-avatar diplomacy
• Strategies for understanding behaviors and values of virtual world residents
• Regulating speech, property, and addiction in the metaverse
• Building transnational businesses in virtual worlds
• Using virtual environments to teach students of all ages
• Space, place, and virtual world cultures

Further info and registration information for State of Play V can be found at www.nyls.edu/stateofplay.

IBM recently demonstrated how seriously it takes online worlds when it published official guidelines for its employees' conduct in virtual worlds. Its Institute for Business Value has also conducted research about in-world leadership skills, and how practicing them in games like World of Warcraft or EverQuest can foster corporate growth.

The Institute's 20-page report asserts that the skills required to manage a 40-person guild and conduct them in raids are the same as those required to coordinate human capital at a corporate organization, and that playing the games may in fact offer "fresh insight" into the development of new leadership abilities.

From the report:

The similarities between the online, globe-spanning gaming world and the emerging picture of the globally integrated enterprise of the future are actually quite striking. As technological innovation enables companies to disaggregate and send increasing amounts of work to employees and external partners around the world, organizations are conducting more work virtually. Corporate leaders must both coordinate and motivate individuals who are separated by time zones and cultures. Collaboration – at an individual and corporate level – has become a necessity. And in today’s dynamic business environment, leaders must take more risks and execute with greater speed – briskly connecting talent and moving information and knowledge around the globe to fulfill organizational needs.

The report also highlighted the key factors that MMOs have in common with the corporate world -- for example, both require participants to self-organize and develop skills, require risk-taking, provide performance-based incentives, and require group collaboration under a leader. No word, though, as to whether playing WoW on company time counts as "work," though!

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

This week, we spent time in Nexon's MapleStory, fighting cute mushroom and snail creatures as we pursued a new job class. So what's the overall impression?

We recently spoke with Doppelganger president and CEO Tim Stevens about vSide, the network of stylish virtual urban hotspots that his company's currently developing. Doppelganger Studios also created The Music Lounge, a virtual nightclub, and Virtual Lower East Side, which it's developing for MTV. Now, it's just about to launch the beta of vSide -- the official date is August 14th -- but we got a chance to tour the alpha ourselves and take a look around. Hit the jump for screenshots and impressions!

The first Virtual Goods Summit took place June 21-22nd at Stanford University, and now the videos of all of the panels are online at the VGS's website.

"Virtual Goods Success Stories," featuring Habbo's Paul Thind, MTV Networks' Kyra Reppen, Nexon's Min Kim and others on how virtual goods helped them make it in online worlds, and "Making Virtual Economies Work," where Areae's Raph Koster and Entropia Universe's John Bates, among others, share their expertise, are just a few of the full videos currently available. Check them out!

A new article in the International Herald Tribune cites the recent availability of an H&M fashion line in TheSims 2 as just one example of how fashion designers are embracing the idea of plying their trade in the virtual space. Now, as the IHT reports, Sims gamers are able to design their own H&M stores and their own clothes, and hold virtual runway competitions. Cosmogirl editor and chief Susan Schultz provides the commentary on the catwalk, and the winner will be determined by user votes.

What's more, one of the winning six outfits featured in the Grand Finale Fashion Runway Showcase will be produced by H&M and sold in its real-world retail stores.

Virtual outposts of fashionable brands to dress avatars are nothing new -- Reebok, Adidas and American Apparel have stores in Second Life, and brands Kitson and RocaWear have storefronts in Doppelganger's upcoming vSide city. But citing the example of Canadian designer Nyla, who's created Second Life counterparts of her real-world designs, the article noted that fashion houses may be increasingly drawn to virtual worlds as a sort of proving ground to market-test new patterns and designs.

[Via International Herald Tribune]

A new article in BusinessWeek introduces the 3D-Web idea that's already been heavily discussed in the thick of the online worlds space:

Google, Second Life creator Linden Lab, IBM, and a bevy of additional companies are moving toward the day when you can stroll around a 3D Web--and not just their own sites--using a virtual replica of yourself that you've created. They are working to establish technical standards, open to all programmers, that would allow the entire Internet to become a galaxy of connected virtual worlds.

The article also highlights some challenges to the concept:

For all the flurry of excitement, there's still a lot of skepticism among tech experts about whether companies can agree on standards that would allow an open 3D world to exist. After all, look at the battle still raging over the HDDVD and Blu-ray DVD standards. For now, Second Life, There.com, and other virtual worlds are fenced-in spaces where one company calls all the shots. If a consumer creates an avatar or a company creates a virtual storefront, they're stuck in that site. Avatars can't stroll from an American Apparel store in Second Life to Wells Fargo's (WFC ) stand-alone virtual-world bank... So it could take up to a decade before anything like this becomes mainstream.

Rita Turkowksi, executive director of the Web 3D Consortium, told BusinessWeek that they hope to launch an avatar that can jump between sites in about eighteen months. The article also cited the newly-launched Multiverse Network platform, whose avatars can move from world to world -- but only within Multiverse's own "world browser," which means they can only surf within worlds created with Multiverse's software platform.

It's an informative article that nicely rounds up what the major players are doing in terms of forward-looking in the arena, though it does allow:

Most agree it would not eliminate the Web as we know it. Rather, it will be possible to move back and forth between Web sites and virtual worlds, just as we now switch between reading a news article and watching a video clip on YouTube. For searching or reading text, today's sites work fine and will continue to do so. But a 3D Internet could make possible a virtual version of activities you might do in real life with like-minded people. You could buy tickets to a baseball game on a standard Web site, for instance, but then go to a stadium in a separate virtual world to meet up with your friends and watch the game (at a lower price than the real thing, one hopes).

[Via BusinessWeek]

Over at our sister site Gamasutra, they've got an interview with Korean designer Hak Kyu Kim, creator of popular MMO Ragnarok Online. Kim's also got a new project, Granado Espada (Sword of the New World) in the works with his new company, IMC Games. In the interview, Kim discusses the difference between developing MMOs and offline games, excerpted here:

What was the biggest difference between developing MMOs and offline games?

HK: The biggest difference is that making an online game is about creating a playground for players. Rather than trying to fill everything up from the beginning, I have to leave a lot of spaces empty that can be filled as the game evolves with its players.

Do you think it’s easier or harder to develop a MMO?

HK: I feel that to make a good MMO you need to obtain various types of knowledge, from business economics, to statistics, to history, to marketing, and many others, as all those bodies of knowledge are critical to making the game as good as it can be. For example, business and economic knowledge is very important when you’re trying to create the economic system within a game. This can’t be done well unless you as a developer know how to make it work.

I guess there’s a lot of math involved in keeping the right balance.

HK: Yes - if you want to maintain the right balance, it is very important to hire the right type of experts in statistics.

You can now read the complete interview at Gamasutra, which includes Kim's thoughts on the Asian market, distinguishing his game from the other offerings, and the background of Ragnarok Online.

Worlds in Motion sister division CMP Technology has launched the free Beta version of a new online environment, Innovation Generation, which is intended to foster technical learning and discovery in kids and "...launch the next generation of engineers, scientists and mathematicians."

The Flash-based interactive environment is centered around features such as 'Explore Your World' - a virtual city that depicts and demonstrates how science, technology and math are involved in all aspects of everyday life.

In addition, other features of Innovation Generation include 'Flex Your Innovation Muscle' - web-based games enabling kids to learn about science, technology, electronics and math, and 'Change the World Bulletin Board' - a virtual bulletin board with the Top 10 ideas that will change the world; winning ideas move to the 'Let's Build It' challenge arena.

Paul Miller, executive director, Innovation Generation, commented of the Beta launch: "Innovation Generation was specifically created to address these critical issues, by connecting children to the world of technology, encouraging discovery and ultimately closing the gap between the demand for innovative technologists and the number of students receiving degrees in science, technology, electronics and math," said."

He continued: "For example, our program features video interviews with real world innovators who share the creation, development and implementation of their special ideas and encourage viewers to start their own unique innovation journey. In a fun interactive environment, the site will build a social community that reinforces that math and science are cool, educating kids to become the Innovation Generation."

Innovation Generation is currently available, in Beta, at http://www.igenstudio.com, and will be officially available in November 2007 through an annual subscription.

[This article originally ran on WorldsInMotion's sister site Gamasutra.com.]

Gartner analysts, in a recently-released assessment, warned that enthusiasm surrounding online worlds "must be tempered with a realistic assessment of the security and risk-management issues they expose enterprises to." Analysts advised companies sensitive to issues of branding, social and ethical positioning to "exercise particular caution in uncontrolled virtual worlds," citing Second Life as an example to watch, and preferring "heavily moderated, targeted alternatives" such as There, Kaneva and Activeworlds instead.

Gartner analyst and vice president Steve Prentice identified five categories into which major issues facing corporations can be grouped: IT-related security risks, such as the download of unverified apps and issues of firewall permeability; identity authentication and access management, concerning the potential for multiple characters and avatars that make it difficult to verify who a user really is; confidentiality in chat and stored information; brand and reputation risks, and lastly, productivity, which Prentice feels might decline, at least during the initial corporate adoption phases.

“The risks enterprises face as a result of their involvement in virtual worlds are real and can be significant. They shouldn't be ignored — but neither should the potential opportunities and benefits that arise from using these new environments for corporate collaboration and communications,” Prentice said. “When planning enterprise activities in virtual worlds, an enterprise's awareness of the risks, as well as a reasoned and objective analysis of them, will enable it to objectively evaluate the overall situation and offset risks against often-nebulous benefits.”

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

This week, our Online World Atlas charts a course for the high seas with Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, the successful MMO-slash-puzzle game from Three Rings Design. Let's hit the deck for an overview!

Numedeon's Whyville, a virtual world for kids, has gained some attention with its success over the past year. Now the San Antonio Express-News is reporting that founder and Chief Executive Jim Bower is leveraging his professorship in computational biology at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio to help Whyville teach kids about life and science.

According to the Expresss News, the Texas Workforce Commission recently granted Whyville with over $440,000 to build a Whyville Biotech and a Whyville Advanced Manufacturing Center to educate young users in those areas -- kids will work to develop vaccines to the in-world virus WhyPox at the biotech center as they learn about world disease control and prevention, drug design and discovery, and new techniques in computational biology.

"From a work-force standpoint, this is huge," Bower told the Express-News. "We have a 'cool' factor, but we're also doing something very useful for these industries.

In addition to science, Whyville residents are also learning fiscal responsibility. Through a partnership with Toyota to sell Scions to teens and 'tweens in Whyville, kids learn about lending and financial services as they must earn enough in-world "clams" to make the payments on time, and a Whyville Toyota engineering facility teaches kids about advanced design.

"This activity is intended to teach kids how to manage credit and be responsible," Bower told the Express-News. "Every kid in Whyville has a credit score. Better to understand how that works now with clams than figure it out with real money when they grow up."

[Via San Antonio Express-News]

With what appears to be an accidental re-release of its announcement of the BarbieGirls online world launch, Mattel shed some more light on the tie-ins that will be available with the accessories to the virtual world. As previously announced, the world is accessed via the USB key inside of $59.99 doll-shaped MP3 player with a 512 MB memory -- now we know it comes with a belt clip, storage case, and adjustable ear buds.

More significantly, though, Mattel will also sell accessory packs, which will unlock new bonuses and content, like accessories, fashions and pets, in the BarbieGirls world, at a retail price of $9.99 each.

Mattel also says it plans to reach four continents and more than a dozen countries this fall on an unspecified date, launching in five additional languages around the world, including Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese.

[UPDATE: The link to the release was removed from the above article, as the erroneous press release has been taken down. You can find the original July 7th BarbieGirls announcement here.]

Acclaim Games (BOTS, 9Dragons) has announced that its new free-to-play MMO, 2Moons, has entered open beta to a strong showing. "We opened the site on Monday July 30th and we were blown away with over 100,000 downloads, so much that our first world got filled in 24 hours," said director David Perry, adding that the launch announcement was delayed until a new server set could be opened.

The fantasy MMO, which will let players form guilds and battle monsters, is an adaptation of Dekaron, a Korean MMO, and is targeted toward players 17 and older due to violence, language and mature content.

It's the newly-refurbished Acclaim's fourth MMO, and will support itself on a mix of advertising and virtual item sales. Acclaim says 2Moons Shop will be opened within a few weeks of the open beta launch, and, players will be able to use Acclaim Coins to purchase optional game items like customizable clothing, character game enhancements and access to bonus content, with new items added regularly.

"This is the final phase of testing with the help of our 2Moons community before this game is commercially released. Unlike the previous Closed Beta, during this period we will roll out all the key features of the game one at a time for them to experiment with and give us feedback," Perry says.

[Via WarCry.com]

Remember Danica McKellar, best known for playing girl-next-door Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years? She's grown into a career as a mathematician -- she co-authored a mathematical physics theorem and published a math book for teenage girls called Math Doesn’t Suck: How To Survive Middle-School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail.

Now she's visiting Habbo to chat with its users -- in a press release we received, Habbo says she'll be there today (Wednesday, August 8th) at 3:00 PM Eastern and 6:00 PM Pacific, and she'll answer kids' questions about tricky math problems, and about growing up as a child star.

I wonder if the residents of Habbo are even old enough to know what The Wonder Years is?

Earlier, we noted that BarbieGirls, apparently by accident, re-ran their launch announcement press release previously dated July 7th. Likely it's this latest they meant to announce -- that they're up to 4 million users since its launch (they recently claimed 3 million users in 60 days in mid-July).

According to the release, BarbieGirls continues to grow at an average rate of 45,000 users per day. While that's certainly nothing to sneeze at, it does signify a bit of a slowdown in signups for the site -- the release itself quoted GigaOM's Wagner James Au:

"In the first 60 days of its existence, the new online virtual world Barbie Girls has signed up three million members, and they’re adding new ones at the rate of 50,000 a day,” said Wagner James Au, GigaOM. “This is staggering growth by any standard, but even more so because Mattel’s MMO is still in Beta.”

The go-live date is August 13th, and will be launched in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Portuguese, as previously reported in the initial announcement. Mattel also says it'll bolster safety features "later this summer" with the addition of parental controls that will require parental permission via e-mail for girls to register on BarbieGirls.com and access certain chat functionality. The beta already features the ability for users to lock their rooms to other characters, block and report offending users, and "robust" moderation.

Marketing and tech agency Spunlogic is now offering custom analytics tools specifically for virtual worlds to its service offering, on the heels of its development of The Place to Meet, Crowne Plaza Hotels' island in Second Life.

Spunlogic now hopes to apply the analytics they developed for Crowne Plaza to a broader client base in a range of virtual worlds, to help marketers understand specifically how and where users are interacting in their virtual space (and how many there are), and assist them in optimizing their virtual branding opportunities.

"Marketers are pulling out of Second Life because they don't know how to effectively optimize their islands and advertising campaigns," said Dr. Melissa Read, Director of Behavioral Research at Spunlogic. "We provide sophisticated analytics tools to help our clients effectively measure their user engagement in-world in order to develop targeted marketing and branding strategies."

The MacArthur Foundation has expressed in the past the potential it feels virtual worlds hold for philanthropy and education. As part of over $50 million earmarked for digital media and learning initiatives, it recently announced a year-long exploration of those possibilities with a $550,000 grant to the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School for Communication. Now, it continues in that vein with the announcement of a new grant, in an undisclosed amount, to the New York-based nonprofit GlobalKids.

GlobalKids, which focuses on educating students in underserved communities about international and public policy issues, will use the grant money to foster discussion around the use of virtual worlds to support philanthropy. Along with fellow grant recipients Common Sense Media, which provides entertainment media ratings for kids, the students will add a special panel to each track of the upcoming Second Life Community Convention, focusing on the increasing presence of social justice organizations in online worlds and how these organizations are using the medium to extend their reach.

“Virtual worlds are already a burgeoning frontier for business and entertainment, but the public sector has been slow to get involved,” said President Jonathan Fanton of the MacArthur Foundation, which recently announced a year-long exploration of virtual worlds. “From MacArthur’s recent experience, it is clear that residents of virtual worlds are hungry for ‘in-world’ opportunities to engage on serious social issues and to act on their philanthropic impulses.”

Weblo, which has embraced the label of "Monopoly on Steroids", features domains based on real-life assets whose owners earn income by attracting traffic to their sites. It's just announced the sale of what it says is the first real country to be sold virtually -- It's England, bought by four so-called "Kings" from North America, who netted the property with a bid of $60,001, outbidding thousands of other Weblo users in a month-long action.

According to Weblo's announcement, the 4 Kings will earn money each time an English city or property is purchased, in addition to all of the ad revenue in virtual England. They also can re-sell the country at a profit, like the virtual mayor of Seattle who reportedly sold his city for $2000 after buying it from Weblo for only $40, or the virtual Empire State Building, bought for a dollar and sold for $250.

Weblo says Atlanta, Tokyo, Vancouver and many other cities have also resold for profits, with over 9200 cities sold worldwide. Until now, the state of California boasted the highest sale price in Weblo history, going for $53,000.The virtual mayor of Seattle sold his city for $2000 after buying it for $40 from Weblo.

“The popularity and success of the England auction has opened the door to the possibility of future auctions for other countries. With 776 international states and provinces already sold our members are now asking us to auction off countries,” said Weblo.com Founder and CEO Rocky Mirza.

The uninitiated may mistake virtual worlds as the territory of hermetic computer geeks, but Switzerland-based sports marketing company Infront is hoping to change that impression with the unveiling of Empire of Sports, an MMO devoted entirely to the sporting world, at this month's Leipzig Gaming Conference in Germany.

According to parent company Infront Sports' announcement earlier this summer, Empire of Sports will create a persistent universe for virtual athletes to create avatars, train, compete in sporting events and earn goods and awards.

"This is the first-ever virtual online multi-sports world with role-playing elements,” managing director Christian Mueller said in the announcement. "There are single sport online games, but no one has seamlessly integrated multiple games around the entire sports lifestyle. The user becomes a 3D avatar, capable of developing his or her virtual body, skills and capabilities through sport and training all-the-while socializing within the Empire of Sports community. We have built this game from the ground up to be a fun and competitive environment while meeting your friends and making new ones."

In an interview with WarCry.com, Empire of Sports' managing director, Mueller provided a few more details -- Empire of Sports will have a "lobby" interface surrounded by "virtual city-like" community centers based on real cities, and the first three sports available will be basketball, tennis and skiing, with both single and multiplayer options, and additional sports to be announced in the near future.

The extensive developer blogs on the Empire of Sports site provide a sneak preview into a particularly interesting feature -- the implementation of a lifelike body model, with metabolism and maintenance of energy reserves playing a role in a virtual athlete's success, just as in real-world competitive sports. "In the very beginning of the game play, metabolism doesn’t really matter that much. You just got to make sure that you’re always eating and drinking enough. You’ll see how your energy is consumed while doing sports and how that impacts your virtual athlete’s performance," Muller explains. "Over time, we’ll introduce you to the key principles of the metabolism through missions and training. This will allow you to understand and manage your metabolism better."

As of yet, however, Muller's mum about how payment will work. Though he says the world will contain shops and auction houses, it's unclear yet whether microtransactions will play a role. "I can't be too specific about the business model yet," he says. "The reason for this is that we're carefully watching the environment to see in which direction it is going and which model fits the game the best. We have noted the rise of micro-payment based models, and potentially it could work very well for 'Empire of Sports'. On the other hand, we know about how sensitive gamers can be and our ultimate goal it to provide unmatched value, which should be a combination of a fantastic new game with an attractive overall price."

The Leipzig Gaming Conference takes place August 24-27.

[In Part via WarCry.com]

We recently reported on how Toyota's Scion is helping kids learn about financing and fiscal responsibility in Whyville -- now, the car that just loves being virtual is launching a club in There.com, through a partnership between There parent Makena and virtual design studio Metaversatility.

According to Makena's press release, the latest in-world marketing campaign around the Scion involves "a large-scale, interconnected 'tower'" of the Scion xA, xB and tC car models that have been transformed into nightclubs -- users'll be able to explore the car's interior features via the ladders and walkways inside an "urbane and modern" party spot that features music, dance floors, fog effects and even a hot tub. Interactive kiosks will be available to users looking for more info about the Scion product and lifestyle.

"Club Scion is an excellent example of how There.com works closely with marketers to develop concepts that enable consumers to interact with products and brands in ways that have never been done in other mediums,"said Michael Wilson, Makena CEO. "We're well beyond banners and text ads. These are truly immersive marketing programs."

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

We're swordfighting, carousing and bilging with Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, the MMO-slash-puzzle game from Three Rings Design. Let's hit the deck for an overview!

The BBC has commissioned a new kids' show from Ragdoll, the minds that brought us Teletubbies. It'll be called Tronji, and the BBC has picked development studio Nice Tech to produce and create an MMO for kids based on the series on its AliceServer technology.

Nice Tech says it expects to complete the game by early 2008 on a development schedule of only twelve months -- which pegs the release date at some point in the month of March, since Nice Tech's announcement says that Ragdoll and the BBC have been playing in the Tronji world since March of this year. Seems they release and auto-update new builds weekly, with no one involved more than five working days behind build reviews, for what they call a "near real-time tracking process."

"Working alongside a studio with a global reputation and strong IP has been a positive challenge for us," says Ben Simpson, Nice Tech COO. "We have been keen to learn from their experience and streamline our own working practices. We feel we have really grown through this partnership– and in such a short time!”

Nice Tech says it will begin focus-testing Tronji with kids over the next four months.

According to a ComputerWeekly.com article, IBM is developing its mainframe systems with the aim of enabling transactions in virtual worlds. Steve Mills, head of IBM's software biz, said recently at the company's UK research lab said that the virtual world-conscious tech giant is looking at new approaches to bolster its investment in traditional mainframe systems.

"IBM aims to invest the majority of its research and development dollar into building software that can link traditional transaction systems to modern interfaces, for example, releasing automatic teller machines that link to banks in virtual worlds such as Second Life," Mills said.

The company's currently testing its Smart Bank app, which simulates a high-volume banking environment with a virtual ATM linked to a real payment system that uses web services to authorize transactions in realtime from a core banking system.

The article says IBM is also pursuing an acquisition strategy in conjunction with the R&D effort, first with the August announcement that it will acquire Princeton Softech, allowing users to identify and store historical data on less expensive storage while storing current data on more resilient networks. Additionally, IBM's July purchase of Data Mirror allows realtime identification and delivery of modified data, while its June acquisition of Telelogic is geared to improve its services arm to support users developing industry-specific software.

"By following its acquisition strategy, IBM will boost its position in the transaction processing market and fill gaps elsewhere in its software management offerings," Gartner research VP Jim Duggan told ComputerWeekly.

[Via ComputerWeekly.com]

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

We've spent a few days living the pirate's life in Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, the MMO-slash-puzzle game from Three Rings Design. So what's the conclusion?

CMP Technology announced that it has launched a metaverse services division. The division, which is being run out of the CMP Software Group, a sister publication to Worlds In Motion which includes Dr. Dobb's Journal, will offer project management, asset conceptualization and design, scripting and building. It'll also offer custom app development, multimedia engineering, virtual event production, proactive asset and audience management, and engagement metrics.

The company says it plans to use its various brands to attract global audiences to the builds and events that this new metaverse division will be creating for its customers. It's part of a larger CMP initiative to expand into Second Life, following the April launch of its Dr. Dobb's Journal's Life 2.0 Spring Summit event.

The next Life 2.0 event, to be held September 15-21, 2007, will focus on the "Opensource Grid" and will feature keynotes and panels from metaverse players. Currently, Dr. Dobb's Island is hosting discussion groups held Tuesday and Friday of each week focusing on technology, trends and business topics.

"By 2011, Gartner expects that 80 percent of Internet users will be participants in some quadrant of the 3D metaverse and CMP's goal is to lower the complexity barriers, cost and risk of metaverse engagement so businesses of any scale can play profitably with these powerful tools," said John Jainschigg, CMP Software Group director of online technology and new business.

Finally a peep from Michael Smith and the team at MindCandy, whose fans have been waiting for the next installment of cross-media alternate reality game Perplex City for some months now, since it was indefinitely delayed.

The folks at Gizmodo tracked down Smith's latest project: a collection of cute monsters on cell phone charms (they whirl and light up when you get a ring) who belong to the virtual world of Moshi Monsters. Each $10 pet unlocks a virtual version of itself, which users can raise and care for. Some interesting social networking elements involved, too -- pet owners can swap pictures and comment on one another's monsters MySpace-style, with a newsroll à la Facebook.

Gizmodo says it looks like the monsters will be able to interact together in a virtual environment too, but it's unclear whether the tiny creatures will be able to do what pocket-sized monsters do best -- which is, of course, battling each other!

Moshi Monsters (website is up, but no content yet) will be targeted at the 7-12 year-old set, and from the looks of things, will go live this September.

[Via Gizmodo]

Europe's Virtual Worlds Forum 2007 is set to take place in London October 23rd-26th, and it's announced its program and speakers, all focused around "the commercial and brand opportunities and the corporate benefits of collaborative working in virtual worlds."

The variegated panels include "Kidalicious: are children the future for virtual worlds?" featuring Sulake's (Habbo) Timo Soininen, MindCandy's Michael Smith and BBC Digital Content VP Alice Taylor; "The future is blurred: social networking meets virtual worlds," with The Multiverse Network's Corey Bridges, and the Guardian's Meg Pickard and Aleks Krotoski, and "Virtual world business models," with NCSoft's Thomas Bideaux, Makena's Steve Victorino and Areae's Raph Koster -- and that's only to name a few!

Other speakers include the "Father of the MUD" Richard Bartle, Gartner Research VP Steve Prentice and Millions of Us founder Ruben Steiger.

[Via Wonderland]

Taking a page from the likes of paper-doll avatar site Stardoll, H&M stepping into TheSims 2, and fashion designers in Second Life and other virtual worlds, PR firm Ketchum's new unit Fashion Interactive 2.0 will focus on helping established design brands reach the current generation's crop of fashionistas, reports ClickZ.

Ketchum's previously served less glamorous companies like FedEx and Kodak. With fashion's rapid rise in the virtual worlds space -- virtual clothing outposts as popular hotspots for making avatars look hip -- it's a good call for Ketchum to anticipate that fashion brands will need the resources of a tech-savvy PR agency. Manish Chandra, the CEO of the Kaboodle social shopping site, recently told ClickZ that the fashion category "is now the growth leader on e-commerce and comparison shopping sites."

The press release explicitly mentions social networking sites alongside "online relationships" and "experiential marketing." From the release:

[Roy] Edmondson, Senior Vice President, Global Brand Marketing Practice, and [Jeff] Danzer, who joins Ketchum to launch this offering as Vice President and Group Manager, Apparel, will direct communications campaigns designed to reach and engage today’s digital consumers. Using Ketchum’s newly developed proprietary program that proactively harnesses the power of social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook, the group will provide a completely measurable communications platform that encourages consumers to become brand evangelists as never before.

[Via ClickZ]

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

Let's start with an overview of Whyville, the educational virtual world for kids from Numedeon!

At this year's Edinburgh Interactive Festival, EVE Online CCP Hilmar Petursson gave a session all about the future of his space-age MMO. According to an article in GamesDigest, EVE's growth has been slow, but steady -- currently at 200,000 players, it aims to reach 300,000 in the next couple of years. Those are not ambitious numbers in terms of userbase size or rate of growth -- consider worlds like BarbieGirls or Nicktropolis that garnered millions in months, and EVE's been running for four years now.

But Petursson's vision for EVE is a world of content heavily dependent on a strong community -- Petursson wants to keep everyone in the same play world, or "shard," as opposed to most other MMOs that separates users into different areas, or onto separate servers, not necessarily allowing them to regularly share the same experience. It makes sense that slower and more gradual development would be key to achieving this strategy, especially as hardware standards advance and EVE players can anticipate a new DirectX graphical update this year.

Still, Petursson continues dreaming big, with the hopes of EVE “being the first game with more players than the population of the developer’s home country." This might be somewhat of a challenge, as EVE enjoys a particularly "hardcore" gamer audience. According to GamesDigest, 95% of EVE in-worlders are men, and very few of them are in the "sweet spot" under-18 audience that helps 'tween-targeted worlds flourish so quickly.

How to attract a broader userbase, then? Well, for one thing, avatars in EVE aren't people; they're space ships. Given the popularity of avatar personalization, clothing and other human-like peripherals particularly among the young female audiences that flock in droves to worlds based on fashion dolls, pets or home design, it's a little bit easier to see why EVE's demographic is still a little more limited than Petursson would like.

With that in mind, Petursson unveiled a new development at the EIF, giving an early look at character avatars to be introduced next year. Petursson hopes that allowing EVE users to personify people instead of merely hardware will attract a wider audience and create a deeper experience, adding a human element to the economics-heavy world (EVE even hired its own economist to work with the extensive in-world transaction system).

With the ever-present specter of the MMO's traditionally short lifecycle starting to breathe down EVE's neck after four active years, it looks like Petursson is focusing on keeping the upward climb going! Complete coverage of Peterssun's comments at EIF can be found at Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.

[Via GamesDigest]

At Sony's presentation at this year's Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Peter Edward, director of the platform group for PlayStation 3's built-in virtual world PlayStation Home, gave attendees a peek into the ambitious vision for the environment.

"For the user, the value of home is all about being able to share the experience with their friends, both gaming and non-gaming brands," Edwards said. "It's about having a safe, reputable environment run by a trusted brand in which they can feel secure about making online transactions." He added that Home users will be able to use the virtual world to buy real-world items, initially using the PlayStation Store interface which will be itself extended into a fully three-dimensional virtual world "in the long term".

"Community is all about communication with other users," Edwards said. "In the longer term, we'll be implementing a fully featured social networking experience within Home."

Further building on the theme of online socialization around gaming, Edwards continued that Home will allow extensive customization of both the avatar and its virtual apartment. Edward projected, "Users will be able to share other content that they have created -- photos and videos of themselves, and user-generated content tools such as their own t-shirt designs."

He added, "We'll also be giving out tools to allow scripting, java minigames and so on."

Edwards is aware of the importance of community to gamers who play online, noting that it's "crucial" that Home cater to the desire for a competition component, such as that of the competing Xbox 360's Achievements system. "The ability to host tournaments and special events will allow maintaining interest in the game," Edward explained. "By maintaining contact with the users for longer, publishers will be able to learn more about the desires and requirements for the user," he adds, with each IP customizing its community focus.

Highlighting the benefits of the Home experience for non-game brands, Edwards noted that it'll allow access to the highly-coveted demographic that comprises the majority of the connected PlayStation audience with sponsored events, branded spaces, objects, furniture and clothing. "A virtual online experience is something brands have already experienced, but PlayStation Home doesn't contain the same kind of risk as the 'wilder west' online experience," he said.

Publishers will be given their own asset creation toolsets to enable them to offer their own downloadable items in Home, like avatar clothing and furniture, obtainable with the already-established PlayStation Wallet and micropayment systems -- Edwards hinted at the opportunity for revenue-sharing with users, to encourage placement of advertising within their spaces. Edwards adds that in the future, users will be able to buy full games within Home.

"In the longer term, once an engaged audience is there, there are revenue opportunities for all, including end users," Edwards said.

[This exclusive on-site report from Andrew Doull and Leigh Alexander originally appeared on CMP Game Group sister website Gamasutra.com.]

Anthony Zuiker, the creator and executive producer of the CSI television crime drama franchise, will deliver the opening keynote at the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo on October 10 in San Jose.

Virtual Worlds Management, who produces the event, says Zuiker will be talking about how CSI: NY plans to extend the TV property into the interactive virtual world space to engage with customers, partners and employees. Could a virtual crime scene investigation be in the cards? We'll have to wait and see!

Broadcast TV pros are finding a lot of common ground in virtual worlds. Just recently at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, Peter Cowley of reality TV bigs Endemol also talked about the affinity for virtual worlds as a natural extension of broadcast properties like Big Brother and Deal or No Deal. Writer and TV producer Lee Sheldon is set to keynote the Writing for Games track at the Austin Game Developers' Conference in September, to discuss how some TV traits, like episodic content, have a lot to teach the multiplayer online gaming and social space.

"With the advent of virtual worlds, television franchises can now engage fans directly, immersing them into their brands, producing an exciting extension to the creative process," says Christopher Sherman, Virtual Worlds Conference Executive Director.

Doppelganger, currently known for their music lifestyle-themed social world vSide (which recently went live), has announced it has raised $11 million in new funding in the latest round led by ComVentures, along with existing backers Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Trident Capital, Draper Richards, KPG Ventures and Greycroft Partners Michael Rolnick, a partner with ComVentures, will join the Doppelganger Board of Directors.

This latest round brings the amount of funding Doppelganger has raised to $25 million. The company says it will use the additional capital to accelerate and grow the business, create new participatory tools for users, and expand relationships with media partners and brands.

Worlds in Motion recently toured vSide and spoke to CEO Tim Stevens about the project, which focuses heavily on engaging users to be participatory, rewarding them with increased access and more velvet-rope privileges in vSide the more they contribute and connect.

"Doppelganger represents an entirely new entertainment medium focused on the things young consumers care about the most: music, entertainment, and fashion," Rolnick commented.

Chichen Itza Ventures, the lead investor in There.com producer Makena Technologies, has announced a "significant investment" in next-gen console game and virtual world developer Trilogy Studios. There.com and Trilogy have enjoyed a long-running partnership, building Virtual Pimp My Ride for MTV, and recently reaffirming their mutual commitment to that project.

Michael Wilson, There.com CEO, said in a press release received by Worlds in Motion that the investment, in addition to strengthening There's partnership with Trilogy, "marries Trilogy's gaming expertise with There.com's leadership in social virtual worlds."

The companies plan to expand virtual worlds' entertainment value by adding game-like play elements to social networking and established entertainment brands. In addition to Virtual Pimp My Ride, the companies say they're working with other major media companies on the development of new, soon-to-be-announced brand-extension virtual world properties that will be announced shortly.

"We see a wealth of opportunity in new financial and distribution models for interactive entertainment, and There.com and Trilogy are building the infrastructure to support these new efforts," Wilson said.

At this year's Edinburgh Interactive Festival, digital ethics consultant and Terra Nova writer Ren Reynolds led a panel titled "Protest in Virtual Worlds," with industry veteran Jessica Mulligan, Linden Lab's Jim Purbick, and Hilmar Petursson of CCP Productions (EVE Online). On the heels of a community scandal surrounding allegations of manipulation and developer misconduct in EVE that resulted in CCP's establishment of an internal affairs oversight group, the discussion was focused around what goes on behind the scenes in online worlds, and on identifying the reasons users become disgruntled and raise protest.

"You get a lot of protest in these things, from governance, game mechanics, political process and griefing," Reynolds said. "People try to run virtual worlds as a service, but people playing the game view this as a community."

"We have been planning democratically elected community representatives for a long time, and you need a venue to discuss societal issues in the world as they grow bigger and bigger," Petursson explained. "To grow beyond 500 people, you have to install some authoritarian figures into the community or build some defined structure into it."

"There are hundreds of people in Second Life who are earning their living in Second Life, which makes governance even more important," Purbick noted." We've been looking at resident governance in Second Life for a long time. We now have a public issue tracker."

Purbick says that despite doing a lot of "reaching out" in Second Life, petitions and protests by in-worlders are still commonplace, owing to issues like changes in economic governance, losses by users when land efforts are terminated, the limits of technology, and even things like the addition of voice, which many Second Life residents didn't want.

Purbick also pointed out that growth in userbase can result in problems for users. "We had to drop live help," he recalled. "We couldn't continue to give everyone free money, which caused protest."

Real-life issues coming into conflict with online world regulation can also create user protest situations; Purbick referred to the recent ban on gambling in Second Life and user fears of sexual censorship; certain jurisdictions make it illegal to have certain freedoms online.

"Linden Lab is a bottle-neck: we're trying to get out of the way. We're moving to let the users create the software as well as the content. We are moving towards a much more federated structure," Purbick says.

Mulligan identified three different types of users: first, the citizens, who "look out for everyone"; second, the "tribesman" user -- some 85-90 percent of the userbase -- who are invested in looking out for the microeconomy; and then the "Barbarians," who "couldn't care less. These guys create 80% of the problems," Mulligan explains. "They don't care about your rules or player justice systems."

"We don't manage expectations well in the online world," Mulligan conceded. "World of Warcraft are horrible at customer service, there [are] just no managed expectations. In 9 out of 10 virtual worlds, there is no meaningful communication [between the organization and the users]. The community says one thing, marketing says another. This really comes down to unfulfilled promises."

[This exclusive on-site report from Andrew Doull and Leigh Alexander originally appeared on CMP Game Group sister website Gamasutra.com.]

Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra looks at a recent study conducted by researchers at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, and published in U.S. journal CyberPsychology and Behavior, examining social behavior in the MMO worlds. Apparently, three quarters of online role-playing gamers make good friends with the people they meet in their virtual worlds, with almost half meeting in real-life situations and one in ten going on to develop actual physical relationships. More than 30 percent get crushes on other players, and 40 percent would rather discuss emotional issues with their virtual pals than their real ones.

From the article:

One in five participants believed that massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs) had a negative effect on their relationships if their partner was not a player, while more than two-thirds felt they had a positive effect on their relationships with those who did play.

Women were significantly more likely than men to be attracted to other players and were far more likely to go on to date them. Most women gave “therapeutic refreshment” as their main reason for playing, whereas most men stated “curiosity, astonishment and interest” as their reasons. Around a third of gamers suggested they could be more themselves in the game than in real life.

Another article at Gamasutra explains the way Chinese MMOs help celebrate Valentine's Day with in-world events, romantic giveaways and a boom in virtual weddings.

Speaking of weddings, some think the increasing complexity and importance of virtual relationships may have further implications. A recent Wall Street Journal article takes a snapshot of how one man's real-life marriage is challenged by his relationship with his sexy, redheaded virtual wife. "It's really devastating," the flesh-and-blood wife tells the Journal, "You try to talk to someone or bring them a drink, and they'll be having sex with a cartoon."

The Journal article is a fascinating read, giving a bit of a sensationalized glimpse into the ways that virtual relationships may affect and challenge real ones. There were similar fears back when online chat, IMs and cybersex were still new, but in the era of 3D avatars and lifelike online worlds, it seems they have much more potential to do this than ever. It's not too farfetched to hypothesize a day when courts could consider a protracted virtual affair like the one profiled in the Journal piece as grounds for divorce, maybe even adultery in the eyes of the court. Who knows?

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

Let's take a closer look at Whyville, Numedeon's education-focused world for kids.

[The following article by Brandon Boyer was originally published on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]

Gamebryo engine developer Emergent has announced a continued push in the Chinese development community with the licensing of its engine to Winking Entertainment, which is currently working on a number of MMO projects.

Emergent also notes that the two will be "exploring further collaboration" starting with a combined presence at CMP's China Game Developers Conference in Shanghai, on August 27-29.

The company also says its Gamebryo engine has been used to "move Chinese developers from PC-centric development to multi-core, cross-platform development," which has pushed its Chinese sales growth up 900% revenue over the last 18 months.

Winking Entertainment is notable as one of the first Chinese video game developers to obtain PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 licenses and, as mentioned, is currently at work on a number of worldwide focused MMOs.

Said Winking CEO Gary Chang, “Chinese game developers must find different means of differentiating themselves and staying competitive. By leveraging Emergent’s real-time 3D graphics engine, we were able to quickly extend our PC-based game development to support leading next-generation consoles, while minimizing our overhead with more automated, cost-efficient processes.”

Free-to-play Asian MMO Xiah has announced several new content offerings for its martial arts combat-based online world. A series of press releases received by Worlds in Motion describe, firstly, a new map called "Blood Devil Island" -- and it's only for the hardcore, accessible only at level 60 and higher with the use of "special beads."

Another current event in the Xiah world is the "Double FEMA Experience" period, running from August 14th to September 9th. No, not the Federal Office of Emergency Management -- it stands for "Five Element Martial Arts," a skill acquired by accumulating and reading special books in-game. During the time period, XP gains from combating monsters with that technique will result in double experience gains for characters.

Finally, nine new in-game "pet" items that add special character enhancements are now available through the game's store. These are all good examples of participatory rewards in free-to-play MMOs; all of the content announced in the releases require some sort of special involvement to obtain, thereby encouraging players to keep returning and building in the world. It's a valuable trend for games that earn revenue from the ads-and-RMT model -- these sort of unlockables and upgrades keep the site sticky.

Another neat thing about Xiah -- which features both solo and multiplayer modes -- is that it can be played either with a keyboard or a game controller, emulating the vibe of a console fighting game with the added element of continuous upgrades, item and stat gains.

We've been seeing how companies like IBM are embracing the virtual world as a useful part of modern business -- they've established guidelines for online behavior, for one thing, while scores of companies have already started consulting with agencies like Metaversatility and Millions of Us to create a professional virtual presence. A recent article in BusinessWeek examines this issue as part of a larger trend around technology evolving our workplaces (again)! From the article:

Even before these $80,000-and-up systems become standard office fare, other new technologies will reshape the workplace. The online virtual world Second Life, where people play using avatars (graphic representations of themselves), is starting to become a real workplace, at least for a few telesales agents at 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. (FLWS ) The online flower vendor is experimenting with a "virtual greenhouse" in Second Life, where a dozen or so workers log in and interact with Second Life residents. 1-800-Flowers Chief Executive Jim McCann plans to use it to get customers to suggest new products—far more direct feedback than focus groups or surveys, he says. "The line between our customers and our staff continues to blur."

It's an emerging dynamic variously dubbed mass collaboration, peer production, or crowdsourcing. Whatever the name, collective efforts are exploding online—from the volunteer-written reference site Wikipedia to Google's search engine, which mines the billions of links that Web site owners make to other sites to produce its results. They are producing incredible value, even though they aren't traditionally considered "work." Says Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management and author of the 2004 book The Future of Work: "Google and Wikipedia are just scratching the surface of whole new kinds of economic organisms."

It's an interesting read that paints a picture of the role professional virtual worlds play in the larger tech evolution.

A new Tech Confidential blog makes note of the recent outpouring of adoration VCs have for the virtual worlds space, and rounds up some big numbers, too:

Virtual worlds have also been attracting plenty of real VC capital. The $700 million acquisition of Club Penguin by the Walt Disney Co. and all the money "World of Warcraft" is bringing in to Vivendi SA (nearly $287 million in the second quarter) has venture firms excited about investing in virtual worlds. Doppelganger Inc. announced an $11 million financing to support the recent launch of its online virtual world — vSide — which will be three times larger than its Music Lounge predecessor.

Other venture-backed virtual worlds include: Linden Research Inc., the San Francisco-based operator of Second Life with $30 million in funding; There.com with more than $33 million; Helsinki-based Sulake Corp. Oy with more than $26 million; and Multiverse Network Inc. with $4.75 million.

The blog also correctly observes that advertisers and media companies are now looking seriously beyond television into the online space, and "with immersive environments, virtual worlds could be one of their biggest opportunities on the Internet." Tech Confidential and The Deal plan to discuss these big-bucks movements in depth at their upcoming Convergence 2.0 conference on September 17th in New York City.

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

This week, we've spent time in Whyville, Numedeon's education-focused world for kids, earning clams by exploring educational work opportunities. So what's the over-arching conclusion?

Ever watch Saturday morning television advertising? Then you might have heard of Rescue Pets, the animatronic stuffed toys with the soulful eyes and the bark you can set to wake you in the morning. They're made by MGA, also responsible for the Bratz dolls -- and as with Be-Bratz.com, now the Rescue Pets too will have their own online world.

Like Be-Bratz, the Rescue Pets world MyePets requires the purchase of a plush toy that comes with a "secret code" card to access the world. Pet owners can adopt a virtual version of their plush pal, and can interact in their own "My Room" space, buy items at the Flea Market, play games at the Arcade, or even look after their pet's health at the MyePets Vet. The company says simple phrased text messaging will also be available for users to interact with one another through a PDA interface.

"The experience of adopting, naming and taking care of one of these adorable pets online focuses on teaching children ages four and up simple decision making and nurturing skills in a safe and imaginative environment," MGA says.

The Rescue Pets toys will retail for $9.99 (a bit lower price point than the $29.99 Be-Bratz toys or the $60 BarbieGirls USB-key-MP3-player) and initially available via three different breeds: Chocolate Lab, Golden Retriever and Mutt, with more apparently to come.

Our sister site Gamasutra recently spoke with Jane Pinckard, content director for the Austin Game Developers Conference to be held September 5-7th at the Austin Convention Center in Texas. This year's event includes a focus on virtual worlds along with MMO games, as Jane discusses in this salient excerpt:

What’s new in the MMO game space this year at the show?

We have a keynote by Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer of Final Fantasy XI. The thing that’s really compelling about that game for our advisory board is that it’s a multiplatform MMO, which is really difficult to do. You have players on PCs and on consoles interacting, and that’s a huge technical challenge that they were able to roll out successfully.

Another trend has really been RMTs and microtransactions – as a general category, it would be “alternative revenue streams.” MMOs are traditionally subscription-based, but there’s all these new things going on, particularly in the Asian markets, where there are virtual items sales and different ways of monetizing the consumer, so that’s been a very strong trend. We have several sessions that address that and how it’s being done in Asia and how those models can be applied to US markets.

What’s going on specifically for the virtual worlds-specific audience?

Well, there’s a little bit of a debate about whether virtual worlds belong with gaming and game development. But World of Warcraft is a virtual world; they’ve built a virtual world that happens to be part of a very structured game experience. So it’s not open-ended like Second Life or other titles that are tied to marketing initiatives and other products. However, there’s a lot of things going on in virtual worlds that I think can be applied to the game market, and I think that the advisory board has selected certain things [to reflect that].

One of the keynotes is Sulka Haro, and he’s the lead designer on Habbo Hotel. That’s not strictly a game, but there are some cool things being done in that world that can impact games, and might be successfully applied to games. Also, the social aspects of virtual worlds have a lot of interesting possibilities for games – combining a virtual world with social networking applications, as Habbo Hotel does.

There’s also a panel on making money in virtual worlds that focuses on Second Life, but of course people have been making money off of online games for a long time. So I guess it’s about “what can games learn from virtual worlds?”

We go back and forth at the advisory board about this. I don’t see that a distinction is necessarily very helpful [between games and online worlds]. There are a lot of things that virtual worlds are making strong progress that I think games could benefit from, like handling transactions. Though, things like the Station Exchange auction system, where users can trade items officially with Sony Online’s blessing – that’s an interesting step in that direction.

You can now read the complete interview at Gamasutra.

Metaversatility is a full-scale development and consultation company with a specific focus on virtual worlds. While it works extensively with There.com parent Makena, they also develop for the Second Life platform, and will be working with clients on developing for other platforms, like IBM’s work using the Multiverse technology.

Most recently, Metaversatility built the latest in-world marketing campaign for the Toyota Scion in There, creating and helping conceptualize the design of the three Scion models as large-scale clubs whose interiors users could explore. Worlds in Motion spoke to Metaversatility creative director Matt Daly about some projects and his experiences designing in the virtual worlds space.

The Process
Daly says that Metaversatility, covering industries from entertainment, lifestyle and music to automotive, telecommunications and consultation firms, has seen “unprecedented growth” since its incorporation in October 2006. “There’s lots of interest in this relatively new and very malleable market,” he notes.

Daly’s job at Metaversatility involves both creative work and some coding, on top of overseeing the art team. “We’re all jacks-of-all-trades,” he laughs. His first step when a client approaches Metaversatility is to discuss that client’s goals and what benefit they hope to receive from virtual worlds.

Describing the process, Daly says, “They tell us what it is they want – a community-oriented giveaway-land project, for instance, and [we discuss] what to do with it. Do they want open-ended or highly controlled? Maybe Second Life isn’t the best for those who want tight controls. Do they want to be incorporated into a broader-existing virtual worlds, or do they want to develop something from scratch on an existing engine that is its own self-contained world? It all depends on exactly what their intended outcome is.”

Lots of Choices
He continues: “The MTV and EMI and Scion projects, for instance, involved their desire to appeal to a very specific demographic -- that is, the sort of younger tech-oriented consumers that are pretty much the large percentage of Makena’s platform. And they also wanted to protect their brand and make sure that it was not mistreated or anything like that, so there was the obvious choice for them.”

So how much is the client, and how much of these virtual world developments are structured on Daly’s input? “Makena differs from Linden in the way that they work in close contact and develop a business relationship with third-party developers for various different projects. But since they’re the first line of contact with the actual client, then in our experience thus far they have approached us with a concept – for instance, Scion’s concept was ‘we have to develop huge versions of the three cars with kiosks and stuff. The other stuff is our area. We started with a very sort of general concept and sort of communicated with Makena and with Scion’s marketing company to refine the idea; where the cars are located, how we’re going to drive foot traffic, how navigation would work, color, scale, interior elements and how they’ll differentiate from each other.”

Sounds similar to real-world branded architecture! So is it? “Well, as is the case with a lot of digital technology and art, we have both the curse and the blessing of a million options,” Daly says. “We are not bound by the laws of physics, for instance, so we can build anything that fits the tech resource budget of whatever engine of the platform we are using. And any budget restrictions we have, pretty much, are on time, not on material.”

As for resources, Daly says that depends entirely on what the engine can handle, but “usually you can do pretty much anything if you can juggle your resources properly.” Another perk virtual design has over brick-and-mortar is that “we can go back,” Daly says. Gigantic large-scale changes that a client requests – like an entire color scheme, are actually “very simple to do,” he explains.

The Importance of Contribution
What factors does Daly think help create a strong brand presence in a virtual world? Metaversatility is able to track metrics in highly detailed ways in online worlds – one of the big draws for advertisers in the space in general. The one thing he’s noticed is that above all, the brand presence needs to be making a contribution to the community. “You see a lot of builds and islands in Second Life that are completely dead and empty,” he says. “Beyond the inauguration, there’s no reason for users to come back to an island that has pictures of shoes on it. There’s no incentive. So builds that actually bring users back and actually provide sort of spaces for naturally occurring activity… I think that sort of self sustained communal framework is really important to develop a long-term, sustainable build that s actually desired by the community and seen as a sort of positive contribution.”

And it doesn’t have to be a particularly major contribution, either. “Pepsi, in the Virtual MTV build, contributed Pepsi machines all over the world -- you could get a can of Pepsi,” Daly recalls. “It seems like a fairly vaporous thing, but somehow people started grabbing these Pepsi cans,” Daly recalls. “They’re simply just 3D objects that attach to the end of your hand, but suddenly everyone in vMTV is running around with a Pepsi can, and it was something they did very willingly. It’s quite the oposite of having to pay for ads, because people are paying you in their own personal capital.”

Friendly Platforms
We asked Matt which virtual worlds are the most friendly to third-party developers. “The thing about virtual worlds in general is that they’re all very nascent,” he says, “in terms of these really socially-oriented places -- because MMOs have been around for years without changing much. Virtual spaces are not all entirely third-party developer-friendly, because they were never meant to be.”

But are some easier than others? Apparently, for third parties Second Life is “as bad as it gets.” Daly explains: “Second Life is not very good for third parties because Linden doesn’t work with [them]; they’re very hands-off as much as they can, and then its our de facto role to come in and know the tools, know the landscape and then develop with whatever we have. You can’t get any further than the way it should be than a platform where you have no real contact with the developers of the platform. It’s very democratic, but for actual third-party developers, it’s not the most efficient way to go.”

On the other side, Metaversatility prefers working with There – though it’s still fairly new also. “With video games, you’d expect [documentation] to be in some compendium somewhere, and that stuff wasn’t there. On the plus side, Makena was constantly available via telephone to work with us. So There is a very developer-friendly platform in that they are trying to make it so any third-party developer who knows its stuff can work fairly hassle-free with the platform.”

Looking Ahead
In addition to recently wrapping up development on the Scion project, music company EMI’s tower in There, and a flagship project for processor heavyweight AMD, Daly’s team is looking ahead. He can’t give further details on his pipeline projects under NDA, but he did say they both involved, “to a large part,” Second Life, and “they’re both major coporate presences.”

“We’re really excited,” he continued. “The work just came by storm as soon as we started. There’s a lot of desire to test the waters and see what virtual worlds have to offer, and it’s sort of opinion leaders wanting to take a dip in the pool.”

The Chicago Tribune's got an article up about a company called Simuality; they help small businesses set up shop in Second Life and other virtual worlds. It seems to be a slightly different tack than the one taken by Metaversatility, who recently talked to us about the work they do building brand outposts for companies advertising in online worlds.

The Tribune piece tells the story of Simuality founder Anthony Van Zyl and how he helped Evanston attorney Omar Khuri build his immigration law business in Second Life, with the help of live support. From the article:

It takes more than a presence to make money on Second Life, van Zyl said. Too many companies have offices or storefronts on Second Life but don't staff them, he said. "When you walk into this virtual reality there should be a person who greets you and directs you where you need to go," he said. "It's absolutely vital that there is human interaction."

But van Zyl knows that having someone available 24 hours a day to greet residents on Second Life is a tall order for many small firms. That's why Simuality, together with a Netherlands company, provides trained avatar receptionists for clients. In the case of Khuri's law practice, van Zyl expects to provide an avatar who can answer questions about the type of legal work provided and understand the preliminary paperwork clients need to complete.

One interesting fact is that neither van Zyl nor his client, Mr. Khuri, use their real names in their virtual business work; van Zyl goes by "Hendry Goldkey" (avatar shown), and Khuri calls himself "Ettorney Stapleton." If the idea is to build a business presence that can translate to the real world, doesn't this seem a bit counter-productive?

When we recently heard that CSI TV producer Anthony Zuiker would be keynoting the upcoming Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo, we wondered whether a crime scene investigation virtual world could be in the works! Turns out a rather intriguing crossover between the show and Second Life is planned -- but there's actually a real-life CSI tool that's about to go virtual.

The Western Mail is reporting that software developers at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, are at work on a virtual world aimed to allow juries to visit crime scenes. Academics believe that letting jurors stroll through the blueprint (still not built as of yet) might help them gauge the "real-life impact" of a crime scene. Jurors could "see" the victim and their position relative to the perpetrator or murder weapon.

Peter Farr, of the Judicial Communications Office which represents judges, told the Western Mail:

“The courts are using increasing amounts of new technology, such as hi-tech evidence from video links with witnesses and CCTV footage,” he said.

“This is the first I’ve heard of this software and if it were to be used in courts in future, it would need to be with the agreement of the Crown Prosecution Service and others, as well as judges.”

[via icWales]

We recently reported that Entropia Universe was turning to Crytek's CryEngine 2 for a graphical boost; now, our sister site Gamasutra is reporting that Korean developer XLGames, founded by Lineage creator and former executive VP of development at NCSoft Jake Song, has announced that it will also be using Crytek's CryEngine 2 for its forthcoming massively multiplayer game.

From Gamasutra:

Crytek's first engine was previously used for NCSoft's AION, an arrangment which XL vice president and technical director Patrick Doane describes as seeing "a lot of success," adding that after seeing CryEngine 2 dmoes, "we just knew we wanted to continue to work with their great new tools and engine.”

XL CEO Jake Song, previously featured on Gamasutra, noted that apart from its graphics capabilities, the engine was selected for "the unprecedented ability it offers to physically interact with the environment," which he says will allow the company "to create entirely new modes of game play which up to now we could only dream of implementing.”

Said Crytek managing director Faruk Yerli, "Jake Song is a true pioneer and legend in the world of massively multiplayer games, having almost single handedly created the original market for them in Asia. To now have his own company select the CryEngine 2 as their middleware, and Crytek as their primary technology provider, demonstrates a high level of confidence in our tools and technology, as well as in our team’s ability to support their ongoing efforts to build a ground breaking new next generation game, not only now, but also for many years to come.”

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

This week, we take a look into Millsberry,, General Mills' teen and 'tween-targeted virtual world. Though it's been called an advergame, it still enjoys considerable popularity among the young set -- let's investigate, starting with an overview!

Today marked the first day of conferences at the State of Play V conference in Singapore. Organized by Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, New York Law School, Trinity University, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the conference on virtual worlds invites experts across disciplines to discuss the future of cyberspace and the impact of these new immersive, social online environments on education, law, politics and society.

As per this SoP’s mandate, panels featured more than just the “usual suspects,” the primarily Western voices which have dominated games scholarship thus far. While both established and upcoming Western voices do seem to be making up a significant portion of attendees to the conference, many Asian countries have come – most notably from Singapore, Korea and China.

Prior to the panel sessions, we were addressed by a senior official from the Singaporean government. Dr. Balaji Sadasivan, Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Information, Communications and the Arts, said that the importance for collaboration in games, noting the “drive to tap into the digital age.”

The first session, 'Building Businesses in Virtual Worlds', dealt with those businesses grown inside of worlds, but also those which are being brought inside. Second Life mogul Guntram Graef, said that corporations may need to “exit the magic circle,” in order to succeed. Jerry Paffendorf of Electric Sheep Company also encouraged corporations and developers to look at how they might use unique intellectual property and stories created within games.

Meanwhile, Thomas Malaby answered the predominantly business-oriented tone to the session by asking a question: could game-making be becoming less about gamers, and more about the corporations attracted?

The second session, 'Regulating Virtual Worlds', focused strongly on the different issues inherent to applying nationally and internationally binding laws to game spaces. Charles Lim Aeng Chang, of the Singapore Attorney General’s office, explored the issue of accommodating local governments, an idea which seemed immediately rebuffed.

David Post complained over the absence of in-game legal systems. Addressing game developers as “Ye Olde Game Gods,” he asked when developers would take the issue of online law seriously, most especially by enforcing player-made decisions. Richard Bartle then pointed out that most often, players don’t actually want laws – just as “most people like Gods to not do much.”

'Education, Kids and Teens in Virtual Worlds' examined some of the past, current and future classroom applications to games. Aaron Delwiche presented his courses which brought players into MMO spaces, while Angeline Khoo and others described certain areas where playing games actually taught difficult and emotional life lessons. You know, gank and be ganked. Not mentioned overly in the discussion on education was Harvard University’s Berkman Center, which had premiered at the SoP their initiative to teach essential life skills through the learning of poker.

While many people are exploring games as an educational tool, Dr. K. Pelly Periasamy of Nanyang Technological University asked a simple and pertinent question: “Is it applicable to the real world? The feel among the panelists was that games do hold limits as an educational tool, though there are also immense opportunities.

Connie Yowell of the MacArthur Foundation brought up her concerns, asking whether some ‘new’ game theory may be “replicating rather than pushing the edges,” using established themes rather than exploring the untested. She also said that now is the time to do such research – as worldwide interest, and more importantly the resultant funding, will only last so long.

The final session worked on the topic of 'Connecting East and West'. The prolific Allen Varney moderated. Referring to their rapid growth, he suggested that event hosts “Singapore will surprise us.” Joshua Fouts reminded attendees that while we may all get excited over the numbers in World of Warcraft, it’s still just roughly half as large as its counterparts in Asian virtual worlds.

This was also the first session to include a translator. Judge Unggi Yoon of Korea spoke at length on how Korean culture influenced, but then was in turn changed, by games. He also spoke on the reasons behind the development of the PC Baang, or Korean PC room, saying that many sprung up and were run by individuals and families who had been struck hard by the Asian financial crisis.

What was fascinating about Judge Unggi Yoon’s speech is that a room full of bustling academics fell almost completely silent. Even if only for a moment, it seemed that the vision of this conference had been realized. East and West are sharing with one another.

[The preceding article by Neils Clark originally ran on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]

Virtual life surprised some scientists recently by behaving just like a real ecosystem, when a plague created to challenge high-level players in World of Warcraft actually escaped its containment and spread among the general population -- carried by travel, pets, and stupid behavior, just as a real germ would.

The episode around the electronic pandemic, called "Corrupted Blood," inspired a Journal Lancet Infectious Diseases report on ways the online world might be useful in disease studies. "The disease had spread to the densely populated capital cities of the fantasy world, causing high rates of mortality and, much more importantly, the social chaos that comes from a large-scale outbreak of deadly disease," the article read.

The difference between virtual worlds and prior disease models is that the somewhat random factor of human behavior and how it contributes to the spread of academics could not be studied in such a realistic way before. For example, "No one has ever looked at what would happen when people who are not in a quarantine zone get in and then leave," said Nina Fefferman, a medical epidemiologist who worked on the report.

Fefferman will now incorporate the similar kinds of behaviors into her model scenarios, and will also continue working with Blizzard to model disease outbreaks in other games.

[Via MSNBC]

The SEE3D group at the University of Wales Aberystwyth is busy innovating! We recently reported that they were working on ways to use virtual worlds to help juries see crime scenes; now, they've developed virtual world technology that will allow town and city residents and council to see how their community will look with a wind farm nearby. SEE3D builds virtual replicas (to scale) of towns considering the alternative energy solution, and then lets residents and local government tour the area so that they can better consider the ways proposed wind farms might impact their neighborhood.

SEE3D's virtual worlds allow visuals within a 30 mile radius of the proposed farm, and even allow local officials to fly over the site in an airplane, or drive past it in a car, to see the wind farm from different vantage points.

Seems like the aim is to help convince people to adopt alternative energy solutions, perhaps with the hope that a virtual replica of life beside a wind farm might be more appealing than the imagination?

[Via NewsWales]

Business 2.0 recently laid out the "five commandments of gaming," written by Amy Jo Kim (shown) of design firm Shufflebrain to help illustrate how game-like content is helping community-oriented sites like eBay, Digg and Flickr stay sticky, and here's an abridged excerpt:

1. Collecting. Hoarding stuff is a fundamental instinct. That's why one of the first words to come out of a two-year-old's mouth is "Gimme."

2. Points. Earning points is a way to keep track of your nerd score. Points give users incentive to improve their standing and serve as a reward for new privileges, access or power. It's also a big motivation to compete for points when you find out someone has more than you.

3. Feedback. There are parallels between the gaming community and the Digg community. Like gaming, a reward system is used to keep people pecking away," says Digg VP of marketing Mike Maser. "One reason that Digg members are so passionate is because our site gives them a unique way to gain recognition. A user's contributions to the overall community are worthwhile, and it keeps people coming back for more."

4. Exchanges. Explicit and implicit exchanges, like taking turns in a chess match (explicit) or giving someone a virtual Facebook gift (implicit), encourage interactive behavior.

5. Customization. Letting your user have some control over preferences (ie. being able to personalize your MySpace page or Google homepage) increases their investment and creates barriers to exit. The more you let users try to exploit the system, the more interested they'll be in sticking around.

Kim is definitely on to something with this!

[Via Business 2.0, by way of Raph Koster's website]

Charles River Ventures (CRV), who's previously invested in Twitter and Raph Koster's Areae, along with Prism VentureWorks, investors in user product rating sites ExpoTV and RatePoint, have co-led a round of Series A funding raising $5.5 million for a brand-new project. It's the brainchild of Conduit Labs and its founder, Nabeel Hyatt (we read his blog, Brinking) who asks the question, "Why can't we do more together online?"

Hyatt is a veteran web entrepreneur previously of MIT Media Lab spin-off Ambient Devices, and was nominated in 2004 as one of the top 100 Innovators Under 30 by MIT Technology Review. He began Conduit as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Prism's Westwood, MA offices, and in an interview with Worlds in Motion, enthusiastically shared a few details on his top-secret social gaming world in development.

Conduit's project is aimed squarely at what Hyatt sees as a "gap" between MMOs and social virtual worlds. "Right now, virtual worlds and MMOs really fall into two categories. There’s what I call 3D social chat, like Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin -- these wonderful worlds that I spend time in -- but the primary interaction between you and others in worlds like these is really just chat," he explains. "All the games are actually single-player games; the social interaction is only chat. On the other end of the spectrum, MMOs have a lot of complex interactions -- intellectual, social, combat, raiding, and things that you can do with other people.They're built for a fairly hardcore audience, and there's a bunch of barriers to entry for producing and playing in that marketplace."

Hyatt's not ready to offer too many specific details, but did elaborate on how Conduit aims to bridge that gap: "We're trying to do something halfway in between that’s accessible on the web, that feels more like a website than having to enter into a game world, but it is still about social entertainment and playing games; it's very much a game that were building."

Conduit should have plenty of help there; the Conduit team has some gaming industry vets on board. Dan Ogles, Michael Sheidow and Daniel O'Brien, all served leading roles in the building of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Asheron's Call and the Lord of the Rings Online. "My favorite story about Guitar Hero is that it's still the only video game that's sold in Barnes and Noble," Hyatt says. "They don't even sell [PlayStation 2] in Barnes and Noble, but they sell Guitar Hero!"

He continues: "I think the team’s absolutely critical. I think probably every other day now over the last couple months, I see a new casual MMO or virtual world startup; it's been constant. And before I did it, I was at a VC firm and looked at this industry and what I saw was the same kind of dichotomy -- two types of startups. There're hardcore MMO gaming guys trying to make that experience more accessible, sort of like World of Warcraft meets the web. And the other side of the coin is a bunch of web guys who want to build a web site with virtual gifting and more gaming."

While Hyatt recognizes the value in both of those approaches, he adds, "I think they're missing the larger point – which is that there is no interaction on the web that is like a social game. I don’t mean a single-player game, which is based on a legacy of, really, only video games; it doesn't last hundreds of years. There're actually thousands of years of games that are primarily social activities like dancing, or bowling. And those are about you bonding with your friends, and there's nothing like that online right now. And I think the web and social networks provide a whole new medium to create something that’s never been seen before."

"In an offline world, we do all kinds of complex interactions aside from talking to one another. We play pool together, we bowl, we play tennis together -- all kinds of different stuff, and none of those normal social interactions like chatting and posting on bulletins and sending snail-mail has been transcribed into social networks, email and IM. All of that’s moved online, but what hasn't is the ability to do something with someone. To get a bunch of friends together on a Friday night, and go 'out' and do something."

So does that mean Conduit's project will not be a virtual world at all? On the contrary; "It is an immersive world," Hyatt explains. "The reason I made that distinction is mostly because when people think about game worlds, they think of something that feels like—typically, to play WoW or Club Penguin, you separate yourself from the rest of your online identity; suddenly you are a penguin, or an elf. The fact that you happen to be using a broadband connection is the only reason its similar with your other online experiences."

"We spend a lot of time building up our online identity," Hyatt acknowledges. "There’s something to be said for roleplaying – I ran [roleplaying group] One World By Night, which ended up launching in 15 countries with 8 chapters in Brazil alone -- so I certainly think there’s a place for roleplaying and assuming other identities, but whats really missing from that is what Facebook does for non-realtime interactions; it’s me and my friends, and I can see what they’ve been up to lately. What’s really missing is a Facebook that’s all about not asynchronous interactions, but synchronous interactions. Online games are all about you and a friend doing something right now. We think that a game is the way to build that next kind of social network."

What about revenues? "I think in the long-term vision of people who are gonna compete in this industry – the broad answer is that its always going to be a hybrid approach [of ad revenues and microtransactions]," Hyatt says. "For us, we're starting this company trying to reduce barriers between you and your friends having a good time online. And so to put a subscription fee, or a download, or a huge avatar creation process all seems the opposite of what we want to do. So it will be free, in the browser, seconds away from friends online playing together, but from there we’ll end up charging mostly through virtual goods, and some portions might be ad-based, but vitual goods and microtransations will be the core – it's people paying for the value they see in the game. Daniel James from Three Rings said something about subcriptions: 'If you're charging a subscription fee, you're either overcharging or undercharging every single one of your users.'"

And who is Conduit's project for? "In the long-term picture this is really about everyone that uses the web. But to try and make a product for everybody is to make a terrible product," Hyatt says. "If you look at the people who are really active online in social networks, that overlaps with their game playing, you're looking at late teens and early twenties -- basically, the Facebook crowd is where we'll be starting to focus."

It's a place to start, but Hyatt's aim is eventually to build the community from there. "The same way Facebook started with Harvard -- both geographically and socially distinct -- they focused on a small group, and built out from there. And we'll be focusing somewhat similarly on a small group of people; we feel like it will be fun for them to grab their friends and play online and then expand that way."

To that end, Hyatt is making the building process entirely transparent -- there'll be an ongoing blog at http://blog.conduitlabs.com, with regular updates and even podcasts available. And despite all the mystery shrouding Conduit's project now, it won't be long before we hear more details -- more team members will be announced, and Hyatt promises a product in less than six months.

[The following article by Neils Clark originally ran on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]

Following yesterday's opening day coverage, the second day of the State Of Play V academic conference in Singapore tackled issues like legal precedents in in-world property ownership and saw “Game Gods” from Second Life, There, and MUD creator Richard Bartle speak on building virtual worlds.

Refreshed from the previous night’s safari, games academics from the East and West again convened this morning for the SoP V in Singapore. The first panel of the day addressed the topic of Understanding Virtual Worlds Inhabitants, looking at the ways in which we can understand the gamers online.

“You’re going to arrive as a three-year-old,” said Thomas Malaby, Assoc. Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. The consensus among the panelists seemed to be that every game world today is unique, and that playing inside remains one of the few ways in which we can reach an informed understanding. Stanford’s Henrik Bennetsen said that, “It’s one of those things that’s hard to understand from the outside.” Even so, he later noted that the rewards are, “totally worth it.”

Also in the panel, Ian Lamont put the spotlight on how the popular press shapes many people’s thinking on games. “Their understanding will be shaped by the coverage in the news media,” he said. Many editors only have a couple hours of day, sometimes in which to research four or five different articles. Some journalists also “go for the low hanging fruit,” continued Lamont, provided by PR companies. As a result, there’s not much to counter the seemingly standard overgeneralization and sensationalism in the popular press.

Space, Place and Culture inside Virtual Worlds primarily flitted around the idea that locations and architecture can have a marked influence on how players act. “Architects structure spaces, and those in turn then structure us,” said Kevin Collins, a Law Prof a penchant for architecture at Indiana U. He and Eric Champion of the U. of Queensland looked at how space then creates culture, at times having an intense influence over our daily lives.

At lunch, Harvard University’s Charles Nesson discussed the use of gaming as an educational tool, most specifically using poker. He hinted on an idea that, while not new, is very compelling: games could be used to revolutionize the educational system. Nesson’s Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society has apparently been “inundated by requests,” from schools looking to join.

After lunch we looked at the Wealth of Virtual Nations. Panelists discussed the current legal precedents, and the stumbling blocks ahead of developers looking to make property ownership inside of virtual worlds more robust. Nick Abrahams of Australia’s Media and Telecommunications Group said that we have to “craft a bargain that is somehow fair.” And then there are cases like Bragg vs. Second Life, where a SL user is looking to reclaim his original property after having been pegged and banned for unfair land buying. Balancing these problems among many jurisdictions is difficult, and as with many new situations, Abrahams said that “you gather precedent wherever you can.” Countries have been, and will continue to learn law from one another.

In one of the real highlights to the conference, Judge Unggi Yoon again amazed the conference. Korea’s legal system is already in the process of passing laws to regulate the trade, sale and taxation of virtual goods. Their current plans are to implement a system wherein virtual properties are going to be considered “public,” which is to say real properties with regard to tax laws on transactions. Korea, however, won’t be regulating small trades between two people, which they are considering “private.” Yoon said that the system would be in place by the end of the year. This lead to a great deal of speculation: to what degree will the East lead regulation inside of online spaces?

The final session dealt with Building Virtual Worlds. The panel featured CEOs and Executives from Second Life, There.com, the Chinese counterpart to There and SL: HiPiHi, and gogofrog, a take on 3-D internet using the Flash engine. And Richard Bartle was there, too. Where these “Game Gods” primarily discussed the specifics of making virtual worlds work, on a number of levels, Bartle brought us back to the dawn of games programming. He walked us through the process of using punch-cards and databases and compilers to create the coding behind virtual worlds. When the process was finished, he then only needed “a little bit of imagination at the top.”

Today, he said, most people just sew together coding and make a database. Bartle looks forward to a point in time, a few years from now, when all that will be needed is that little bit of imagination at the top. “We don’t need to understand a combustion engine to drive a car,” he said, though most of us cannot imagine living without today’s vehicles. And yet his clear excitement was tempered with an apprehension. “I’m afraid that people are going to take away my toys,” he said. It does follow that when the real world endorses the journalists who propagate generalist and sensationalist images of gaming, some fears are warranted.

The problems, hurdles, and possibilities given game companies won’t be solved by ignoring research, beating the same themes or gameplay to death, or leaving the respective East or West well enough alone. The companies who make and take ground will show an earnest understanding and compassion for both the worlds that they create, and global audience which plays them.

Charles River Ventures is a firm with keen eyes on the virtual worlds, social gaming and social networking spaces -- in particular, with an eye on entrepreneurs seeking to bridge gaps and coordinate elements from all of these kinds of ventures into a single integrated product. One such company in which CRV has invested is Raph Koster's Areae, and successful real-time networking tool Twitter is another. Worlds in Motion recently spoke with Nabeel Hyatt on his Conduit Labs project, the latest startup to receive CRV's vote of confidence. We chatted with CRV's Susan Wu, who focuses specifically on working with these products (she also was special advisor to the first Virtual Goods Summit), and got further comment from her on bridging the gaps in the space that Hyatt mentioned earlier.

"The distinction between what Facebook and an MMO looks like is going to disappear," Wu says. "All social interaction online will be driven by game mechanics. My goal in doing these conferences and blogging about this subject and trying to find companies to invest in is, how do I bring these two segregated universes together? There are all these Web 2.0 conferences, and Web entrepreneurs basically talking amongst themselves in this insular environment, and I see the same thing in the gaming industry, which has always been a cottage industry and very segregated. I see so many different parallels going on in these two communities, and my goal is to bring them more closely together."

Wu elaborated on where these two key industries are failing to connect. "There're a lot of virtual gifting apps and lightweight casual games developing on Facebook. And I spoke with a lot of these Facebook developers and they're all trying to reinvent the virtual economy," she explains. "And there’s a limitless body of empirical data out there – it doesn’t make sense for Web 2.0 folks to invent it from scratch. It results in an inferior customer experience. There’s been virtual economies and mass market since Ultima Online; that’s 12 years of learning that these guys just aren’t picking up on. That sort of frustrates me."

So she zeroes in on those ventures she feels "get it." "I try to bridge this gap -- Raph gets it, and Conduit does too—I've seen 100 or so startups in the space in the last year or so, and as Nabeel said, there’s such a dichotomy in the two communities, and there are very few teams that have been able to merge both disciplines in immersive gaming environments."

How to start bringing these teams from different sides of the field together? "When I put together the Virtual Goods Summit, it would have been easy to populate all of the speakers and attendees from the gaming industry," she recalls. "There's a lot of established success in virtual goods there. But I made sure there was a panel around mainstream virtual gifting -- companies like SixApart and Dogster and all of the folks who are experimenting with virtual goods, and I wanted to put them in an environment with folks from places like Neopets and Nexon so they could have a real dialog about what's going on on both sides of the fence."

She continues: "One of the hallmarks of a successful Web company is -- if you look at the track record of the most successful companies that have stayed independent and sustainable, like eBay, Google or Amazon -- they have built platforms [which can] foster entrepreneurs. There are ecosystems that spawn innovation from the community members themselves, and Facebook is falling in with that too, with the new platform launch. Few gaming people understand this intuitively -- though, Xbox Live Arcade really fosters an entrepreneurial ecosystem, too. That's something Areae is trying to focus on – how to build an actual ecosystem and a real web platform for people to work in."

Wu elaborates further on the Conduit and Twitter investments on her blog, reality.org.

The Guardian has made an interesting future prediction -- that in the future, the number of avatars living in virtual worlds will eventually outnumber humans living in the real one. The projection, in an article by Victor Keegan, is based in Gartner research that says that over 80% of internet users will have avatars in about four years' time -- and most people have more than one virtual self.

Keegan says that despite the rough days Second Life's been having of late, the race is on to see which virtual world space (or spaces) will emerge the biggest; the article points to Entropia's new deal with the Beijing municipality to allow it to handle 7 million users simultaneously, as an example. As for Keegan, he's betting on Google Earth, which as he says, "recently added photographs of streets to its zoom-in model of the planet. It already has 250 million users who add content and interact with each other. It doesn't take a big leap of the imagination to envisage your avatar talking to friends and strangers in your own street in a few years' time."

[Via The Guardian]

The ever-expanding world of Nexon's MapleStory, which Worlds in Motion recently explored, has added two new towns: the mountain village of Mu Lung and the seaside Herb Town. The New Leaf City area, itself announced not too long ago, now has its own Free Market for players to buy and sell goods.

The Mu Lung area will also have a salon where players can customize their avatars' coifs with new haircuts, and brand-new monsters swarm the Herb Town area, ready to be slain. Finally, a new White Scroll item offers single-slot protection for a weapon or item.

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

Let's continue our trip into Millsberry,, General Mills' teen and 'tween-targeted virtual world.

A giant in multiplayer gaming in the East, Nexon’s accessible-to-all MMOs have garnered considerable success here in the US. Worlds in Motion recently visited the singular, stylish sidescrolling MapleStory world, and we have the upcoming American launch of the multiplayer racing game KartRider to look forward too, too. Already one of the top-selling online games in the world on the heels of its success in the Asian market with millions of users, rumor has it that we could see an open beta in America as soon as early October.

We asked Nexon America’s Min Kim about KartRider’s appeal. “I think it’s really a global type of product,” he explains. “It’s a racing game; a lot of people say the art style is ‘very Asian,’ but it’s really very universal. It also spans across various age groups. The thing about it is, a lot of people have grown up playing these console-style games. It’s definitely not hardcore; it’s more of a casual experience where people can socialize and race, and I don’t think they’ve been given that opportunity before.”

That traditional console-style gameplay combined with multiplayer elements is one of the things we noticed about MapleStory, whose 2D world is lush with the fervor of its community. We asked Kim what role that community element might play in KartRider. “The community factor drives all of our products,” Kim says. “That same element that drives MapleStory drives Kartrider. There’s no real single-player experience; you could play by yourself in MapleStory, but a lot of is creating social experiences.”

Building a Community
He continues, “I’m finding that these days, for a lot of the teenagers and people playing, it’s now a different experience when you are in the game, and visually in the same place with others. On top of that, what adds community to it is the competition and the customization -- the ability to be unique and create your virtual identity. So you can represent who you are and communicate that.”

MapleStory takes socialization seriously – one of the things we found on our trip inside was that there is even a system by which characters in the MapleStory world can get married. “We thought our players really needed that,” says Kim. “One player has met her real-life husband on MapleStory; there are a lot of people finding people they have things in common with, they’re getting closer relationships. Of course, not everyone that gets a MapleStory marriage is in love, but it’s a fun type of way to be close within the game.”

A Unique Look
When we think of virtual worlds these days, everybody thinks 3D – but MapleStory distinguishes itself through brightly-colored and uniquely designed 2D graphics for that console-style feel Kim refers to. “One reason MapleStory was successful is, when it first came out, it was at a time when lots of South Korean games were going 3D,” he recalls. “It’s not about pushing the graphics to the edge. They found that out a few years ago; we didn’t want it to look like everything else. When MapleStory came out, we wanted to make it different and turned it into a 2D game, and that was refreshing when everything else was 3D.

But what about KartRider? Kim explained how an accessible look helps make some of Nexon’s biggest games more appealing to a broader market. “KartRider is more like cel-rendered 3D racing, but the art style is very crisp and clean and inviting for both genders, and a lot of girls play it in Korea, too,” he says. MapleStory and KartRider both lend to that; they’re more skewed female than online games in the past. The demographics are something like 30-70, 20-80 female-male. There’re also a lot of girls playing MapleStory; I’m amazed to see that. Because the gaming market in the states is different than the Korean market, and there’s a new generation of gamers, things are balancing; gaming is second nature to the new generation.”

Bringing in the Girls
How to continue this trend toward balancing the audience and attracting more female players? “One of the things is, we try to make as many points of socialization as possible and we’re constantly figuring out how to make it easier to communicate with each other,” Kim explains. “I think when we make games it depends on the genre, but with games like MapleStory and KartRider, we’re trying to net as many people as possible, so we concentrate on fun and community and that social factor -- and we definitely want to get both sexes involved. Part of that is, also, if you have girls in the game, the boys are gonna wanna play too.”

Are there specifics involved in getting girls in the game? “I don’t think we ever try to make a game boy or girl-centric, but I think there are fun features that lend themselves to both genders,” Kim says. “Everyone can appreciate the type of games we make. It’s the genre as well; whether or not we think it is female-centric to begin with, certain games are more male centric – for example, if we open a soccer game, we know it will be more guys than girls, but for MapleStory and KartRider, I think we knew there would be a lot of females playing. In Korea we heavily marketed to the female audience.”

Elaborating on the universal appeal, Kim pegs one of the biggest trends in online multiplayer gaming and online social worlds. “Also, it is a casual game – but these are gamers that don’t know they’re gamers,” he says, “so there are girls in there who wouldn’t classify themselves as gamers but are on there for hours. When MapleStory came out, we ran a poll asking how many MMOs the users had played in the past. I can’t remember the specifics, but it was like only one third had played one, a third had played two or more, but a third had never played an MMO before, or even knew what an MMO was. So it was that a lot of people were bringing their friends in.”

Getting Local
With so many localized versions of MapleStory, a lot of specifics need to be customized. How will KartRider’s appeal be tailored to the US market? “Every game is different, but what we are learning in MapleStory is that people here really like customization, so we will try to create content that works for the US market,” Kim explains. “The wedding system in MapleStory was designed in our LA office, because we wanted to make a wedding system that would make sense in the Western audience. They had an Asian version that we tweaked. So as we release KartRider in the states, it is more of a universal product – it’s just racing with cartoons. But as we roll things out and add more cars, we might try to look at the market and see what fits better.”

One way that MapleStory gets audience-specific is with holidays and events. “If you look in MapleStory during Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas, there are events they wouldn’t be running in Korea and vice versa, that are culturally centered. We will try to run events in the game that speak to the local audience.”

Making it Big in the Market
Nexon’s also had big success with the multiplayer dance-off Audition; it’s one of the most successful online games in the world, holding the number two slot in China, and it’s playable in the States right now. We asked Kim to explain Nexon’s magic touch, and how working in the Eastern market first might provide beneficial experiences for the North American market. One thing Kim says has been helpful is getting experiences with microtransactions – a new revenue model for many current online games in the West, but something Nexon’s games have been working with since the late nineties. “It’s not something you can just create a formula for,” he says. “We had the benefit of running a lot of products early on, and taking those learnings and translating them into better gaming experiences.”

“We’ve definitely had the benefit of time, as well as a great player base, that we’ve learned a lot from,” he adds. “Not just from game to game, but through the life of the game by listening to what the customer is looking for, so a lot has changed from the days that we opened them. The other difference, I think, between us and others is that I think a lot of people want to do this whole microtransactions-and-free-to-play thing, and these business models – we’ve had the benefit of time to figure out how to do this, but many people develop games they think will be fun, but they don’t keep the business model in mind, or they don’t understand the business model. That’s gotten a few companies in trouble in Korea. And a lot of companies do that, and they will continue to do that – have a game concept that at the end of the day, they’re like, ‘how do I make money off this?’”

Securing distribution deals for pre-paid cards also works very well in terms of monetizing the game content and increasing accessibility. “We’ll be getting very wide distribution for the prepaid cards,” Kim says. “When we first launched the product, everyone needed a credit card to fully enjoy the content. What that did is it basically curbed potential players who wanted customizability, because more than half were 13 to early 20s, so without that payment vehicle they couldn’t fully participate.”

Fun at the Core
But for Kim, the business model is step two. “In terms of our products doing well, it’s that our games are very fun, and I think that’s the core to all games that are going to be successful in terms of the business model we’re in,” he says. “It’s one of the most competitive markets out there, because we’re selling free. So unless your game is good, nobody’s going to play it. There are a lot of free games, so your game really has to be very good. And once the game concept is good, then you build the business model around it. So those business models never took off because the games weren’t fun. We all understand we're working with a hit-driven market and we're fortunate. I think in Korea, there are only four products that have broken the 200,000 concurrent user level. Three of those games are ours.”

Nexon also stays successful by balancing the expertise of experience with the input of the users – teams check the user forums regularly to take a pulse on player experience. How do they keep them engaged? “A lot of thought is put into how we can make this better for the players,” Kim says. “A lot of the items in-game are very creative, so even in our commercialization we have an in game store where a player can sell items to other players in the game. Most games have trade between users, but we found players wanted to open a store -- which is fun for them -- and price items in the store, and facilitate the process. Little things like that -- I think we inspect our game and say, ‘how do we make this easier to do?’”

Looking Ahead
Nexon’s games also keep things fresh with new content introduced constantly, and KartRider will follow the same pattern. “I think within the open beta there will be different releases,” he says. “We’ll start, for example, with a fixed number of maps and then as time progresses, we’ll add new maps. All our games patch monthly, and KartRider will patch even more frequently than that, maybe every two weeks or potentially even weekly. So there will be new content for players; that’s a critical thing for a business model. We say that our business is more like a soap opera, versus a movie release. Where a console product makes all its money in the first few weeks and a huge launch, our games last 3-7 years -- so who will play that long unless you’re updating content?”

There are more announcements just on the horizon for Nexon – keep your eyes peeled for KartRider, and stay tuned to the upcoming DigitalLife event in New York on September 27th for some more news. Until then, the residents of Nexon’s long-lived game suite are looking forward to the events of the holiday season, new every year -- and keeping them coming back.

A neat new BrandWeek article talks about major brands' efforts to move into the online social networking and virtual worlds space, and why some have succeeded -- along with why others have failed. It mentions appeal for niche audiences and perks for invested members -- using BarbieGirls as an example, with content that becomes accessible with the purchase of the BarbieGirls' MP3 player. From the article:

With brands ranging from cars to tequila to retail setting up community hubs, The Coke Show joins a growing list of cautionary tales, including Wal-Mart's ill-fated social network The Hub and Anheuser-Busch's Bud.tv, showing it is far from easy to tap the same kind of sharing vibe that's fueled the rise of MySpace, YouTube and Facebook.

Those that have succeeded either tap into the existing passionate audience of a niche brand or offer some functionality that cannot be found already on popular social media sites.

"There's been a me-tooism on the social-networking front of 'I need to create a MySpace of my brand,'" said Pete Blackshaw, CMO at Nielsen BuzzMetrics. "Every brand needs to do some element of it, but do they need to go all out? It's not clear."

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

This week, we spent time in Millsberry, eating a balanced diet and doing our civic duty in General Mills' the teen and 'tween-targeted virtual world. Here's our conclusion!

Over at Adrian Crook's Free To Play blog, there's a great new piece up analyzing how traditional retail models are (and will continue to be) affected by the rise of a Club Penguin generation. Here's an excerpt from the article, inspired when Crook noticed on a family trip that his young cousins were playing online mixed-model games more than retail:

What does this say about where the North American PC market is headed?

Based on overwhelming anecdotal evidence, it’s clear to me that the younger set (under 20) is embracing free to play and virtual goods games because the budget and engagement model is tailored made for for them. And as the younger set is further weened on the same virtual goods business model that’s already dominating Asia, retail only pay-to-play PC games will be ignored en masse.

In some respects, North American companies have begun adjusting to the F2P/virtual goods wave. With gifting sites like Facebook and HotorNot.com, microtransaction services like Xbox Live and casual MMOGs like Puzzle Pirates, one might argue that we’re at least keeping up with the pack in this emerging space.

But what are traditional North American game publishers (EA, Activision, etc) doing to adjust to this new, non-retail, online-centric business model? Are they seeding their own internal virtual goods projects? Building virtual goods into their existing or upcoming products? Acquiring early movers in the space?

At least right now, the answer appears to be “none of the above”.

Crook notes that the traditional North American "partner and acquire" approach just can't work in this market, and that's a good point -- can you imagine how much it would cost an American company(assuming it's possible to price such a transaction at all) to buy one of the Asian giants of the virtual goods space?

GigaOM's Wagner James Au recently visited Beijing, where he spent some time with HiPiHi, the "Chinese Second Life" we heard about somewhat recently. From his detailed impressions:

For a Second Life user, the most striking thing about HiPiHi is how similar its interface is – reverse-engineered is probably the more accurate term. (This despite the fact that Second Life’s confusing user interface is easily its weakest selling point.) Xu said he conceived of the basic idea before even knowing about Second Life, but it’s abundantly clear he and his team have modeled a lot of HiPiHi on it. Like Second Life, content is streamed from the networked HiPiHi servers — which comprise the world — to users’ computers.

Residents can shape their environment with a library of prefab, customizable artifacts (furniture, homes, etc.), or for the more ambitious, in an atomistic creation system that very much resembles Second Life’s tool chest. (Albeit without a scripting system, though Xu’s team promised one will be available in October, when HiPiHi is slated to be launched) The 16,000 or so beta users/testers are drawn from the Chinese regions, but Xu said English and Japanese versions will launch later this year.

A key distinguishing feature of HiPiHi, Au says, is that subscribers retain the underlying IP rights to all of their in-world creations, which would separate it from all other MMOs thus far. According to Au, HiPiHi founder Xu Hui is working with Creative Commons China to create a CC-licensing system for user creations in time for HiPiHi’s commercial launch.

What about the most obvious questions we've had about HiPiHi -- how will it deal with China's heavy-censorship government? Au explains:

Xu said cybersex in HiPiHi will be OK, as long as it’s done in private; political talk on the other hand, will be prohibited. To do this, Xu will run user chat through a keyword-filtering system derived from China’s Great Firewall. Zhang said the beta users are already voluntarily watching what they say.

“It’s self-censorship,” he offered. “They know what kind of words will be very dangerous.” But while you can’t type, for example, “Falun Gong” in chat, you’ll probably be able to game the filter by creatively misspelling the banned meditation sect. And the filter, the HiPiHi team acknowledged, won’t be able to block non-textual acts of dissent — say, protesters wearing user-made Falun Gong T-shirts.

[Via GigaOM]

A mysterious blog, "Confessions of an Ex-Arena.Net Employee" -- sniffed out by the folks at WarCry -- has set tongues wagging. Arena.Net is responsible for the popular MMO Guild Wars, which only charges for the game itself and is free-to-play thereafter. Gold-farming or the exchange of real-world money for in-game items or gains is a ban-able offense -- but the self-styled ex-employee is claiming that the folks behind the scenes are actually working with the gold farmers to profit secretly from those sales.

There's no way of knowing whether the ex-employee is for real, but as the folks at Metaversed point out, it raises the issue of security in virtual worlds administration. Users with connections on the inside or a way of accessing employee information could be devastating to a virtual economy, especially if security is not strictly ensured at every level. To that end, Steven Davis of security software developer SecurePlay responded at his PlayNoEvil news site by highlighting five major ways in which he feels virtual economies might be leaving themselves open to exploitation (as paraphrased here from Metaversed):

1. Companies whose model involves profit from sign-ups could possibly benefit by mass-banning users for gold farming related offenses.
2. Employees at any level may collude with gold farming companies. (It's happened before.) Securing access privileges, auditing, and staff management are critical.
3. Larger gold farming companies could target smaller ones for banning with a little help from game company employees to eliminate competition.
4. A game company could give a "head's up" to preferred gold farming companies about upcoming mass bannings. The farmers can switch accounts and lay low for a bit and stay in business while the game company looks great in public.
5 Employees know the technical vulnerabilities of the system better than anyone, and can advise select individuals of how to best exploit the system.

[Via Metaversed]

Acclaim has announced that its free-to-play fantasy MMO, 2Moons (which recently entered open beta) is now opening its virtual item shop. In a press release received by Worlds in Motion, Acclaim says it's signed up roughly half a million users who will now be able to use Acclaim Coins to purchase virtual goods and gameplay enhancements.

The store adds special items like a "Traveler's Backpack" that gives a player 50 more inventory slots, as well as potions, boosters, clothing and other character customizations. Acclaim says it plans to update the shop in the future with more new items like rideable mounts, guild-wide special effects, and more special outfits.

Acclaim's also kicking off the new store launch with "2Moons Killer Events” to give players a chance to earn double experience points to quickly level up and enter random drawings to win special prizes such as gaming hardware, enhanced weapons, and Acclaim Coins packages that can be used in any Acclaim game.

“2Moons has been a fantastic project that’s already proved Acclaim’s free-to-play model is what gamers all around the world have been waiting for. The number one request we got from the gamers who have been testing the game was to offer them more customization, so the item store will immediately help there,” said David Perry, director of the game.

A new post on Cisco Systems' Virtual Worlds blog identifies the key motivations for online gaming behavior in order to highlight how they can be used for collaborative professional environments. It's a slightly different approach than Shufflebrain's Amy Jo Kim took when she laid out her "Five Commandments of Gaming" (Collecting, Points, Feedback, Exchanges and Customizations). Cisco's list, and comments, are in this following excerpt:

1) Achievement - provides goals, challenge, reward, analysis of complex problems, and status
2) Competition - provides challenge, success, reputation, ego and status
3) Socialization - provides a way to help others, create friendships/relationships, collaboration, group-wide enthusiasm for a task, communication channels
4) Exploration - allows discovery of new information/ideas, distraction and escapism
5) Immersion - allows customization of the user or environment, allows personalized style

When we look at most corporate collaboration environments, they often lack many of these elements. The problem is that adding many of these elements are often deemed to potentially invade privacy or require too much input from end-users that may not feel properly motivated to participate.

So the challenge is finding creative ways to incorporate motivational factors into our Collaborative Environments such that users feel a need to engage with them and clearly understand the benefit they get (and the company gets) from their participation.

[Via Clickable Culture]

Not so keyboard-savvy? Fear not. Apparently, David Stubbs and his team, called WiiCade, are working on enabling the Nintendo Wii's motion-controlled remote to work in simple multiplayer Flash games piped through the Wii's Internet Channel. Playing online with motion control? It's possible! Clickable Culture's Tony Walsh (CC's definitely another "blog to watch," by the way) got a little hands-on:

David demonstrated a couple of simple multi-player Flash games, both of which performed pretty well (a bit of control-lag noticeable), considering how severely the Wii's processing power is tapped--the little white console is not only running the Opera browser, but that browser is running Flash, and some sort of Java-enabled layer through which Wiimote signals are accepted and passed back into Flash. Probably I'm butchering the explanation--all I really care about is that Wiimote-controlled Flash games are now easier for anyone to create, thanks to the WiiCade team.

So it sounds like there are still strides to be made in the tech, but imagine a console-based online world that could be navigated via motion control? Something simple like Sherwood Dungeon, with its hack-and-slash swordfighting, could be a lot of fun this way!

[Via Clickable Culture]

At GDC China, Netease (Journey to the West)project manager and game producer Xiaojun Hui led a discussion called "Virtual Worlds Construction," which focused on how to embody Chinese culture and atmosphere through virtual worlds, and how traditional cultural influences shape the way the Chinese play online.

Highlighting the difference between online games and stand-alone games, Hui noted that online gamers spend much more time than standalone on a given game. The best metric for designing virtual worlds, he said, is the concept of time variance, as the MMO experience changes over time.

Virtual worlds are also more complex, he said, owing in large part to the interaction among multiple users. According to Hui, the most important factor is survival of the users.

When constructing virtual worlds, Hui advised considering some issues that have nothing to do with games -- billing, social norms and tax rate, in addition to how to solve the problems of disadvantaged players and how to design incentives for users.

"Virtual worlds are not games," Hui said. "Trying to apply game design principles doesn't work - [you] have to look at the real world for paradigms."

Hui discussed the importance of understanding users' needs, and the need to understand why they play. In his opinion, people go into virtual worlds because their real lives are "empty" -- in those cases, what's the source? Speaking of the Chinese market, Hui believes that after the Chinese economy opened up in the 1980s, the resulting economic inequality left people feeling unsatisfied. And he thinks there's a resulting spiritual emptiness, too.

"Why do you go on vacation to the mountain regions, or to Tibet? It's so you can regain that feeling of fulfillment in life," he noted, adding mirthfully, "When you go to Tibet you don't see a lot at all - no wife, no house, no kids - you forget about all those troublesome things!"

Hui believes, then, that empty people can be enriched by following Buddhist concepts to help them realize their needs in the virtual world. He even posited whether virtual worlds could be used to solve Chinese employment problems, since users feel fulfilled by completing virtual tasks.

Virtual worlds can be socially gratifying to the Chinese, Hui noted, because of the influence of traditional culture. "Chinese are keen on human relations," he said. "The minute someone starts playing on a server, the first thing they do is form this inner circle. So playing is joyful to us because we are playing with real people."

[The preceding article originally ran on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]

Habbo.cn, the Chinese Habbo, has shut down, according to the following message on its site:

Dear visitors:
unfortunately we have some bad news for you: since August 24, 2007 Habbo.cn has been closed at least temporarily, and possibly for a long time. :( Our Habbo Staff is currently working hard to find a way to continue the service in the future - you will be informed about the situation as soon as we know. We are really sorry about this. Meanwhile you can choose to visit other Habbo services all over the world.

[Via billsdue]

Console video gamers are demanding the same kind of dynamic, connected online interaction that's taking off all around the PC world; Microsoft's implementation of Xbox Live Arcade for its 360 console turned out to be a stroke of genius, letting gamers create profiles, share leaderboards and make their achievements visible to everyone, in addition to enabling them to download demos and play multiplayer gaming. As the Xbox 360's major competitor, Sony's upped the ante with PlayStation Home, which envisions the console gamer in a full-scale virtual world, avatar and all, and in sneak peeks shown off at recent gaming conventions, promises to allow socialization as well as dynamic 3D representations of all of the essential features of connected gaming, all against the backdrop of a fleshed-out virtual world.

PlayStation Home began beta-testing this summer, shrouded in secrecy; though Sony has showed demonstrations of Home, few journalists have gotten up-close-and-personal with it, and what demonstrations were given have historically been tightly controlled. But recently, game news mecca IGN got to chat up an anonymous mole who's been participating in the beta testing, and that informant dished tons of dirt on how Home is progressing -- and how it's not.

First, the mole tells IGN that Home is currently still limited to the four areas Sony showed at last year's GDC: The user's apartment, of which there is still only one layout available; the lobby, which is apparently "quite large," with places to sit and chat and screens to watch; the movie theater, where users can see game and movie trailers on 10 different screens (at present), and the game room -- according to the mole, the most popular room, with 6 pool tables, 4 bowling lanes and arcade machines.

Sony had promised that gameplay and socialization could connect seamlessly; users could invite one another in the game by way of pop-up invitations from friends. However, this feature is apparently not developing according to plan; the mole tells IGN: "This feature has not been implemented yet. None of the new features or areas outlined at E3 have made it into the beta. None. There is no support for in-home parties."

What about the avatars? Home's look is on the cutting edge of next-gen graphic vividity, so it should be interesting to see how individual looks roll out. The mole says clothing and hair selection are still limited, but that face creation is highly detailed, with the entire facial structure fully customizable -- the way he describes it, it sounds similar to what we found when we visited Entropia.

The mole also found that you can't yet play back hard drive content like music and video in your apartment as Sony'd projected, either -- "You are restricted to pre-set photos for picture frames. The ability to play back video and audio of any type has also not yet been included. TVs or Stereos do not appear in the list of available types of furniture," the mysterious informant said.

There's also no "trophy room," the Home equivalent of an achievement display that had been promised, where titles users play would generate awards that pop up inside it.

Just about everything else that appeared in the GDC demonstration is available in Home now, though, reports the mole to IGN -- "This includes arcade games, bowling, pool, furniture placement, character customization, etc. The features that are in home do work well. All the games are fun to play, and promote communication. Placing furniture is relatively painless and there is a good assortment of furniture to choose from. The physics work as promised."

Communication tools are also good, it seems, supporting both Bluetooth voice headsets and keyboard, with a voice volume that, quite pragmatically, depends on how close your avatar is to the speaker's.

And the informant's overall rating? Despite the issues the mole cited where Home still seems to be lacking, the dirt-disher likes it overall. "Home works," he told IGN. "What I mean by that is it's easy to go in and socialize and have a fun time doing it. People generally have a good time. It has a very open atmosphere, so you can pretty much walk up to anyone and start chatting with them. I've made friends in Home that I play online games such as Resistance or MotorStorm with. The Home beta has left me very excited about the final product, as it should be even more enjoyable when everyone I know has access to it."

[Via IGN]

Recently, we reported that the Korean Software Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA), aiming to pave the way for Korean MMOs to enter the global market, had slated six new MMOs for the second half of this year, all to be available on their Game&Game global platform. According to a press release received by Worlds in Motion, the first in this series, the anime-styled fantasy MMORPG Pi Story, is now about to kick off its closed beta on August 31st.

The announcement was made by Pi Story's developer, NCONY, a team comprised of developers, marketers and operations managers with backgrounds in MMOs like Ragnarok, Lineage, and Silkroad Online, which have proven Korean games can find a loyal home among American audiences. Pi Story is the team's first effort, and it's recently finished its 3rd closed beta test in Korea.

"We wanted to target a time that was convenient for game users in Europe and North America," explained Tom Suh, communications manager for NCONY Enterprise. "We hope that this closed beta test will allow us to determine what our players want, and to make changes to accommodate their wishes and truly localize our game product for the global market."

The closed beta test will run from August 31st to September 5th, from 6 P.M. to 7 A.M. GMT.

Next-gen console game and virtual world development company Trilogy Studios has announced it has raised $3.2 million in its latest round of independent equity funding. This new round comes on the heels of a "significant" investment in its virtual worlds endeavors from Chichen Itza Ventures, the lead investor in There.com producer Makena Technologies.

Trilogy and There.com have enjoyed a long-term working relationship, partnering up to build MTVN's Virtual Pimp My Ride (a collaboration it recently reaffirmed) on There.com's technology, and now Makena CEO and There.com producer Michael Wilson will join Trilogy's board of directors.

The partnership aims to merge the spheres of online social worlds with gaming, in large part to enable media companies to monetize their brands in online worlds through avenues like microtransactions, sponsorship and advertising. Trilogy says it will allocate the funds to expand the company's virtual world and casual MMO business.

Trilogy was originally founded in late 2005 by former Electronic Arts Los Angeles executives Rick Giolito and Mark Skaggs, along with former Vivendi Universal executive vice president Michael Pole. Worlds in Motion talked with Michael Wilson about the partnership and what There.com can learn from gaming vets.

"Virtual worlds are amazing social platforms; that’s what we built our virtual world about. The things we're known for -- PG-13, IP protection, and how all PCs can run There -- were all things designed to make the platform available socially to more people," he explains. "The thing is that in virtual worlds, just as in real life, people look for entertainment. Just standing around socializing -- there’s more to life than that. You go to movies, watch TV, entertain, play games, go to school, et cetera. We’ve been trying to bring a lot of that to our platform, because we think that’s important. It's the reason we partnered with MTV – they certainly know how to get a lot of people to spend time in front of the TV!"

So how will Trilogy help? "We look at their sensibilities, and ask how we can bring that to our platform. We're coming out and saying that the skills that the game industry has been honing for 20 years, we need them in these social virtual worlds. The fact we’re embracing it so much is important," Wilson says.

Wilson said that the first project the partnership will tackle is improving the worlds There.com has built for MTV. "We’re going to look at bringing “player compulsion loops” to the table," Wilson said.

Compulsion loops? "I’m going to point at World of Warcraft, because everybody knows they're really good at this," Wilson explains. "We study them all the time, because they do such a good job. There is something in their platform that compels you to go and do stuff; you want to do it, and keep doing it. Eight million people do that for World of Warcraft. So this whole compulsion element with the whole design of gameplay is part of a 'secret sauce' to make these worlds successful."

He elaborates: "Giving people interesting things to do, achieving status, being able to display that status, whether that's with exclusive merchandise or, say, a dog that nobody else can get. These are the sorts of things you can engineer to make the world more interesting and get people interested in spending time there; that’s where compulsion comes from.It's a great adjunct to the social nature of the world; you’ve got people meeting each other and now 'how good am I' at various parts of this game, at making clothes or holding events, becomes a way to have your own status to start conversation."

Since many people have historically seen the world of game design and internet socialization as being related but disparate, what's it like to work together now? "It’s great because they come from a completely different side of the world; they focus very much on art and gameplay and it’s really a lot of fun," Wilson says. "The cool thing is that, when we started getting art assets from them for Pimp My Ride, they were so tight, and good, because they know that the gameworld is very demanding. So it’s a great thing, and for them, I think they like hanging out with us because we’re MMO-plus-user-generated content."

He adds: "We take our partners very seriously. We try to do fewer quality relationships than many non-quality relationships."

A rather sensationalized editorial in the Shanghai Daily calls for a governmental ban and a player boycott on all unmarked virtual transactions, to stop player theft by "black hats" and "crackers" who steal virtual goods or otherwise disrupt online economies. "This virtual thievery is very real and does not bode well for the future of the young robbers who are plunged into online larceny," the article says, continuing:

Young men who should have been in college or even schools are hired to play online games at least 12 hours a day, in order to collect equipment, which the workshop bosses then would sell domestically or overseas.

There are no minimum wages, hardly any days off and no real beds for these online gameslaves. Overnight steamed rice is their daily fare.

Numb and dull in real life, over-excited in virtual fights, who could make better slaves for this postmodern industry, whose motto is to turn persons into batteries for the matrix, to squeeze the real world for the sake of the virtual one?

Government and society should take effective measures to restrain the online game industry. A good idea might well be to ban the transactions for virtual items through those e-shopping Websites.

Gameslaves? Numb and dull? Ouch.

Over at Gamasutra's job listings, it looks like a new San Francisco startup is hiring a game designer to build a new MMO. The company, ProductCore, describes themselves as "kid-friendly," and specify they're looking to make an "addictive casual" game. Wonder what it'll be like?

Chinese developer Red Mushroom apparently also has its own virtual world with a retail toy tie-in, just like Webkins, Be-Bratz or BarbieGirls. BaoBao-BengBeng integrates a virtual world with its own microtransactions system -- while the game is free to play without a purchase, a feature code that comes with the plush toy and purchase-able items within the game provide additional content.

The animals available are all enormously cute, if a bit strange -- there's a policeman dog, a Hawaiian panda, a baby chicken who's apparently into bowling, a rapping lizard and a telekinetic goat, to name a few.

[CORRECTION: The article originally stated that the toys use a USB key or require a code to access the world; we've received word that all retail purchases are optional.]

[Via Ypulse]

Independent game studio Last Straw Productions announced keynote speakers for both days of the Indie MMO Game Developers Conference 2.0, which aims to provide content, community and contacts for artists, designers, programmers, and Indie entrepreneurs.

The Indie-themed keynote speaker on March 29th is "Indie Evangelist" Jay Moore. Previously, Jay was director of business development at online tool developer and game publisher GarageGames, where, among other things, he launched IndieGamesCon and worked to establish Torque as the game engine platform of choice for independent game developers.

The MMOG Design-themed keynote speaker on March 30th is industry guru and "founding father" of virtual worlds Dr. Richard Bartle, co-writer of the first MUD in 1978 and author of the 2003 book Designing Virtual Worlds, now an industry consultant and a professor of computer game design at the University of Essex, UK.

“IMGDC is honored to have such renowned industry professionals as keynote speakers. It doesn’t get much better than this!" Says IMGDC founder and director Jonathon Stevens states. "IMGDC 2.0 is going to be an incredible conference building on the passion and excitement we saw last year. Last year, we got you excited, this year you’ll leave IMGDC with a passion and love for an industry that desperately needs it!”

IMGDC will be held March 29th – 30th, 2008 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

Let's investigate Dungeon Runners, the new MMO from NCSoft that brings a lighthearted twist to classic genre conventions. We'll start with an overview!

MTV's annual Video Music Awards, held this year on September 9th, are a huge event for the network, and this year they're taking the event to as many platforms as possible -- for example, simulcast on mobile phones with text message voting, and performances and polls online.

Of course, vMTV's getting in on the action, too -- MTV will create a virtual world specifically for the VMAs, available for free download from its VMA website. The world will recreate the various areas of the Palms Hotel's Fantasy Suites, including the basketball themed "Hardwood" suite, the glammed out "Pink Suite"and the crown jewel of the Palms, the incredible "Sky Villa," and MTV says it'll feature celebrity guests and in-world events in a week-long party leading up to the big show.

Unype says on its blog that its Unype Facebook application "lets Facebook users roam around inside Google Earth and see/interact with each other."

According to the blog, the free, no-download, cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) app gets added into Facebook by users who click a button to enter Google Earth and "see other Facebook users as avatars moving around." Users also have the option to specify their Skype ID to voice-chat with other users inside Google Earth.

"We believe integration of social networks and virtual/parallel worlds will enable us to move from clicking on links/looking at text pages and clicking on more links, to ‘actually’ moving around in a 3D space and meeting other users in a much more natural way, just like we do in the ‘real’ world," Unype says.

Unype has apparently also developed Alice-brained chat bots that can live inside Google Earth, interacting with users and recording your messages while you're away. "The brain is completely programmable by a simple text editor and a little knowledge of AIML so you can customize it to say exactly what you would like it to say," Unype adds.

The avatar situation is still apparently in the early stages, but it'll be interesting to see how a marriage between Google Earth and Facebook might develop!

[Via Business and Games Blog]