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.”