Technology-focused research organization Yankee Group has released a report titled "Wither Second Life?" Examining the impact of the slowing rate of growth for Linden Labs' virtual world, which has waned since its peak in October 2006. The report also found that user engagement with Second Life has "leveled off" at 12 minutes per month, contrasting those figures with the steady increases seen by sites like MySpace and Facebook. As to the latter, Yankee Group pegs the average time spent per user at 186 minutes per month, a 24 percent increase over the last six months.

"The hype surrounding Second Life doesn’t match its actual marketplace impact," says the report, attributing the stagnation to Second Life's "PC-centric approach in an increasingly mobile world."

“All is not lost with virtual worlds,” said Christopher Collins, senior analyst in Yankee Group’s Consumer Research group. “However, for virtual worlds and metaverses to achieve greater potential in the marketplace and grow beyond early adopters, the experience must be untethered to meet the needs of the 'Anywhere Consumer.' Companies that provide remote access—through mobile devices or other means—to their web experience will have a greater impact than PC-centric companies.”

According to Linden Lab's official blog, Second Life's physics engine is at last getting a tune-up, after a couple years' unfulfilled promises.

Tony Walsh's Clickable Culture blog has plenty of excellent detail on the change - Second Life has been running on the Havok 1 physics engine since 2003, and it will now be updated to run on the more recent Havok 4 engine, improving the performance and capabilities of the virtual world.

The Havok 4-powered Second Life is currently in public beta. From Linden Lab's blog:

"This project is all about improving sim stability and reliability, reducing lag in the physics engine, and fixing some bugs that could not be fixed under Havok1. In other words, there are no new features in the Havok4 project, despite the fact that there has been significant work done 'under the hood'".

Among some of the improvements Linden hopes to see from the engine upgrade are reduced simulator crashes, less lag, stacked objects that behave dynamically (reacting when supporting objects are removed) and improved management of how in-world people and objects react when they collide.

There are still some bugs, according to the blog, but once the physics engine completes beta testing and rolls out across the grid, Linden will presumably begin actual work on Havok 4 features. the heels of frequent snarking about Second Life being "over the hill," it's expected that this facelift will help it stay current.

Beijing-based virtual worlds developer UOneNet has a new virtual world in the works called uWorld, planned for an early 2008 launch, with alpha testing to begin in December of this year. The company's founder Eric Ye, was a former software architect at IBM and has a Masters degree in engineering from the University of Southern California The company says uWorld users will be able to purchase virtual real estate, start businesses, create social circles and make and sell virtual items. These features would make it the second full-scale virtual world announced in China after HiPiHi, so it's assumed the two will be competitors.

There are already 3D navigable environments in the Chinese market, but UOneNet calls them mainly 3D storefronts for virtual items, planning to differentiate itself by a more holistic approach. It also says it's prioritizing stability by using its own proprietary UniG technology for its back end.

Like HiPiHi, uWorld will focus on the Chinese market and culture by highlighting in-game tutorials and content creation tools. UOneNet cited focus groups with Chinese users of Second Life, and found that those users were disinterested in the open world format, which left them wanting to know what they were supposed to do.

Explained Ye, "To adapt to Chinese Internet users in our product design, we put more into in-world tutorials and examples to guide users, also help them form social and economic circles. We give them a sense of achievement when they accomplish something. Chinese users are creative but many are not technology savvy.” uWorld is also being designed with a softer color palate, which it hopes is more in line with the taste of the Chinese culture.

Currently, UOneNet has 60 employees and is operating with a mixture of angel and venture funding.

[Via Redline China]

Big-Bit Australia, which bills itself as a "virtual properties full service solutions provider," has announced that Wusic, its Internet-to-phone service, will now enable users of virtual worlds to make phone calls from within virtual worlds and business networks. The service is also designed to enable promotional and advertising campaigns to reach these consumers cia a click-to-call service.

Users within virtual worlds can also connect calls to those currently not logged in. It extends the communication capabilities for virtual world users, to be sure, but reading between the lines, Big-Bit makes it sound almost like the network will enable in-world telemarketing. On the flip side, it could also provide a way for users of business virtual worlds to connect with their colleagues, or to enable a real voice presence in in-world stores, sales or tech support desks. The Wusic network already connects globally with its system for initiating calls and tracking billing records.

Big-Bit offers strategic advice, construction, marketing, public relations and events services to companies seeking to establish footholds in virtual worlds such as Second Life and other newly emerging worlds. Wusic's newly released APIs allow interconnectivity with social networks like Generation Q and Facebook, and are now extending their capabilities into full-scale 3D online worlds.

Specifically, the company says virtual worlds companies already established "will be able to receive voice calls and covert leads which would otherwise have been lost if not for the ability to speak to a sales or service representative."

The Napa Valley Register is reporting the results of a survey conducted by the Pew Center for the People and Press' continuing Internet Project, which asked a panel of "experts" -- those who lead in the industry or have a major stake therein -- to predict the future of the Internet in 2020.

Among other Web predictions, the respondents said that virtual worlds will gain in prevalence, which seems a solid forecast. Interestingly, though, the respondents said users will become "increasingly engaged" with them, indicating they feel virtual worlds will play a stronger role in people's lives than they currently do. Though the survey seems to indicate that some of the panelists felt that virtual world connectivity will have a positive impact on workflow and socialization, others felt that "much productivity will be lost" to a growing epidemic of virtual world addiction.

Lately there have been many reports on virtual worlds being developed specifically for business purposes, to enable interaction and connectivity within the professional workplace. IBM is a major pioneer in these kinds of efforts, as their "code of conduct" for employees in virtual worlds indicated that they see the potential in the space for business uses.

Virtual worlds and online games are developed specifically with encouraging high levels of user engagement in mind -- high average-time-spent numbers are a measure of an online world's success. It seems that even the experts are concerned, though, that these coveted high engagement levels might translate to social or professional problems.

[Via Napa Valley Register]

Good coverage from the Associated Press on the epidemic of cheating in online games, which, as the recent article correctly notes, takes on a whole new slate of issues outside simple morality when real player money is involved, such as in the virtual economies of Second Life, MapleStory or Entropia Universe.

Time is money, too -- cheating also affects the balance of play in online games, where many users put hours, weeks or even years into strengthening their characters and gaining items. The article provides some insight into the ways major players like Blizzard, Linden Lab and Nexon wage what Nexon America's Min Kim calls a "daily battle" against cheaters.

But Intel, who's already demonstrated an interest in the virtual worlds space by partnering with Qwaq to bring Miramar, its 3D information space technology, to market, is at work on a security solution to protect online games and virtual worlds, as the article explains:

Intel's technology would embed a module in a PC's circuitry that would analyze data coming off the keyboard and the mouse and compare it to what a game actually processes. If there are conflicts _ the player clicked the mouse just once but the game read that as "fire 100 shots" _ the Intel system would be able to signal the game makers or other players. The system could also put a "trusted" stamp on seemingly legitimate players.

Intel says its system would not degrade PC performance or be noticeable in game play, but the concept still needs work. Notably, it would require the support of PC makers as well as the game companies that would have to build in ties to the Intel system.

Unclear yet what the end result of this tech in development will be, especially if it requires firm integration with products that already have their own infrastructure. You never know, though -- developers might want to tie in something like this if it presents a stable, non-intrusive alternative to the constant struggle of daily scrutiny.

[Via the AP]

The Virtual Worlds Forum Europe 2007, to be held October 24-25 in London, has announced an expanded list of speakers and exhibitors and a growing list of exhibitors. Workshops are scheduled for October 23 and 26.

Speakers include keynotes from Paul Ledak, vice president of development, Digital Convergence, IBM and Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, and presentations from industry leaders including Dr. Richard Bartle, Raph Koster at AreaE, Jessica Mulligan at Sunflowers, Alice Taylor at Channel 4 Television, Rob Seaver at Vivox, and Thomas Bidaux at NCSoft, among many others.

“First year conferences in any discipline usually start very small, and grow significantly in years two and three, but the immediate popularity of VWF Europe has exceeded our expectations,” says conference director Sasha Frieze. “Key players in the virtual worlds space, including developers, analysts, and investors, have recognized the future of this rapidly expanding market in Europe , and have generously supported the show in enthusiastic numbers.”

Frieze noted that 15 major exhibitors from five countries are on board including IBM, River Runs Red, and There, and that number is growing.

"IBM, as a founding sponsor, is investing in the Virtual Worlds Forum because of its leadership position as the first virtual worlds conference in Europe , and for the importance of cultivating a collaborative virtual world community," said Paul Ledak, vice president of development, Digital Convergence, IBM. “As the 3D Internet evolves, we will see a transformation in how businesses use these environments to realize business value. The Virtual Worlds Forum will be an excellent venue to collaborate with the community and discuss shaping the future of virtual worlds."

Workshops include Virtual Worlds 101 on October 23rd, Enterprise Virtual Worlds on October 24th, Risk, Reputation, and Virtual Worlds on October 26th

PSFK UK has some goods on the highlights of the Ypulse Tween Mashup held recently here in New York. Speakers from Stardoll (shown), Cartoon Doll Emporium and Whyville all had one thing in common -- their young 'tween users actually demand branding in their virtual worlds.

Apparently, Stardoll now features "StarPlaza," where its users can shop for designer duds for their paper doll-like avatars. Although Whyville features user-generated designs, not brand labels, Whyville CEO Jim Bower recounts how some even feature the influence of brands like M&M.

All of the eyes and ears of kids' virtual worlds notice that kids actively want to flaunt their favorite brands to their friends in virtual worlds, and providing more in-world branding opportunities to marketers is just as much providing a service to its users as it is offering ad space to the clothing labels or snack food brands. It makes sense -- that age group behaves that way in the real world, experimenting with new ways of expressing and defining themselves, and sharing that with others.

A recent Financial Times article has a thought-provoking breakdown of seven major economic models in virtual worlds, questioning whether virtual worlds have long-term sustainability as a component in the rapid proliferation of Web 2.0. The article recalls the now-infamous run on Ginko Financial in Second Life and takes an optimistic look back at the episode. Says the article's author Eli Noam, "But far from identifying it as a calamity, to many commentators it confirmed the faithfulness of the computer simulation: after all, the real world had long experienced insolvencies, too."

First up for analysis, real product marketing. The article points out the disparity between Second Life's user base and its active users at any given time as evidence of why this might be a less effective model -- however, in focusing only on Second Life, the article fails to note what big business real product marketing can be in virtual worlds, especially those for kids -- after all, we just heard from Ypulse about how 'tweens are essentially begging to be marketed to by real-world brands in their virtual worlds and social networks.

Second, Noam is skeptical about the long-term profitability of virtual goods. Though we've seen entire online worlds sustain themselves on RMTs and virtual item sales, he does raise a caveat worth considering -- as user-generated content becomes more and more prolific, might not the value of virtual items drop to "almost zero?" While it's true that the increasing prevalence of user-created virtual items would cause finer crafts and more desirable creations to rise to the top of the heap and garner a value assigned to them by their popularity, I think that Noam is correct in noting that with so many options to choose from, successful virtual items might only command worthwhile prices for a short, fad-like time. The exception, of course, is where the owner of the world has control over the available items on offer -- but doesn't that fly in the face of the Web 2.0 ideal?

Third, Noam notes that business-to-business services -- for example, IBM and Electric Sheep's provisions to retailers, or other software developers for virtual facilities are prevalent and viable, but he also expects that strong competition and profitability gambles for consumers of those services might threaten the long-term growth in these avenues.

Further snags in the road to virtual worlds wealth worth considering are the creation of private worlds for specialized purposes, thereby reducing the appeal of more general worlds and the need to police music and movie content for appropriateness or copyright violations creating a drain. Notably, Noam actually foresees a time when, with community being such a critical factor in a virtual world or social network's success, companies will have to pay users, essentially, to use their service as the playing field becomes more populated and competition stiffens.

Noam's predictions are a bit bleak, but they do highlight some issues that are surely legitimate concerns when looking down the road to the possible evolution of a promising new technology space.

[Via FT]

Turner Broadcasting's Products Group has signed a one-year deal with Kaneva to extend its entertainment properties into virtual worlds, reports Online Media Daily. Each Turner Web property will have its own space within Kaneva, and video players will broadcast Turner content.

Under the terms of the agreement, Turner will get access to Kaneva's technology, enabling it to use and create its own Kaneva spaces. "Through this opportunity, we hope to leverage the Kaneva platform to explore how users interact with our brands in a virtual world," said Blake Lewin, vice president for TBS Inc.'s New Products Group. "

"Turner is an ideal flagship media partner for Kaneva," said Christopher Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva. "Turner's high-quality programming and credibility is synergistic with our unique focus on delivering entertainment to the masses inside a virtual world. As a result of this partnership, we will provide entirely new ways for audiences to watch, participate and interact around their favorite TV programming."

[Via Online Media Daily]

It's easy to get confused by virtual worlds metrics. After all, there are many different ways to track population. Will you choose total registered users, total active users, total concurrent users, number of hits to the launch website, number of total accounts registered... you get the idea. To make matters more difficult, companies that own virtual worlds are typically mum, or at least, very selective, about the types of data they release (recall Ryan Olson's exercise in frustration at Red Herring earlier this year).

In the comments section here at Worlds in Motion, reader "darniaq" correctly pointed out:

And yet, I wonder: what advantageous do companies have to report numbers in a consistent and comparable format? Each companies' business needs are slightly different. Their first audience for such data may be publishers, hosts, share holders, management, whoever. The data they prepare for these audiences is tailored to what is most relevant to them.

It's nice to have subscriptions and uniques and registrations in press releases. But in the end I feel these numbers matter most to folks with the least stake in the success of a game: analysts and players.

So numbers are clearly a poor way to study virtual worlds. Nonetheless, Renaud says, it is essential for the industry to start defining some kind of taxonomy:

You can slice and dice the market by 2D vs. 3D, web-based vs. client software, apples vs. oranges, but we need to find a common set of language by which to differentiate the QQ and Cyworlds from the ActiveWorlds and Kanevas from the Metaplaces and Toontowns. Until then, you have emoticon-on-steroids avatar chat in IM and Social Networking sites being compared apples to apples with narrative driven virtual worlds like World of Warcraft or Runescape. It’s not apples and apples at that point, it’s apples and orangutans.

Raph Koster agrees somewhat, irritated at seeing the user-generated worlds of Areae's Metaplace put into the same category as Disney's kid-focused minigames-for-jellybeans world of Toontown ("OK, we get the message, we’ll redo the site’s graphics!" he says). Nonetheless, Koster says, perhaps it's not sensible to differentiate them totally when they share "99% of their core architecture."

On the other side of the coin, trying to press certain products into the category of either "virtual world" or "game" doesn't make much sense either; oddly, it looks like MMO designer Steve Danuser says that World of Warcraft is the virtual world, while Metaplace is the game.

So if numbers are useless, "game" is subjective, and client display, as Koster adds, doesn't determine purpose, what factors will we use to segregate and study virtual worlds as their very own entity, in a world where "game" is a subjective term, and virtual worlds for business and retail purposes are on the rise? It's an interesting question, and one to which a clear answer has yet to surface.

[Via Raph's Website]

When we heard about Empire of Sports, Infront's casual sports MMO, we were interested, and talked to Empire of Sports’ managing director, Christian Müller, about the world and the ways users would be able to play. Now, Empire of Sports has announced that multiplayer football (that's soccer to us Americans) will be the first game to be incorporated in the competitive sports world, and the company says users will be able to play in full teams of 11 virtual footballers against one another.

In addition to soccer, Empire of Sports says it will also feature multiplayer basketball, tennis, skiing, bobsleigh, athletics and virtual gymnasium, all of which will be available at launch later this year.

Alexis Galley, CEO of Empire of Sports developer F4 says they've gained experience in managing lag with multiple players in development of the various sports, and are pleased with the results.

Adds Müller in the press release, “We are thrilled to make this revolutionary football sensation available to our players. Football has a very special appeal to sports fans around the world, and finally it is possible to experience the top level action and tactics of ‘the beautiful game’ as an individual player in a team. Of course we will stay true to the ‘Empire of Sports’ philosophy, and offer an attractive football environment with a challenging development path for gamers to level their avatar, master game play and learn about football tactics.”

We recently reported on Intel's efforts to contribute anti-cheating technology for MMOs, but security expert Steven Davis of PlayNoEvil has had Intel's work on his radar for some time now, and he followed up with Worlds in Motion to provide more details and clarification.

"The Intel anti-cheat tech is similar to PunkBuster and other technology, but moved onto [a] secondary processor," he explains. "It is mainly a 'bot detector' looking to see that the keyboard and mouse are actually sending the data to the game."

In other words, the technology will catch unscrupulous types who may be sending multiple signals to an MMO while only taking a single action manually -- for such a thing to be effective, an "aimbot" must be at work. It's a familiar old approach, according to Davis, and the countermeasures are equally familiar: "Also, the Xbox architecture has used this approach... with mixed success (if you recall the Xbox hack descriptions, there was trusted code installed on the Bridge chip that was attacked via EEPROMs and bus probes)," he explains.

EEPROMs and bus probes? That's a little beyond our ken, but the over-riding message seems to be that, as well-intentioned as Intel's and other tech solutions are, MMOs will be actively fighting against cheaters for some time yet. Thanks for the extra info, Steven!

Virtual Worlds Management has just released a list of accountable transactions it culled from the boom of venture capital, tech and media firm investment news around virtual worlds in the past twelve months. Notably, the report assumes a total of $1 billion in investments spread across 33 companies, and of those, Disney's acquisition of Club Penguin accounted for $700 million, if you recall.

Oddly, however, the report includes Intel's recent $110 million acquisition of Havok, styling the company as a "3D virtual worlds graphics technology" company. It's a bit of a stretch to call Havok a virtual worlds company, since the Ireland-based company's modular run-time tech and artists' middleware has been used for console and PC video game physics and behavior for almost a decade, most recently on big sellers BioShock, Stranglehold and Crackdown, to name only a few.

Even more misleading is the inclusion of independent gaming pioneer GarageGames, who is best known for its proprietary Torque game engine. Same with Emergent Technologies ($12 million from Jerusalem Venture Partners), whose cross-platform C++ game engine, Gamebryo, launched in 2003 and has since been used in PC games like Civilization IV and, notably, critically-acclaimed single-player hit The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Others included in the report fall into somewhat of a gray area -- for example, PlaySpan, who received $6.5 million in Series A funding from Easton Capital, Menlo Ventures and Asian investors, could apply its technology equally to gaming networks as to multipurpose virtual worlds. The taxonomy of virtual worlds is a bit tricky to define and will continue to be under discussion for some time, to be sure; similarly, it can be anticipated that many video game companies may broaden their involvement into the virtual worlds space (such as Entropia Universe's graphics upgrade to Crytek's CryEngine).

But it's less useful, and more misleading, to use such arbitrary delineation when trying to quantify an industry by investment numbers -- certainly virtual worlds are enormously attractive to investors, with large dollar amounts involved, but it would seem $1 billion is somewhat an inflated number.

Once in a while, business smash successes come out of Second Life that reinvigorate the arguments those who support the Linden world levy against the critics. Metaversed has the interesting story of RDZ Animations, who's sold 2000 units of their product at $3000 Linden dollars* apiece.

What's interesting is what their product is -- when you realize it's a "couples animator" called Rendezvous. Since we are talking Second Life here, it should be clarified that Rendezvous is not a sexual animation tool -- it's simply an animation tool that allows couples spending time together to actually hold hands, stroll together, perform cuddly resting animations and things like that.

Companionship in virtual worlds is a thought-provoking idea. There's quite a great deal of talk lately about personalizing one's virtual life, and how online worlds enable people to project their interests and self-expression into an avatar. It only makes sense, then, that that would extend to the way avatars relate with one another. There are already some strides being made in this area -- what comes to mind is our experiences in VSide and Entropia Universe, both of which let you choose the way your character stands, thereby controlling the attitude you project. And while most online worlds and MMOs provide means to initiate physical gestures of various types back and forth, what Rendezvous focuses on is the behavior of spending time together.

Ever tried to follow or walk with another character in a virtual world? Just as Metaversed says, this can be a stilted, awkward experience, rife with stiff collisions, meandering paths and companions getting stuck behind. The fact that RDZ Animations is so successful with a product that attempts to make even mundane companionship in virtual worlds so lifelike shows how important that is to some people -- after all, aren't virtual worlds social experiences? And it's also a good story of how Second Life businesses can be successful by knowing their market.

[Via Metaversed]

[*CORRECTION: The original article stated the price of the technology at $3000 USD -- it's $3000 LINDEN dollars, or as one reader said, "about $10"! Which makes quite a bit of difference, but the interesting developments for social interactions in virtual worlds still stand!]

It's a tough call when trying to determine which MMO games are relevant to the virtual worlds space, but EVE Online is definitely one of those. PC gaming-focused Rock, Paper, Shotgun agrees, and in an in-depth interview with senior developer Nathan 'Oveur' Richardsson, veteran game journalist Jim Rossignol says, "It’s the one online game that is actually a ‘virtual world’ in any sense, and I feel as if every single player has left a mark on it in some way. Just like real life, we all have something to add, no matter how inconceivably microscopic that contribution might be."

To get the idea, you need only hear it from Richardsson's mouth, as he explains some very virtual world-y elements of EVE:

"It’s about creating a stronger foundation for the role-playing and social elements of EVE and to embrace the emergent gameplay. Okay, sorry for the buzzword soup! In more human terms, EVE is built upon social networks and we wanted to create a setting where that could be taken even further. It’s hugely player-driven, where all establishments are owned by players, including corporate offices for meeting, planning and recruiting, plus we hope to have venues like bars for karaoke or gambling. We then want to see what patterns emerge, what one really uses the in-station tools, props, scriptable NPCs, rooms and establishments for. Then we go with the flow. There is no combat there though, that happens outside the stations."

To that end, Richardsson also comments on past allegations of corruption in the game's administration:

"We’ve always considered ourselves more as janitors than gods and feel that the power should be in the hands of the players to create empires, nations even. This is another (big) step towards realization of that vision and we sincerely hope it evolves into something great.

In a virtual society like EVE, there will always be differences of opinions, allegations of abuse of power (real or perceived) and an outcry for change. It’s a bit of a slippery slope in that while it validates the legitimacy of an online game’s value as a virtual society, it also presents us with some very real issues that have to be addressed."

[Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Internet payment company Paynova has expanded its payment service specifically for online games and worlds. Its first partner for the launch of its new services will be MindArk, who will integrate the Paynova services into Entropia Universe, according to the company's press release.

The announcement represents an extension of an existing partnership between MindArk and Paynova. Entropia Universe already offers Paynova payment options, but they will now have more choices -- Entropia's users can pay via debit card, Internet bank, and a number of local payment methods in Sweden, and at the same time, Paynova's One2One additional service will be implemented, which is aimed at streamlining participant payments both when entering and within Entropia.

The One2One service supports both subscription and "pay-per-component" transactions, so that users of Entropia or other online worlds that support it can make both kinds of payments using the same payment service in-game or out of it.

"Being able to accept payments over the Internet is a prerequisite for our entire business. Paynova has supplied us with a stable, secure payment service for a number of years. It's great that we can now expand the cooperation with more payment methods and new functions. Paynova also gives us the option of accepting more payment methods as they become available without the need for further development from our side," says Carl Uggla, chief marketing officer at MindArk.

Turbine (Lord of the Rings Online, Asheron's Call) has announced the appointment of former m-Qube COO Jim Crowley as its new CEO, replacing long-standing officer Jeff Anderson, in a move that follows three new executive hires in early September.

No word was given from Turbine on the reasons for Anderson's departure, but the company did say "the move is one of many that Turbine has recently made to invest in new talent that will drive the next wave of the company's growth."

The quote refers to the aforementioned hiring, which saw Craig Alexander brought in as vice president of product development, Jerome Lalin as vice president of marketing and T.J. Marchetti as vice president of community and social media.

Turbine said that Crowley's time as the COO of m-Qube was instrumental in turning the company"into one of North America's largest mobile media companies." Previously, Crowley also served as COO of Network Plus, Inc., a telecommunications and data provider.

Said Crowley in a statement, "I'm excited to have the opportunity to play a role in Turbine's continued growth and success. Turbine has an incredible team, industry leading technology and a portfolio of franchises that are without peer. I look forward to working closely with our entire team and our global business partners to continue to invest in, and accelerate, our domestic and international success."

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

Interesting MediaPost article currently running that attempts to understand the behavior of users in online worlds. When we talked to eMarketer's Debra Aho Williamson, she pointed out with reference to kids' worlds that children are more likely to represent themselves as themselves. However, MediaPost speaks to Lina Zhou, associate professor, Department of Information Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County, about how deceptive behavior patterns sometimes manifest themselves in online worlds for adults:

Behavioral Insider: There is some level of idealization that goes one with many avatars in Second Life, where people aren't actively deceiving one another so much as idealizing themselves. Is this any different really from putting on a good face and demeanor to the world?

Lina Zhou: Interpersonal deception is traditionally discussed in the context of a physical world, where there exist moral standards that have been developed over a long time to constrain individuals' behavior. For example, everyone is expected to tell the truth. In a virtual world, such a standard may not exist -- or the routine of practice could be different.

For example, in some online games, it is acceptable for a player to win or to gain advantages by deception, which does not violate our moral standards. Second Life is similar to traditional 3D multi-player role-playing games in many ways, but they also differ in two important aspects. First, Second Life allows residents to create their own social world collectively. Second, it encourages residents to trade their creations and skills for real-world money.

[Via MediaPost]