Serious Virtual Worlds

Second Life has taken our head space. We think of virtual worlds in terms of the wall of press, blog, pod, and enthusiastic dork coverage that washes, Linden spun, every day into that personal space.
I have news for you – it is nowhere near the only game in town.
There is NO way that Linden are going to be allowed to own this new frontier. The big boys are now quietly putting down their glasses in the saloon, getting calmly out of their chairs and walking into Main Street eyes narrowed and hands on their……wallets.
You want proof? Shade your eyes. MTV, just a fantastically popular and profitable global music channel, is into virtual worlds. Not once, but twice.
Where? It links its virtual worlds to its existing hyper successful programme properties. You have never heard of Laguna Beach? Virtual Laguna Beach with 300,000 users in almost 10 weeks as a professional perhaps you do need to pay attention. And not only are they doing it with Laguna Beach they are doing it again with Virtual The Hills. Not heard of that property. Oh dear. And much more Compared to unfettered, user-generated worlds like Second Life, There.com gives users much less leeway to create their own objects, but it runs more smoothly, looks prettier, and gives developers tighter control over the economy and behavior of visitors - it was a perfect fit for MTV.
So what is the play here. What we are seeing here is the sharding of the monolithic myth promoted by Second Life. That is that everything is available in one virtual place.
Well as in the RW (Real World) you know and I know that it isn’t. The world is not monolithic socially. We choose and have chosen for us our social environments. I have nothing in common with France’s extreme right Jean Marie La Pen and the idea that my kids would be in the same Second Life space as this guy is extraordinary. But he is there now. What next Kim Jong-il from North Korea?
My prediction. As in the RW we will join virtual social worlds that are custom built to mesh with our own social preferences. We do this now anyway in the RW by choosing where we live, where we socialize, where we send our kids to school, so we should not be surprised.
The VW(Virtual World) is here to stay and we will choose custom built worlds that fit our social needs. So just relax.
[Disclosure: Ambient is the partner in Europe of Forterra the original developer of There.com and the only supplier of virtual world platforms that you can customize.]

dick(dot)davies(at)ambientperformance.com