Blogging Virtual Worlds Fall: Entertainment in Virtual Worlds

The afternoon’s panel on media and virtual worlds kicked off with a question from moderator Jerry Paffendorf: What are your TV-viewing habits and what was your best experience in a virtual world. Only Reuben Steiger, CEO Milions of Us, actually watched TV on the air or cable, admitting that it was “silly amounts of bad TV—I have two kids and no DVR.  Blake Lewin, Vice President Product Development, Turner Broadcasting Inc., admitted the situation was ironic. All were enthusiastic about virtual worlds. That’s one of the common tropes in developing media for virtual worlds: more and more users crave interaction. And studies have shown that virtual worlds users simply replace TV with the online environment. With that in mind, the panel dove into the question of what media representatives need to do to take advantage of the virtual worlds.

“I often go to people who do not know about virtual worlds and start with the idea that virtual worlds are fundamentally the first communication medium that people can use to feel like they’re in a place together,” said Sibley Verbeck, CEO The Electric Sheep Company. “That’s what we need to leverage.”

However, Paffendorf pointed out that many brands were hesitant to give full control to a development agency to fully develop the product. Steiger, whose company just launched a Second Life campaign for the CW show Gosip Girl, explained that it came partly out of a lack of wide experience.

“I think there’s sort of an interesting elephant in the room,” he said. “This is a small minority of the work we do. Entertainment is interesting, but the majority of our billable projects are for big brands. When it comes to resistance from clients to doing the things that it takes to be successful, we really don’t have a solution. We try to be logical, but sometimes we’re not successful. More often than not, the body of work is starting to build a set of case studies that say, ‘In this media, if you can take the storylines and make them effective for participants, that’s what guides success.’ The extent to which people can determine outcomes is the primary driver of success.”

Lewin explained that it also comes from a traditional, safe perspective.  However, that’s not only being changed by virtual worlds, but Web 2.0.

“Our idea was just getting the message and brand safely out there,” he explained. “This social networking stuff is flipping everything on its head. The entertainment value that comes to it is brought to you as an experience. It’s not storytelling.  It’s interacting.“

With the conceptual ideas down, Paffendorf turned to the question of mechanism. All of the panelists were involved in different platforms. Turner has just invested in Kaneva, Millions of Us and The Electric Sheep have worked in Second Life and other worlds, and Microsoft develops Virtual Earth while also working in existing virtual worlds.

Kaneva offered Turner a safe environment, explained Lewin, that also allowed for importing models from Maya and 3DS that can be transitioned to more realistic virtual worlds. That’s a significant advantage for future projects, particularly in the still emerging space.
“For most projects, the platforms don’t have everything we wish they had,” said Verbck. “I see the biggest barrier to success as a chicken and egg type thing. The biggest way to fuel these entertainment things is advertising, but you don’t get that until you have a lot of people. It’s hard to get a lot of people until you have content. The big gap is getting these platforms ready for mainstream users. To get advertisers to underwrite that while you’re still creating content is difficult.”

Steiger views that as just a matter of reality. The bigger problem, according to him, is the lack of proof that virtual worlds can work this way.

“What doesn’t really exist are case studies that we can point to or you as executives can point to and say,’ Look, here’s a hit that was produced out of this fledgling media,’” he explained. “There are ideas out there that are really, really exciting, but they’re going to require risk taking. The more hits we have, the less risky it will seem.”

Schiappa  looked at it as also a matter of scale that’s complicated by the multiple platforms. When it comes to what’s next, though, he explained that Microsoft is heavily involved in gaming as a virtual space, but also continuing to get involved more heavily in traditional virtual worlds. “Hopefully next year you’ll know why I’m here,” he said.

“I think from a Microsoft perspective, we’re still looking at how to marry the socialization with some entertainment,” he explained. “Until you hit scale where 20 of my friends of there, there has to be a reason for my friends to show up in the first place. This market is nascent, and there’s so much out there for us to digest. Our project is large scale for what we want to do across the entertainment medium.”

While Steiger cautioned against trying to predict how all the pieces would fit together in four years, instead encouraging developers to take small, but risky steps, Verbeck raced ahead ten years.

“Ithink in ten years from now, virtual worlds are going to be the best advertising model there is,” he said. “And I think it will make advertising into something that refers to a business model and not just the content.  I’d love to do a retail project. I think virtual worlds are going to be more successful for consumer shopping than the Web, but there are a lot of things that need to be done.”