PC World Readers Find Virtual Worlds Boring; Mashable Readers Think They're a Bubble

In PC World's  list of the Ten Biggest Web Annoyances, "Boring Virtual Worlds" came in last: "Given the promise and hype surrounding virtual worlds, or metaverses, like Second Life, we found it interesting how few of our readers care about them. More than half of our survey takers said as much, while another 25 said that they aren't bothered at all by the quality of virtual worlds." Likewise, in a poll today on Mashable about what the biggest Web 2.0 bubble is (social networks, widgets, or virtual worlds), virtual worlds is the winner (or loser) by a small margin. [via PC World]

The PC World author, Ryan Naraine,  makes a good--and common--point that virtual worlds are often too clunky and glitchy for new users to acclimate. But the only example he offers is Second Life. Likewise, it looks like he's pulling evidence from the Yankee Group study about mobile phones that was later retracted.

What I find more interesting, and probably worthwhile to look at is, the demographic that the research is based on and how it's conducted. PC World "asked visitors at our online forums to identify what they consider the most dysfunctional aspects of the Web; then we polled our readers to find out which of these problems they find most aggravating."

For starters, the questions come from pretty anecdotal evidence, and then they're all slanted negative. But the response still seems indicative. When I reviewed high-end PCs, almost nobody, whether in the forums, the office, or general community, was interested in virtual worlds. I've seen--so this is anecdotal as well--the same response in writers and readers at a lot of other leading game magazines and websites.

For people who obsessed about being on the cutting edge of hardware to get the most realistic graphics in their games, the more open-ended social worlds just didn't move them at all. Or if they did, it was mostly to make jokes about furries. Most of them were talking about Second Life.

Occasionally projects like the Playstation3's Home attracts gamers, and it seems like it's getting to be more acceptable to label an MMOG as a "social experience."  And more and more virtual worlds developers are taking the game-influenced hint, so I wonder if this is mostly a matter of the way the question was phrased, PC World's readers' limited awareness of the variety of virtual worlds, or just the ongoing bias.

For the readers at Mashable, a site focused on social networking, virtual worlds might be providing too immersive of an experience. Active Worlds has embedded it's world on Facebook, and other projects are working in the same direction--often with a gameplay element. I haven't heard any gaming backlash against social networks, so maybe it'll just take a combination of the two to make virtual worlds accessibly to both the mainstream and the hardcore gamers. 

Maybe it's all of the above. Any thoughts?

Comments

[csven]

This is a biased perception, I know, but I tend to think of PC World readers - as a group - as not being especially bleeding edge. Ahead of the general curve perhaps, but not out on the front lines of development.

When I think of the typical PC World reader, I think vanilla corporate IT; not someone who'd risk everything for a risky metaverse start-up, even if it did sound like fun. They *like* designer label clothing, driving a nice, rust-free car (preferably a VW or Audi) and spending too much money on coffee concoctions. The cutting edge types don't care as much about that stuff. They idolize Richard Stallman more than David Perry.

With Mashable's readers I sense a skew to a particular type: the "How Can I Make Money Fast On The Intarwebs". In other words, lots of widget people who spend more time trying to find some little hook to make their copy of an existing service just a teenie bit better than someone else's (with expectations of leveraging that minor improvement into billions of dollars, of course). Because virtual worlds in general, and SL in particular, don't offer them any easy and obvious opportunities to get rich quick, they don't like them. Yet.

That's my .02

[Anthony Reisman]

Maybe not everyone has jumped on the bandwagon yet, but look at the growth rates for virtual worlds.

Then compare it to the rise of the browsers back in the day. Plenty of people then said "Why would I trust something on the internet, it could be written by anyone" and how many thought no one would ever use their credit card online.

Then see if we can draw conclusions as to what may be in a few years given that virtual worlds are ALL still pretty much in their infancy, and those previous examples have sure matured since.

[Markus Breuer (Pham Neutra)]

I wonder if there have been similar polls about the "world wide web" in 1995? Anyone here has a good link?

[Cleophus Tibbs]

The comparison to the World Wide Web is a little confusing to me. It is a comparison that is made more and more often by virtual world types, and I believe it is flawed.

Virtual Worlds will work in conjunction with the web, though the web will ALWAYS have more users. Early engineers had disagreements with people who thought that radio and then television would obviate the need for books.

What we need to realize is that in the web and in virtual worlds we have two different things. The web had a stellar uptake rate because it was, is, and always will be, more efficient in the realm of information communication. It is a book. Virtual worlds are much more like televisions. They can communicate information quickly, though only at great expense. IE - in a relatively IN-efficient manner.

We should leave the web comparison alone. Virtual worlds are their own thing. And that thing will be big. Will it be as big as the invention of paper . . . doubtful. However, sooner or later most users of the internet will begin to come across one every now and again. Realize that it will probably be more later than sooner and more every again than now.

The uptake rate we should shoot for should be of our own design. To expect the uptake rate to match that of the internet is to invite failure.

[len]

"To expect the uptake rate to match that of the internet is to invite failure." - Cleophus

Which is what the VRMLers were told. It didn't stop the investment bubble from growing and popping. It won't stop this one. Don't spend too much energy staring at your navels when these surveys come out.

We can't control the investment rate without controlling the press. We can't control the press without stopping the pre-announcement FUD_BlipVerts. So realistically, this is already out of "OUR" control.

If you need a picture, find "The Magic Christian" and snap a shot of the swimming pool scene. That is the current perception of virtual worlds as a market and a technology. To predict the future, one would want to know when pool maintenance crew is scheduled to visit and how far the next closest laundry is.

Virtual Worlds are not one market. Business applications and games are not the same market or technology. We should quit pretending otherwise.

Virtual Worlds are not the same market as social networks but they can reinforce each other. They share some common problems of security, privacy and norms/affordance enforcement. We should quit pretending otherwise.

The future of the web is not a 3D Web. The web isn't one thing as far as client/server systems go. It is a single namespace with common network infrastructure. 3D is a representation, not a medium. VR is a medium. VW is a sub-set of VR. We should quit pretending otherwise.

Virtual Worlds are economies the same as a casino is an economy. We should quit pretending otherwise.

Virtual Worlds as predictive models are the same as a B.F. Skinner pigeon lab. We should quit pretending otherwise, but it is fun to fly in a bigger cage even as we mourn the loss of real identity.

The breakout hit in any recent expressive medium is usually not very different from the other instances around it. Typically is has one or two special qualities that cause it to scale out quickly in terms of uptake. What those qualities are depends on the zeitgeist, the spirit of a time, and this is a cultural-historic phenomenon that is largely unpredictable but recognizable. The better the experience "feels" to the conjunctive minority that grasps it first, the more likely it is to scale fast and far. Then it is a question of talent and management.

Virtual worlds as games or other entertainment media can be compared to nightclubs with bands or galleries with a new vital clique of painters. Both technique and the message make the difference there. These are hard to predict. Virtual worlds as business applications are largely cost-effective services. This one is easier to predict.

Lastly, Virtual Worlds is the topic of this site, but real-time 3D and VR are a much larger space of applications. How real-time 3D is incorporated into non-VW applications will determine which standards are successful. Those setting out to create such are warned not to set their sights too narrowly or their goals too high. If we learned anything from HTML and XML it is the aphorism of Tim Bray: The Minimum Required to Declare Victory usually wins and is all you can get done anyway.

To that I add something from another project: More Meta Than Thou. It is a phrase on a t-shirt from a team that correctly predicted the future ten years out and lost because it would not be there in two. Knowing where things are going to be in ten years is not nearly as important and knowing where your customer is today and your code will be next week.

If you love it and do it, you never lose. If you love it and leave it to chase someone elses love, you always lose.

[Roland]

Ok, so this is about a public which is supposedly tech-savy and they don't care a lot about virtual worlds. I for my part work with young (20 somethings) financial and business journalists. They are on Facebook and some of them on Twitter, they use last.fm etc.
I tried about everything to explain virtual worlds to them - Second Life but also pointing out the variety in virtual worlds. The reactions were overwhelmingly negative - outspoken rejection or just not interested.
I tend to believe there are mental blocks against immersive experiences, some stuff only psychologists can fully understand (I am not a psychologist).
Maybe it is just those people are not cutting edge technologists. But maybe something more fundamental makes a lot of people reject the whole concept of virtual worlds and avatars. What seems very attractive to a minority (I am very attracted to virtual worlds, especially Second Life) is maybe the same stuff which makes others block it out of their lives.

[Anthony Reisman]

I will still draw parallels between VW adoption and WWW adoption because there are similarities. I suppose I should clarify when I say WWW that mean things like going to web sites to get information and not the services and routing that runs behind it all.

I'm not holding us to maintain the same adoption pace, but I still believe it will. You can already see it happening.

In VW there is not only the ability to present information more efficiently, but the ability to display, organize, and allow collaboration in ways that are just not feasible in 2D method. The same was true for the WWW.

The thing that I see most people fail to realize is that they think VW are what we see them as now. This is a serious shortcoming because the WW opened up possibilities that no one could have thought of before existed, e.g. how could something like Wikipedia have been concieved of until familiarity with the WWW had been in place?

Those same people who are mentally blocking against immersive experiences are just some who mentally blocked out using the WWW to get information for several years. Even now, I have these people come to me and ask how you find something to buy that isn't in their local store. This is exactly how you can recognize it as a disruptive technology.

Those are the same people (in 1-2 years) who will be coming to the rest of us to catch up when they suddenly see the utility of it all.

[len]

"...In VW there is not only the ability to present information more efficiently, but the ability to display, organize, and allow collaboration in ways that are just not feasible in 2D method."

Yes. We can look at the back of a bad hairdo.

"..how could something like Wikipedia have been concieved of until familiarity with the WWW had been in place?"

See Vannevar Bush. Atlantic Weekly. 1945. "As We May Think"

The not so odd thing is that despite what you read on or about the web, the future is mostly predictable in all but the details.

[Alex Fedotov]

@ Cleophus Tibbs
Can you contact me at alxfed (at) gmail.com ? We need your help.