Feature: Steve Prentice, Gartner Analyst, Virtual Worlds 2008 Forecast

The 3DNPVEI and Bitmanagement Software demo was postponed due to technical difficulties, so we'll be checking it out tomorrow, but that means we can present another preview of the Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2008. Gartner has made a number of predictions about virtual worlds, including the frequently cited claim that 2011  will see 80% of active Internet users involved in virtual worlds. But for a look at what's happening more immediately, we asked Gartner analyst and Vice President Steve Prentice for his predictions. Check out his look at 2008 below. Check out the complete forecast for free here.

What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?   

Virtual worlds became mainstream headline news in 2007, but 2008 will be a more challenging year. There remains tremendous opportunity, especially in the “middle ground” of the lightweight, social-networking-oriented virtual world and the corporate intraverse, but the unbridled optimism of 2007 will give way to a more critical perspective on the failures of virtual worlds as well as their successes.

Top three predictions:

• As social networking converges with virtual worlds to support rapidly growing virtual communities, a “lightweight” social-networking/entertainment-oriented virtual world will emerge, successfully targeting the MySpace/Facebook teen generation with an emphasis on having fun rather than content creation, and building a user base in excess of five million within the year.

• Avatar-enabled corporate collaboration environments (intraverses) will become the focus of enterprise attention, replacing the focus on largely unsuccessful forays into public virtual islands that have failed to attract or retain customers.

• Education and training will emerge as the killer application, as establishments compete for students and tap into the familiarity and high acceptance of online gaming and social networking communities of generation V.

What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for the virtual worlds industry?

• Ease of Use – current user interfaces are overly complex and a significant contributor to the current high attrition rate (in the order of 10 to 1) of new users to virtual worlds. While powerful development tools and the ability to create compelling user-generated content are important to a minority of early adopters, the mainstream audience (especially a teen audience) is motivated to enjoy the experience rather than build it themselves. Lightweight, intuitive user interfaces, building on the experience of console-based gaming platforms, are a necessity if mainstream adoption is to accelerate.

• Client platform diversity – concurrent with the demand for ease of use, the arrival of new virtual environments on the back of gaming consoles will highlight the current complexity of PC-oriented user interfaces. With growing populations of smartphones and powerful games consoles, different user interfaces (and “playing” experiences) will need to emerge to address the differing capabilities of these new devices.

• Age-progression – As the audience of tweens grows up and looks beyond the attractions of Club Penguin, Barbie Girls, Neopets, Webkinz and the like, a new range of teen-oriented virtual worlds needs to emerge to compete with today’s social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and the rest. Success will hinge not on technical or functional capabilities (although these need to be satisfactorily addressed) but on capturing and riding an unpredictable viral wave of adoption.

• Regulation – Virtual worlds have enjoyed a flamboyant youth, free to explore the possibilities of an environment limited only by imagination. But as their success becomes more visible, external influences in the shape of regulation, censorship, legal issues, taxation and a raft of conservative market forces will increasingly restrict and constrain development. Addressing the demands of child protection, anti-fraud regulation, copyright issues, anti-terrorism legislation, free speech, taxation and other “real-world” issues which early adopters had hoped to leave behind will become an increasing challenge for operators.

A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on the industry?

• Interoperability – as the number of players increases, the challenge of interoperability will continue to grow, but attempts to create a single “metaverse” are both futile and pointless. The challenge will be to support interoperability where it makes sense, addressing both the technical (standards-related) challenges and the business-related issues of asset ownership and inherent resident identity ownership and control.

• Community migration – large communities have built up around early platforms, but it would be a mistake (that appears to be commonly made) to assume that these communities owe any sense of allegiance to the underlying platform. They do not. While they are currently imprisoned on isolated islands, they are learning to live with each other and the constraints of the platform. As new entrants bring real alternatives to the universe, expect to see mass migration as virtual-world refugees flee existing platforms to build new communities of like-minded individuals on newly available virtual land – in scenes reminiscent of human migration throughout history. Some existing platforms may find their current resident base (and the effective measure of their real world value) has melted away in to night to newly arrived alternatives in search of a better (virtual) life. The loyalty of communities, in the virtual world as in the real world, lies with the community, not their chosen home.

• Globalisation – True 3D virtual worlds have been dominated by westernised, English language development but this will change. Growing interest in Latin America and the launch of Chinese-based environments, buoyed by the Beijing Olympics, will encourage the growth of non-English-speaking virtual environments. Reflecting the cultural diversity of their residents (and the influence of different cultural heritage and regulatory oversight), these will offer a different experience, exhibiting varying levels of control and restraint compared with current environments.

Comments

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"...attempts to create a single “metaverse” are both futile and pointless. The challenge will be to support interoperability where it makes sense"

Good call. The web is already a single metaverse but all applications don't talk to all other applications. Those that do already have a standards substrate that they can use for 'appChat'.

My prediction is there will be increased emphasis on standards for infrastructure systems. This is where it makes sense. CAD is already doing this. Public safety applications will follow somewhat slowly but certainly. The question to ask is which communities of interest really do need a means to hook up and interoperate and then for how long. The public safety applications need this in the upcoming 18 months to enable full-up NIEMS simulations. However, many of the message standards (think CAP) already exist. Others such as incident notifications need a lot of work.

Given good messaging applications for coordination, the 3D standards can be those that already exist (get real. When do you actually NEED a contiguous earth map?) with network sensors in place. Local representations are often sufficient. When they aren't, the specific requirements for these should be worked out individually.

The question is one of shared assets and that is not necessarily required of these workSims although that can bring a lot of costs down. Contrarywise, the notification messages consumed must be shared. No surprises here.