Virtual Worlds News

Men More Likely to Share Creative Work Online Than Women

A recent study from Northwestern University found that while men and women design creative content at about equal rates, 2/3 of men report sharing their work online compared to only 1/2 of the women. When the sample of 1,060 freshmen from the University of Illinois, Chicago, was controlled for self-reported digital literacy, the numbers evened out. The content discussed tends towards the easy to post written fiction, music, and video, but I wonder whether the divide is heightened with user-generated content in virtual worlds, which often requires more complicated 3D modeling or design skills.

“This suggests that the Internet is not an equal playing field for men and women since those with more online abilities -- whether perceived or actual -- are more likely to contribute online content,” Eszter Hargittai, assistant professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, said in a statement.

McKinsey: 60% of Second Life Users Unaware of Co-Creating with Brands; 60% Interested, Though

In a recently released McKinsey report, on brands' use of open co-creation throughout the Web is hailed as the next wave of innovation. It seems like virtual worlds, with the possibility of collaborative design and emphasis on user-generated content, would be an ideal space to work. Indeed, Dassault Systemes is interested in harnessing the crowd for direct product design, though not necessarily in a virtual world. Part of the issue is that there aren't that many examples in virtual worlds to cite, but there is increasing interest.

Limited Interoperability Acheived for OpenSim and Second Life

In February, realXtend and OpenSim announced that they'd achieved portability for users wanting to take their avatars between different OpenSim worlds. Last week, OpenSim opened up even more, letting users take common logins, though not their avatars or inventories, from Second Life to OpenSim. Zha Ewry, working on the project from IBM's end, Tess Linden and Layla Linden were logged in to Linden Lab's Aditi test grid, but were able to jump, as the default Second Life "Ruth" avatar, to OpenSim.

Sure OpenSim is based on Second Life to begin with,  and it's just the most basic of  portability bringing the user to a new, default avatar, but, as Zha Ewery pointed out, "It’s a very nice first step."  [via Eightbar]

Parks Associates: Only 7% of Teen-and-Up Internet Gamers Visit Virtual Worlds Weekly

Michael Cai of Parks Associates published some results of a recent survey of Internet gamers ages 13 and older about online habits, including virtual worlds. Right now the demographic isn't overwhelmed by virtual worlds: only 3% visit virtual worlds on a daily basis and 4% on a weekly basis; another 8% visit each month, though, and 10% visit less frequently. That's compared to the 37% who visit social networking sites and 41% who watch short videos online on a weekly basis. He notes that the demographic doesn't address kids worlds, though, which have taken off to a much greater degree. Part of the reason is structure: 36% of respondents say they visit virtual worlds to play games, which are much more prevalent in younger worlds, while 29% visit to escape real life.

Interview: Strategy Analytics' Barry Gilbert - 137M Virtual Worlds Users Now; 1B by 2017

Strategy Analytics released a new report today predicting that the percentage of registered users that go on to become active users in virtual worlds will increase from 10% now to 27% by 2017, creating a market base of almost 1 billion users.While it's hard to get a sense of the active users in many worlds--the numbers typically aren't made public--Strategy Analytics went to the users themselves.  "Market Forecasts for Virtual World Experiences" surveyed thousands of Internet users in the U.S. and in Europe, questioning about awareness of virtual worlds and use habits.

"We've taken a little bit of a different approach, looking at unique users," Barry Gilbert, Vice President and Research Director, told Virtual Worlds News.  "Nic [Mitham of K Zero] cites about 300M registrants. I think he's got very good numbers, but we tried to look at what the actual number of people hitting the various virtual worlds is. We've done some surveys across Europe and the US to determine how many worlds people are using on a regular basis. We were able to do some calculations that bring back the numbers. There might be 300M registrants, but about 137M people make up those registrants."

Japanese Researchers Send Paralyzed Man to Second Life with Mental Controls

Last October, the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory demoed a brain-computer interface  that let users move about in Second Life using only their minds. The goal was to make it a tool for physically handicapped users to interact with others in the virtual environment. Today the researchers said that a man who could not move his arms and legs was able to control a Second Life avatar via the BCI's three electrodes and then communicate with other users through an attached microphone.

Update: Over 303M Registered Virtual World Accounts

Nic Mitham of K Zero has continued the tiring task of tracking virtual world growth across the metaverse. He's updated his "Universe Graph," with figures from 2008 Q2 and added in several new worlds as well. It's a big jump--almost double the size of the 173.61 million registered users he tracked in January, though that's in part due to the addition of new worlds. Now, across 21 virtual worlds, there's over 303 million registered accounts. Unsurprisingly, most of those users come from the massive amounts of worlds out there aimed at younger users.  In fact, only Second Life is posting numbers in the 30+ sector,  and only four worlds are showing user numbers in to 20-30 category. There's been discussion about whether the kids world boom is a bubble set to pop, but there's clearly still plenty of room to grow with the other demographics. [Check out the full-size chart at K Zero]

$2M Awarded to 12 Teams to Study Virtual Worlds and Games for Health

The Robert Woods Johnson Foundation announced today that it would award more than $2 million in research grants to 12 teams "to help strengthen the evidence base that supports the development and use of digital interactive games to improve players' health behaviors and outcomes." The recipients won't be named until Thursday, but some of the funded studies will investigate how people with substance abuse problems can rehearse good behavior in dangerous environments in the virtual world.  There's already been some research in that direction to show that virtual stimuli are strong enough to trigger addiction responses as well as actually showing benefits for some patients in the real world.

Researchers: Virtual Worlds "Useful" for Kids

In a study sponsored by the BBC looking at its  world  Adventure Rock, launched in October and aimed at kids 6-12, researchers from the University of Westminster found that virtual worlds are a "powerful and engaging" alternative to passive TV  viewing, though the BBC should have involved kids earlier on to get their feedback. "They really do have good ideas to contribute and they are very good critical friends,"  Professor David Gauntlett, who conducted the research, told the BBC.

Video: Walking in the Virtusphere

Sébastien Kuntz of A VR Geek Blog got some hands-on (in?) time with the Virtusphere recently. The Virtusphere is, as he puts it, "a 2.6m polycarbonate sphere of 120kg lying on wheels, with an incredibly sophisticated movement detection device below (a mouse!), used as a virtual reality locomotion device." Once a user climbs inside, he or she can walk, run, or jump with a little bit of practice, though Kuntz notes that it's a little unnatural to be walking inside a sphere, unlike the Cyberwalk treadmill option.  In its defense, and this is possibly why the military is using it for training, at $50,000, the Virtusphere is about 20 times less than the omni-directional treadmill.

The video shows a user walking in the Virtusphere while viewing a world created with Dassualt Systemes' Virtools through a head-mounted display.

Updated Gartner: 90% of Corporate Virtual World Efforts Fail in 18 Months (Chalk It Up to Experimentation?)

9 out of 10 business experiments in virtual worlds fail within 18 months, reports Gartner today in new findings. That's a pretty dark cloud (and the WSJ is looking at it that way), but Gartner's analysis isn't nearly as dire as its headline. Gartner notes that throughout the process lessons have been learned, many of the attempts were relatively low-cost experiments, and there's still plenty of opportunity. "Businesses have learned some hard lessons,"  Steve Prentice, vice president and fellow at Gartner, said in a statement. "They need to realise that virtual worlds mark the transition from web pages to web places and a successful virtual presence starts with people, not physics. Realistic graphics and physical behaviour count for little unless the presence is valued by and engaging to a large audience."

The New Yorker on Virtual Iraq for PSTD Treatment

Almost 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have post-traumatic stress syndrome according to a RAND Corporation study, and almost 50% won't seek treatment. The New Yorker this week does a great job of looking at one viable alternative, both as a possible treatment and an enticement to seek help, Virtual Iraq. "I’m not someone who responds to sitting with some guy, talking about my whole life. I’m going to go in and talk to some dude who doesn’t understand my shit and talk about my mom?" asked Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "I’m the worst of that kind of guy. So V.R. therapy, maybe it will work. We’re a video-game generation. It’s what we grew up on. So maybe we’ll respond to it."

Foldit Mixes Collaborative 3D Protein Modeling with Competition and Games

Foldit asks players to rotate proteins in three dimensions, assemble side chains, shape the backbone, and generate stabilizing hydrogen bonds--all essential tasks as the players contribute towards University of Washington protein scientist David Baker's goals of curing HIV, developing various vaccines, and more. It's not a virtual world, and it's not quite reaching the holy grail of massive collaborative design, but it is getting there (Forgive me: it's Friday and this is really neat). Also, it's incredibly popular. After a lot of launch-day press today, the site's blog noted that "Thanks to our folders all over the world, our site is slowing down. Please be patient if you can't log in at first. It may take a few tries to get into the game. In the meantime, we will post an update today which should make the experience much smoother for all of you."

Online Subscription Market Surpasses $1B; Virtual Worlds Should Crack Top 5 List

In February, the NPD announced that it would begin tracking subscriptions for virtual worlds, massively multiplayer online games, and casual gaming sites. The first report was released today, pegging the market at over $1 billion. The trend in many virtual worlds and casual MMOGs has been to move toward a free-to-play model supported by advertising and/or microtransactions. In fact, there's been a hearty debate over which was more effective or even best for the consumer. It looks like, regardless, there's still life for subscriptions. "Now that NPD can estimate the value of the subscription market, it's clear that there is a sizable chunk of revenue being generated by PC gaming beyond what is reflected in retail sales," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

Reminder: Shape the Future of Virtual Worlds News with Our Reader Survey

Just a reminder, folks: We launched a reader survey last week to get your feedback on where we should take Virtual Worlds News, what services you might want to see, and what you'd like to see less of. We've gotten lots of good responses--thanks to everyone for your help!--but we know there are plenty more of you out there. We'll be closing the survey at the End of the Day this coming Monday (May 12). If you want to contribute, please get your responses in before then. And, as always, feel free to shoot me an email as well if you have anything else to add. [Take the survey]

Survey: Help Us Improve Virtual Worlds News

Hard as it may be to believe (at least for me) Virtual Worlds News passed its one-year anniversary back in February. I didn't start writing until June, but that means we're coming up on my anniversary as well. In any case, it's time to take a good look at the site, the news coverage, and the services we can provide and see what we can do better. We've brainstormed a few ideas on our own, but since you're the ones reading the news, we'd love to know what you think. We've set up a short survey to get some feedback on who you are, how you use Virtual Worlds News, what you like, and what you'd like to see done differently. Thanks for  reading in this first year, and thanks  for helping us work towards a great second year. If there's any information you don't think fits in the survey, please feel free to shoot me an email with suggestions, advice, tips, and, yes, criticism.  [Take the survey]

Stanford Gets $6M to Research Parallel Processing; Aims at Virtual Worlds

Last month saw Berkley nab $10 million each from Microsoft and Intel to research coding for parallel processors. Now Stanford is set to announce its Pervasive Parallelism Lab with $6 million in funding over three years from Sun Microsystems, AMD, Nvidia, IBM, HP, and Intel. Most new computers already feature multi-core processors, but not all software (or, it often seems, very much of it) is ready to make use of them. Stanford's general goal is to improve programming techniques, but the head of the lab, Kunle Olukotun, says there are three specific areas of focus: virtual worlds, robotics and massive data analysis jobs.

Virtual Reality Real Enough to Spark Addiction Cravings

We've noted previous work at Duke on using virtual worlds to combat addiction. University of Houston Associate Professor Patrick Bordnick is working in the same direction. His most recent research brought 40 alcohol-dependent people who were not receiving treatment into a guided virtual environment for 18 minutes that featured each individual's drink of choice. Participants were asked to rate their cravings and attention to alcohol during the session and interviewed afterwards. "What we found was that the VR environments were real enough that their cravings were intensified. So, now we can develop coping skills, practice them in those very realistic environments until those skills are working tools for them to use in real life," Bordnick said in a statement.

NPR on the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab

NPR yesterday had a short, but nice interview with Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. Bailenson gave a short, but intense rundown of some of his work at Metaverse U earlier this year, so it's nice to hear him explaining things at a public radio pace. The topic of the day is weight loss with a mirrored, optimal-self avatar through vicarious reinforcement. A participant is shown that weight loss is possible through exercise, and then, as research has shown, they're more likely to continue to exercise even out of the lab.  "What we can do is show you a model of your optimal self," said Bailenson.  "In two separate studies now we've demonstrated that the mere act of watching this causes you to see that weight change is possible and in your optimal self you can actually lose weight."

Satyam Looks to Mix Realities with Sonar and Holograms

Satyam, an India-based IT company, has been working for a year and a half on a way to blend real and virtual worlds with a holographic projector and grids of sonar sensors to track users movement in real world relative to the virtual. The product, being developed in Satyam's R&D labs in Chennai, has already attracted interest from a major military power as a simulator and another major aerospace industry player. For now, though, it's limited to a 2D prototype that lets people walk over a virtual piano and play it while being tracked by 64 sonar sensors in the ceiling. "It is proving popular with the employees' children who we sometimes bring in here to experiment with what we do," Venkatesh Chandrasekaran, head of automotive R&D, told Silicon.com.

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EU to Present CyberWalk, Virtual World Treadmill

In work supported by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission, a consortium of researchers have been developing the CyberWalk Project, an omni-directional treadmill with markerless tracking,  control and "several perceptual tricks" [PDF] aimed at letting users physically walk through a virtual world. The research will be presented this week to press and scientists, in a workshop from April 17-18 at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. “In the virtual environment you have flight simulators, car simulators, but the most natural way of locomotion for humans is walking and this was practically impossible,”  Marc Ernst, the coordinator of the CyberWalk project, told ICT Results.

Updated: Virtual Worlds Management Report: 100+ Youth-Oriented Worlds Live or Developing

Virtual Worlds Management released a new report today on Youth Worlds: Based on a comprehensive research available through Virtual Worlds News, we've found that there are now over 100 virtual worlds operating or in development with a focus on the youth market (18-and-under). It's worth noting that, at the younger level, the lines between virtual worlds, games, and social networking blur heavily. If nothing else, it's a fascinating trend at how users are merging their activities into one immersive space. Likewise, while the list is sure to change (please feel free to send in updates) it's a good snapshot of where the industry is at: [These numbers are updated according to several worlds that I'm currently adding to the list.] While there are 60 listed youth worlds currently live, another 53 are in concepting, development, or testing phases. In other words, keep an eye on this space.

VizWoz Numbers Update; Launching Virtual Cinema Next Week

VizWoz, a newly launched virtual world aimed at creating a safe virtual world for kids and teens, didn't get off to the best start last month with a tour for KZero's Nic Mitham. It did, however, impress The Guardian enough to land an Elevator Pitch column, where founder and CEO Daniel Laurence explained that the company's "launch target on March 21 was 20,000 users and we're aiming for 180,000 in 12 months - although this is a very conservative figure." I'm not sure how many users have come in, but within the first ten days 394,000 chat messages and 30,500 friend list invites were sent out, leading now to almost million  messages and room movements and 125,000 games played.

Photorealistic Virtual Worlds Only Years Away?

Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, is looking at a Graphics Turing Test. Instead of asking users to evaluate whether an unseen party in a conversation is human or not based on responses, he's interested in asking  whether a seen party appears human. In other words, to pass the test, we shouldn't be able to visually distinguish between the virtual world and the real. To do that, he says we need to combine current advances in photorealistic modeling with the ability to render the world at at least 30 frames per second (though the gamer in me wants to see at least 50fps). McGuigan believes that sort of advance is around the corner.

Interview: Millions of Us Announces Industry Coalition for Study on ROI in Virtual Worlds

Millions of Us, in partnership with Sulake, Gaia Interactive, Metaplace, SceneCaster, Doppelganger, Vivaty, and WeeWorld, with more expected to join, has announced an industry-wide coalition to commission a study from Forrester Consulting to study engagement metrics, and ROI in virtual worlds. "The basic idea is that we’ve organized a consortium of the major virtual world platforms, about 10 of them so far, who are all participating in a study by Forrester,"  Millions of Us CEO Reuben Steiger told Virtual Worlds News. "We’ve come out of the experimental phase of marketing in virtual worlds. Consequently, what we’re seeing as an agency for large brands is that they’re now committing non-experimental budgets. When they understand that this is a standalone category with 100 million people globally, they have a lot of trouble making sense of what to make sense."

Interview: Sulake Releases Second Annual Global Habbo Youth Survey

Last year Sulake, with the help of Finnish research firm 15/30, surveyed 42,000 users from 22 countries about their media habits, online actions, brand preferences and more. This year it turned to 58,000 of its users from 32 countries all on its own. “We're really proud of the fact that we did the survey independently in-house,” said Teemu Huuhtanen, EVP, marketing, ad sales and business development and president, North America. “It's an investment from the company point of view that we could hire quite a few people that have their backgrounds in research.  That's definitely an area where our partners see tremendous value.”

Evans Data Corp.: Software Developers Not Yet Interested in Virtual World Events

In a new Developer Relations Program report from Evans Data Cororation, 500 developers were interviewed about, among other things, their participation in virtual worlds for developer relations events. 10% had attended  developer conferences in Second Life, which sounds reasonable for the virtual world's penetration and the number of events going on, but 56% said they had no plans to participate in a virtual world event in the future. 34% were interested in Second Life events, but not in the near future. "Companies should focus on what works in terms of developer relations programs now,” John Andrews, president and CEO of Evans Data Corp, said in a statement. “While it’s great to be creative and take advantage of the latest technology, such as 3D environments, the data shows that the market isn’t quite there yet for serious training and events.” It's not clear, though, if respondents were asked about other virtual environments, like Unisfair or the new Tomorrow Space, more specifically targeted at easy access for short events.

RPI Creating AI in Second Life; Wants to Build Holodeck

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,  with support from IBM and other outside parties, are experimenting with  using avatars to test cognitive theory inside of Second Life. It's not about an NPC simply following a behavior script; instead RPI wants avatars that can "predict and manipulate the behavior of even human players, with whom they will directly interact in the real, physical world [...] by coupling logic-based artificial intelligence and computational cognitive modeling techniques with the processing power of a supercomputer." Even without AI, crude avatars can already be pretty good at manipulating people, and Gartner is looking ahead to the time when avatars are even more persuasive. RPI is starting small (literally), but looking ahead.

Update and Mea Culpa: Study on Gender Swapping Only So-So

Last week we covered a study out of Nottingham Trent University that found up to 70% of women in online games reported swapping genders for their characters and 54% of men said the same. Richard Bartle has since taken the study apart: "The paper's authors do point out some of the problems with their survey themselves, which although enough to give academic cause for concern would not trouble journalists with a deadline to meet [JS: Admittedly, I'm guilty of this]. These are: the survey respondents may not have told the truth; it's a small sample; the sample was self-selected; they only got their samples from four sources." There's certainly gender swapping going on in virtual worlds, but this looks like far from the final word on the subject. My apologies to you all for putting pushing the story forward.  [via Giff Constable's Out to Pasture]

Digital Entertainment Survey: 48% of Britons Have Never Heard of Second Life

Entertainment Media Research, an entertainment research consultancy, released its 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey earlier this week, looking at responses from 1,608 UK consumers aged 15-54 in January 2008. There's no section specifically devoted to virtual worlds, but there's plenty of interesting information in the meticulously cross-referenced 249-page report. Hit the jump for a breakdown of social networks and MMORPGs.

Most Online World Users Swap Gender

A new study out of Nottingham Trent University found that most users of online games where they could use a character of any race or gender took advantage of the flexibility: Up to 70% of women reported swapping genders and 54% of men said the same.  "It seems that women gender swap for a variety of reasons, such as to avoid unsolicited male approaches on their female characters, or because they felt male characters were treated better by other males during the course of the game," Zaheer Hussain, who co-authored the study, told The Guardian. Men swapped to flirt and swap different aspects of their personalities. [UPDATE: The study isn't quite as strong as we thought.]

NPD Begins Tracking Paid Subscriptions

The NPD Group announced yesterday that it would begin tracking  paid subscriptions and reporting them on a quarterly basis in addition to its more traditional retail sales numbers. Based on 3 million consumers who have agreed to complete online surveys, the "NPD’s PC Software Subscriptions Reports deliver insight into market size, title level detail and demographic profiles for consumer software subscription spending in the Security, Tax, Personal Finance and Online Storage markets," according to the company. The company will also track Xbox Live subscriptions, but it will not track paid downloadable games. “The reasons we're not tracking that yet are a technical, the methodology is a bit different,” NPD Group VP Martin Zagorsek told Next Generation. “We're hoping to address downloads later this year.”

World of Warcraft Tops PC Game Retail in 2007

This is our last bit of World of Warcraft news for a little while, but the massively popular roleplaying virtual world keeps topping lists and breaking records. Just this week, Blizzard announced that its game had hit the 10 million subscription mark, likely fueled, at least in part, by its high sales last year. The World of Warcraft franchise took the top two slots in NPD's breakdown of PC games sales for 2007. World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade moved 2.25 million copies while the basic game sold 914,000. While it's not an online version, The Sims franchise dominated as well, taking up four slots with a total of 1,221,000 units moved through retail. In a year when PC gaming retail dropped almost $60 million from previous years, the trend is significant. Games that focus on multiplayer, social, and casual elements are dominating. The virtual worlds industry has already taken notice.  [via Gamasutra]

What Are YOUR 2008 Predictions and Business Goals

VirtualWorldsNews.com wants to know your industry predictions and business goals for 2008. Answer the following questions on your own blog and then post a link to your blog entry in the comments section below. If you don't have a blog you can just post your answers in the comments below. These are the same questions we asked 45 industry leaders in the Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2008.  No cheating, answers must be supplied before Jan. 1, 2008.

1. What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?
2. What business goals have you set for 2008?
3. What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for the virtual worlds industry?
4. A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on the industry?
5. How will the above changes affect your specific segment of the industry in 2008?

Register Now for Virtual Worlds 2008 and Save $700

Register now to attend the Virtual World 2008 Conference and Save $700 off the onsite price. Early registration - only $595 - is open only until February 29, 2008.  Register Now.  Plus, secure your hotel room before prices go up.

Virtual Currencies Attract Users to Online Surveys

Peanut Labs recruits people from social networks to take online surveys. While some online survey companies attract "professional respondents" through banner ads, which produces less reliable results, Peanut Labs is attracting people with cheaper, but more interesting, virtual currencies. By doing so, Peanut Labs is seeing response rates of 29%, which is four times higher than the industry average. And 80% of those respondents are choosing currencies for virtual worlds over cash or gift certificates for iTunes.