emzee

I remember reading Idoru years ago, where one of the characters is a purely virtual pop idol, a software construct created to entertain the masses. You can imagine the advantages - no rehab, no paparazzi, no romances with sketchy guys.. though there’s always a risk of a software bug causing her to freeze up in mid-concert (please be patient while we reboot the performer..).

Frank Sinatra’s royalties are safe for now

A virtual pop star is a lot way off, but synthetic singing software already exists… enter whatever words and notes you want, and it sings them. They of course created a virtual idol (limitations be damned) called Miku Hatsune, whose songs are all over Japanese charts.. it’s all still pretty scripted, so we’ll have to deal with the Britneys and Winehouses for a few more years, but I’m looking forward to the day when tabloids are full of rumors that the latest virtual idol has caught a deadly computer virus (planted by a jealous rival, natch..).

I came across this video of an interview with Chris Carella from Electric Sheep, a digital agency specializing in virtual worlds. The interview itself was pretty good, but what was unusual (for me at least) was that it was done inside Second Life, in a virtual lecture hall, with people attending via their avatars.

I was watching this a couple of weeks after it happened, courtesy of SLCN, which offers videos of Second Life events. The video looked odd at first - none of the avatars were actually moving, they just sat there as the participants talked via actual audio (no IM-style typing bubbles, that’s so 2006). The camera moved around, panning and switching between angles, so it was engaging enough to watch… but at first I wondered why this is any better than a conference call - why bother with the 3D representation?

But after a while it did start to feel different. The TV-style angles, the constant subliminal message that this was happening in some kind of “space” some”where”.. it gave the event a more tangible feel than the disembodied nothingness you feel when you’re on a con-call. It certainly was more memorable, though it’s hard to say whether it was the visual context or just the novelty of the experience.

Plenty has been blogged about the overhyping of Second Life, but this week it reached a new level - there are now market research firms conducting virtual focus groups and other types of research with Second Life residents.. so even if we get over the fact that SL geeks are not exactly typical consumers, to put it politely, what could companies like Coca-Cola possibly want to know about these people? In-game consumption of virtual cola? Or maybe Trojan wants to research the market for virtual condoms for all the 3d genitalia SL residents seem to be buying.

The other issue is more basic - market research relies on the fact that most people tell the truth (more or less) when they’re taking surveys or participating in focus groups.. but in a virtual world, the whole point is you get to be somebody else - I’m guessing a good number of the foxy babes and buff dude avatars in SL have McD’s-scarfing walruses at the keyboards pulling their puppet strings. So if people are taking liberties with their avatars (except for me, of course, I really do have wavy blond hair and huge pecs), can you trust anything they’d say on a survey??

It feels like I’m reading announcements about new virtual worlds almost every day now, CosmoGirl’s is the latest, and MTV now has half a dozen. There’s no way this can continue.. unlike regular social networking sites, virtual worlds need to have people actually there, hanging out, in order to be fun. On Facebook it’s enough for people to pop in for a few minutes every day or few, poke a few friends or post some photos, and it feels like there’s a lot going on. If you walk into a virtual room 2 minutes after your friends have just logged off, you’ll be sitting there staring at four (virtual) walls.

The other issue is managing all of your identities and profiles. It’s hard enough with the social networking sites, though networks like Flux are popping up.. soon you’ll be able to cross-connect your profiles all over the place. But while most social networking sites are pretty open web platforms, most virtual worlds are very closed (technologically speaking) so if you set up an avatar in one, there’s no easy way to move it to another.. Second Life just announced that they’ll be working on this, maybe instead of one big metaverse we’ll end up with a zillion little virtual worlds all linked together with people merrily teleporting from one to the next.

This evening I had a discussion with a friend over drinks about virtual worlds and teens. He had all kinds of great ideas about what kinds of games and creative properties would appeal to today’s teens. But in my mind, any teen-focused online community will succeed or fail on its ability to walk the fine line between keeping out the creeps and predators, and allowing teens to explore the racier and riskier sides of their imaginations.

Nancy Drew still going strong, online

Here’s the core dilemma - if you try to create a space for teens online without any barriers or safeguards, you’re bound to attract sexual predators and various other perverts. But if you place too many restrictions on what users can do or say in the community, you’ll quickly bore your main audience - teens who are in a phase in their lives where they’re exploring who they are, in part by taking risks and pushing boundaries.

One of the most attractive aspects of online environments for some people is that it lets you experiment with identity and behaviour in a environment that’s lower-risk than the “real world.” But there’s a difference between low risk and no risk, and even in virtual worlds it’s easy to find examples where behaviors cross the line, especially when the people involved are younger and still working out the kinks in their sense of right and wrong. Anyone who’s spent time in mainstream online worlds knows they’re full of underage players, but anyone who sets up a world explicitly aimed at teens won’t have the luxury of playing dumb.

It’s a tough nut to crack, but whoever does it first will have a long line of marketers willing to pay top dollar for a peek at their audience.

A little over a week ago the Wall Street Journal ran an article on Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon famous for his work on virtual worlds.. he’s dying of cancer and was giving his last lecture, to much acclaim. I didn’t give it much more thought until I stumbled across the video of his lecture The talk is pretty inspiring, not only is Pausch an entertaining speaker, he’s absurdly healthy-looking and perky for someone who only has a few months to live.

The part that caught my attention was his work in co-founding the Entertainment Technology Center and its Masters program. It’s not the only program that attempts to combine left-brain and right-brain studies - my department at Parsons has similarly lofty goals. Most such programs tend to be dominated by one side or the other, usually due to imbalances in the faculty.. there’s a natural friction between art/design people and technology/business people, and I guess in most schools one side wears the other down over time.

ETC seems to have found a balance, maybe because both founders had equally strong personalities? Pausch definitely made it sound like the relationship was stormy, though fun. Stormy-but-fun is a good way to describe all the creative/business collaborations I’ve been a part of, I don’t think there’s any other way to get the best out of both worlds.