{"id":1551,"date":"2010-03-01T07:01:44","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T12:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicholsclan.com\/tinblog\/?p=1551"},"modified":"2010-02-26T15:16:23","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T20:16:23","slug":"the-path-of-least-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/03\/the-path-of-least-resistance.html","title":{"rendered":"The Path of Least Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Virtual<\/a>
Kim and I all dressed up for our virtual wedding.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was over three years ago that I took the plunge into virtual worlds<\/a>.\u00a0 There was a lot of momentum building in the gaming and social networking arenas and a lot of money and energy being spent to build and draw people into these virtual environments. The predictions at that time, including mine, were that VWs (virtual worlds, not Volkswagens) would continue to mature and eventually become the next generation of the web.\u00a0 People eventually wouldn’t logon to a website or service anymore as much as they would step into it.<\/p>\n

However, as CNet’s Daniel Terdiman observes in a recent column<\/a>, the wind is out of the VW sails.\u00a0 Much of the energy lately has gone into social gaming like Farmville<\/a> and Mafia Wars<\/a> or into the kid-friendly 2.5D worlds of Club Penguin<\/a> and Habbo Hotel<\/a>.\u00a0 Meanwhile, worlds like Second Life<\/a> and even the more game oriented World of Warcraft<\/a> have been technically stagnant.\u00a0 So are VWs dead?\u00a0 In short, no.\u00a0 They’re just taking a more circuitous route than anticipated.<\/p>\n

Several factors are at work here.\u00a0 A key one being that the economy has seriously slowed the flow of cash into funding new development of any sort.\u00a0 Lots of industries have gone technically fallow over the last 18 months or so.\u00a0 Flash based games and Facebook<\/a> games are dirt cheap to produce by comparison.\u00a0 So it’s not surprising that this is where the effort is going.\u00a0 Still, in many respects, the social nature of gaming and online activity has continued to grow apace.\u00a0 The growth of Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, the interactive commentary on most every blog and news service, networked game consoles with multiplayer games, and other similar applications continue to point to consumers being ever more comfortable connecting, interacting, and sharing online.\u00a0 Virtual Worlds remain the next logical step.\u00a0 An immersive experience where the user is projected into the social interaction rather than typing and reading at its periphery.<\/p>\n

The advent of mainstream 3D movies, like Avatar<\/a>, and games, like Call of Duty<\/a> have made great strides in acclimating people to the idea that realistic environments can be manufactured.\u00a0\u00a0 Meanwhile, 3D televisions and computer monitors are poised to bring 3D content into our homes over the next few years.\u00a0 Very high bandwidth symmetrical Internet connections are also moving into the home.\u00a0 (More slowly in the USA than elsewhere, but that’s a different topic.)\u00a0 And new interface technologies such as Wii controllers<\/a> and Microsoft’s Project Natal<\/a> will free people from cumbersome keyboards and gaming handsets and allow them to interact with the VWs in natural and intuitive ways.\u00a0 All the trends continue to point a future where a virtual world based web is as common and accepted as having a Facebook page is today.\u00a0 All we really quibble about is the timing.<\/p>\n

Yet even with all the technological and sociological convergence toward a VW based future, there remains an enormous hurdle.\u00a0 Second Life founder Philip Rosedale said, “The deeper, fully immersive virtual worlds, as Second Life has shown, it’s just a huge amount of work.”\u00a0 Chris Sherman, lead organizer of the Virtual Worlds conference added that the cost of building 3D worlds and “the return on investment is simply not there.”<\/p>\n

VWs, even fantastical ones, are fundamentally built from objects in our real world.\u00a0 The trees may be purple and the people blue with tails, but these are all elemental structures we are familiar with.\u00a0 Moreover, in the same way that most people’s Facebook pages are pretty reflective of their real selves, it’s reasonable to assume that most VWs will also be reality-based.\u00a0 Currently, the process of turning objects in the real world into 3D models is painful and expensive.\u00a0 It’s well within the grasp of Hollywood, but remains outside the capability of the average consumer to perform or to pay for.\u00a0 This is the nut that remains uncracked.<\/p>\n

Not to fear though.\u00a0 Eventually, somebody will devise a process to affordably capture snippets of the real world and make them available for you and I to share and use.\u00a0 In principle, it’s much like photography.\u00a0 Once an arcane art, but simplified by George Eastman<\/a> and made accessible to everyone so that their world, their memories, their lives might be tangibly shared.\u00a0 Same idea, different century.\u00a0 If only George were around today… this seems like the sort of opportunity he’d be all over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was over three years ago that I took the plunge into virtual worlds.\u00a0 There was a lot of momentum<\/p>\n

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