Gaming / Virtual Worlds

An update on Second Life numbers.............

Clay Shirky points to journalist David Kirkpatrick (see comment section here) numbers from Second Life CEO Philip Rosedale:

As of January 1st, 2.3m avatars created

Actual users who have entered Second Life - 1,525,670 unique email addresses have logged into SL at least once. This is not IP addresses, which would be expected to be less as some people create avatars from multiple email addresses.

Of these, 252,284 people have logged in more than 30 days after their account creation date. Percent of registrants still active after 30 days was 45% in early 2004, now running at c 15%.

About 40,000 users are paying members (I assume mostly, if not all, landowners - though ownership is of course on a leasehold basis).

So the "active" user base would seem to be (roughly) that 250,000, plus some % of people who visit much more occasionally - if that were about another 10% of all email addresses that gives a number of about 400,000. As an "order of magnitude" that tallies far more with my experience - the most people I have seen online is about 14,000 at any one time over the Xmas period.

This is useful...hopefully moves the debate on from all the hooha about total number of users, to what is actually being done in Second Life and other Web 3.D environments, which in my view is truly revolutionary.

I have been to two talks in the last 6 months where people claimed 1.0m and then 2.0m users of Second Life. Both times I blogged afterwards that I had never seen more than about 10,000 on when I was there, but being a trusting soul I took the PR guys at their word

Well, turns out I was not the only one scratching my head as to where all the avatars had gone.

Clay Shirky did a bit of analysis and wrote a very sharp piece about all this on Tuesday.

Turns out that Linden claims 2.0m *residents*, where a resident is defined as the avatar, not the user. However it is very unlikely that the ratio is 1:1.....many people have more than one avatar. Also, apparently Linden’s own numbers suggest that the Residents figure includes even failed attempts to use the service. They were adding their second million Residents between mid-October and December 14th, but they also reported just shy of 810 thousand logins for the same period.

In addition, this figure is gross of churn, and I have seen figures as high as 85% bandied about, that may also include inactive avatars though.

Thus at its worst, assuming say a ratio of 1.5 : 1 of avatars to users, 1.8m gross avatar logins and say a 66% churn, Second Life would be on something like 400,000 actual users in reality. An "industry standard" 33% churn puts them at about 800,000 users.

Pity they felt the need to do this really, it just makes it worse when it all comes out and I do think they are doing something very interestng.

(Addendum...great article comparing Virtual Reality's (broken) promises 10 years ago with Second Life today over at Valleywag. I played with VR. the economics and computer power are very different today, but it is a sobering lesson)

Now to do some digging to see if its so lonely at Habbo Hotel

You know something is happening when there are TWO events on Virtual Worlds in one night. I went to This One by Music Ally et al and missed out on That One at the Dana Centre.

The thing that I have been mulling over for the last few days is what the next phase is for virtual worlds. The reason for this stem partly from my own experience with these virtual worlds and gaming in general, and partly from a conversation I had afterwards with IBM metaverse evangelist Roo Reynolds.

Essentially, 2nd Life and Habbo Hotel are on two opposite ends of the "ease of use" spectrum for Virtual Worlds

Habbo is designed to be a "low usage threshold" environment. Your avatar looks like a little lego man and the clothing options are pretty basic, and the environment is pre-constructed. Your own options for self expression revolve around decking your hotel room out (ie a 3D profile) and buying furniture from Habbo (with real money of course). Bad behaviour is not part of the Habbo Way.

Second Life is the other extreme - you can build your land, your house, your chattels, yourself, and any darn thing your pixel-dusted mind can think of. You can stream video, audio, bloggio or whatever in from outside. Anything goes, from gory S&M bondage cultures through to joining the Second Life Liberation Army

However, the time taken to get used to operating a Second Life avatar and in getting connected in this huge virtual planet is not small - 20 to 30 hours I would estimate to be vaguely competent. I would compare that to 20 - 30 minutes with a Habbo Avatar.

This matters...the evidence from the Gaming World is that not many people have the time / inclination to immerse themselves in the increasingly complex gameworlds emerging. During the Virtual World talk, it was mentioned that Second Life was c 1.5 m users and growing rapidly, and that c 1m of these users were mainstream (I would put it much higher than that, personally).

This has changed usage - rather than being Creators, building Byzantine palaces and other New nirvanae as their profile signatures, these new arrivals' creative bent goes about as far as putting cyber-bling on their avatar - or buying new branded trainers and colouring them in. You hardly need a system as complex as Second Life to do that.

Habbo, though, is just too restricted - you can't configure the environment, and there is no easy ability to import media.

But at the end the day these sites are, in fact, (as the session panel convenor Toby Lewis of Music Ally heretically put it), just glorified chat rooms (or social media sites as we term them in 2006)

This is where the conversation with Roo comes in - IBM uses 2nd Life for virtual conferencing and more, and it has a number of benefits - its much easier to see mixed media in a 3D world (Powerpoint, video, text, avatars), and people react better to an avatar as there is simply a bigger bandwidth interaction - they even have water cooler conversations. Its not quite real world face to face but its better than 2D IM

But IM is easy to use for the mass market, its almost Habbo level of entry threshold - Second Life is decidedly not. And for the business / professional market, who has the time to learn to use a Second Life Avatar (and the self confidence to look a complete dummy in front of colleagues). However, getting 3D conferencing and services right will save companies and people large amounts of money in travelling and markerting costs alone.

For these reasons I think that the major growth area will be some form of mid-range Virtual World. As I already discussed in "You can't sell Soda on a Sword an Sorcery Site", the world will have to be modernistic to attract ad revenues.

Sort of like a Second Sims....

Every Tom, Dick and Harriet Company now seem to think the New New Thing is to announce your next new new product in Second Life, with Sun and Dell being the latest up.

I don't know who is advising them (well, actually I do...see below) but this is a becoming a bad idea, since:

(i) It has been overdone, it is just so not cool anymore - the buzz being created is more Wilde than Wild now (see Sun's here and Dell's here).

(ii) It is inconvenient for the intended audience if they have to log in to 2nd Life for the show, as it takes quite a few hours to handle a 2nd Life avatar competently - even less complex sites such as Habbo Hotel can have their problems for participants (see here for the pitfalls one can experience).

(iii) The tone is wrong for Dell - with an exclusive only audience it flies in the face of the whole "inclusive" movement that Web 2.0 is (or was - since the Web 2.0 Conference last week was apparently invite only maybe this is the New New Trend. Mayhap Mash and Cash don't mix?).

OK, its another small step for mammon - but why 2nd Life anyway, why not elsewhere?

It’s all to do with Wizardry.

It is apparently very hard to credibly advertise todays' products like computers, soda and other consumer stuff in a medieval "Sword and Sorcery" gameworld (except Swords by Wilkinson maybe?). Unfortunately all the other large Virtual Worlds (Runescape, World of Warcraft) are basically Dark Age dreamlands. (See here for a quick 101 on Virtual Economics.)

In other words 2nd Life however has enough virtual footfall (1 million alleged Avatars) to be interesting, and flogging today's consumer crafts to Trolls and Wizards is just too incongruous.

However, Second Lifers are apparently getting fed up with the grief these PR "flacks" are causing. After all, most people's wishes for Paradise do not include hucksters, billboards, boorish touristi and all the 1st Life hustle they are trying to get away from (I assume anyway), so (shock horror) the cool school are heading out to the islands, setting up private spaces and leaving the virtual inner cities to the Griefers.

For example, one major area called DreamLand (about 10% of Second Life) has just voted to ban PR flacksters from their turf. This report on the Nov 11th edition of the Second Life Herald is indicative of the anger welling up.

"Especially with the engagement of public relations firms in the space, a few corporate players have demonstrated their willingness to take advantage of early Second Life pioneers' achievements in unethical ways. It appears to have become common practice in certain corporate circles to copy concepts that have long been pioneered by Second Life residents, to then make false claims of inventorship in the real world media. Examples are companies that falsely claimed to launch the '1st radio station in SL', '1st fashion brand in SL', '1st tabloid in SL' or to be the '1st company launched in SL'. All these concepts have already been pioneered for years in professional, successful and profitable ways by lesser known Second Life residents."

Androids may dream of Electric Sheep, but not with advertising on their flanks.

Taking things further, there are now episodes of protest art and the Second Life Liberation Army has placed bounties on the heads of the Ad agencies bringing corporates into Second Life.

Linden labs, (Second Life's Creators) in the meantime have been raising prices on the islands, allegedly to stop property flipping but many residents think this is to stem the flow of Virtual Refugees away from the (commercially) richer soil of the Mainland. Whatever the reasons, prices are going up and commercialism is rushing in where avatars fear to tread.

But, even assuming the flacksters become more sensitive to the virtual environment, the issue longer term is that asking people to pay more to be bombarded with Messages from Our Sponsors is not sustainable in the long term, as by and large we (virtually and really) don't like commercialism except as a bribe to get at something else we want more cheaply than we otherwise can get it.

I am thus waiting spellbound for the first Ad-supported Virtual World that pays you for the amount of time you spend on it.

After all, if Google can give away mobile phones for free, paid for by advertising, then giving away a Virtual Mansion and adjacent Billboard should be a bagatelle.

You read it here first

Now, being contrarian we're going the other way...brewing Virtual Mead to sell on Runescape. Its just that programming all those virtual bees takes so darn long.....

Dastardly Dealings in 2nd Life - our man Dark Harlequin reports:.

Back in May real life contract law started to impact Second Life (see Wired article for example) as sharp practitioners and sharp practices (allegedly) moved in.

However, seems like 2nd Life now has a few sharp practices of its own too...clearly they now also want a cut of the real world asset price bubble and last Sunday they sharply raised their own land prices with one days notice but shut off the sales system except for a quick auction of 150 lots.

This has caused a hullabaloo, not just because of the short notice, but it would seem the shadowy Friends of Second Life (those Land Barons who are alleged by The Rest to always get an inside track on all land deals) did not get an inside track - and are thus doubly miffed, as the 2nd Life Herald reports. Anyway, the deadline is now 15th November, and the Linden CEO is defending the 35% uplift basically by arguing that too much tacky development is going on in 2nd Life and this price hike will stop land flippers profiteering.

This highlights the fact that no one owns land in 2nd life. It is in fact a prefectly Feudal system, there are chains of sub rentals, so when prices go up to the main tenant, the subtenants do...what exactly? How does such a contract work if I have contracted to pay you as my landlord X and then you try to up it? What happens when someone in the chain defects? I await the first lawsuit from sub sub sub tenants with some interest.

And next up, the Taxman cometh...it would seem the Australian Tax Office is the first tax authority to take an interest.

And I wonder when eBay will start to have to look at all the arbitraging of Linden dollars in various currencies? And how long till the first money laundering schemes on 2nd Life are found I wonder? As the GigaOm article referenced above points out, it will get interesting when the Men in Black start investigating the tax scams et al, and want to look at Linden's records in triplicate.

Don't say we didnt warn you, see point viii in this post.

With all the Corporate wannabegroovies setting up in 2nd Life now, I think its only right and proper that all the Tax Offices should set up there too - in fact, I have a nice piece of land they can use, lovely views, buy now...

Well, I tried to get onto Habbo Hotel today to attend the Mobile Youth Virtual Networking 2006 session this afternoon.

Hah!

After going through the nannying Habbo setup screens (can't use these characters, we don't like your username, don't like that password - the one I always use) I finally got to the "done" section - hit the key, and lo - before I even got into the Habbo Hotel I was banned by a moderator with no reason being given! Tried my private email address and agreed to get the spam mail just in case, same result. I even reduced my age to see if the auto assumption is that any older guy is a pervert (or just not wanted), but still the banned result (thankfully, in a way).

Went back after confirming my email address (even though there was no sign that this was a prerequisite), got a congrats you are confirmed - but was still banned.

I let my 11 year old son enter himself, same process, same issue - he is also now banned from Habbo. They clearly don't like Runescape Wizards in Habbo Hotel !

We had, according to the Banning Order, apparently contravened the "Habbo Way". Not that we ever got into the system, so we hadn't a clue what we did wrong. So, off we trotted to the "Contact Us" bit (deeply hidden in the site), and found that there is a 48 hour turnaround to even reply to a query, and a 7 day bar cycle for being banned.

So, net net, thanks Habbo - I missed the meeting, missed an opportunity to try a virtual conference, and my son and I are both totally disenchanted with our treatment - a "room full" or "we have a problem" would have been a bit nicer way to tell us we could not enter - and certainly a better remedy to problems than "you are banned - now FAQ Off" - is required.

Seems like some things never change, rude customer service remains in virtual worlds. Fortunately there is choice - back to Runescape and 2nd Life for us.

Maybe we were unlucky, maybe we are digital untouchables, maybe the system was down, maybe the moderator had a bad hair day, maybe it can't handle Firefox 2.0 - who knows, the system didn't tell us anything - but this is not the way to treat customers, especially online. We have blogs now, and we can talk about this stuff - online, globally.

Cave Customer

Postscript - my son eventually got in on IE 6.0 using the same email address (his) for both his parental guardian and his character, so heaven knows what security checking system they use

Post-Postscript - have traded 3 emails so far with Habbo, the basic response (after 2 queries for the same basic details) is that I was been banned for not following the Habbo Way. I have sought clarification as to how I could have done that, having never got as far as getting into the site - maybe, as in the famous Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch, my character's shirt choice was too loud?

Yesterday I attended the NMK session "My So Called 2nd Life" - there were a number of very interesting talks, very perceptive questions, and illuminating conversation in the bar afterwards. The talks were a good mix of big and small company plays and academic work.

It was far more mind expanding than any illegal substance, and so much fun it should be banned - the whole "feel" is like the mid 90's again. (Of course, in the mid 90's this was all called Virtual Reality - and it was very virtual because the computers just could not crunch at the price performance they do now)

As we delved into the various MMORPGS, ARGS, MOORs and so on, it became clear to me that we are actually looking at the early form of the "next" Web development phase after Web 2.0.

To explain..."Web 2.0" is essentially - when all is said and done - the endgame of Web 1.0 dreams. To be fair, the open environment of Web 2.0 has been taken to an unimagined level with tagging, mashups etc - or was until the money started to arrive anyway - but essentially it is about broadband speed and penetration. Massive numbers of web wise "eyeballs" are connected to cheap, fat pipes, doing a lot of the stuff that was dreamed about in Web 1.0 but was just not then feasible or affordable. We had VoIP in 1999 for example, but you had to buy for $200 what your laptop now comes with for free, then set up your own wifi station (with a pringle antenna), and do it all on a dialup line.

The next phase of the Web though will (imho) be both a continuation of this trend, yet different. It is a continuation in that it will do, with ever increasing power and bandwidth, what we have done since the text internet (and before) since time immemorial - form "social nets" and communicate with each other. It is different in that it will be virtual 3D, and that is a much richer contextual environment that will blur real life with virtual life.

i.e., not so much Web 3.0 as Web 3.D!

Taking some of the principles of the Web today and projecting, here is a possible scenario-set:

(i) User Generated Content - building our own spaces, our own personae, and probably using the 3D worlds to make our own content - machima is the starting point, but YouTube has shown there is a lot more talent out there than those officially sanctioned by the Media Moguls. Who will be the first to film Hamlet in 2nd Life or similar?

(ii) Existing content - as iTunes has shown, content at a reasonable price, allowing a high degree of user choice and "playlisting" (a form of user content generation) that is easy to download/upload is very attractive. I also think content rights may increasingly evolve into a de facto "Use it or Lose it"

(ii) Identity and Profile - my 3D avatar(s) becomes the repository of my identity, which I own. This avatar travels between applications and interacts with them, sometimes in 2D, sometimes in 3D. I will probably have a nuber of avatars (profiles) depending on the application, Clearly the management of Intimacy will be far more subtle than it is today on MSN say, and relate more to real life.

(iii) Search will change....at present search in 2nd Life is non existent, that must change and will do so as it becomes open. The current search regimes were built for Web 1.0, (which is why the GYM crowd have had to acquire web 2.0 technology), but the emerging world will have much richer metadata and thus new search techniques will apply.

(iv) Webservices are becoming mainstream, reliable and have an increasingly light touch on the client, allowing dumber and dumber devices to become part of the experience.

(v) Bandwidth - ah, bandwidth. The nay-sayers argue that as soon as we all start consuming movies etc the bandwidth will collapse. But my observaton over the last 10 years is that there has always been a nay-saying about bandwidth, especially by the owners of the last generation of business models. However, bandwidth provision and demand are in a sort of helix dance, and there is still a huge amount of darknet out there. I don't think we will all be consuming TV and VoD movies all the time anyway, the alternatives are just too enticing and will become more so as the blend of real and virtual worlds increases.

(vi) The Customer Environment - Game machines, Mobiles, TV, PC...will all interwork (not as devices, the manufacturers are determined not to do that) as Services. I will set up my service on my PC, consume it on my TV at home and interact with it on a Mobile or Nintendo when out and about. What will be most revolutionary is the the "environment" will blend between the virtual and the real world. My Avatar has already attended seminars on line in 3D, 2nd lifers increasingly arrange to meet in real pubs, and ARG players play virtual games in real worlds - the trend to using reality as a backdrop to the 3D characters' world will continue.

Will I still consume old media - sure, the new never replaces the old - but they fight for the same hours and wallet, so getting attention will be the key issue going forward.

(vii) Analytics - there is a lot of data generated by you online....all the commercial Co's (and no doubt governments) will want to collect it, but I see an increasing counter-drive to privacy as well - the end position will be an Opt-In play - I share data about me, but at a price.

(vii) Advertising.....it must happen, and is to be encouraged as a way of subsidising services - but beware, we can "TiVo" a virtual world quite well. 2nd Life for example has roughly doubled in population in 4 or so months, a mass immigration if ever there was one, and this is attracting mass retail interest. However, caveat retailer - in 2nd Life or similar users can just go somewhere else, so the challenge will be to enhance the existing experience - for example will an easy to navigate 3D Grocery mart be better than shopping online off a web page?

To me it is quite sad the way many Brands are now barging into 2nd Life, boots and all, to get the publicity buzz - the risk is it turns into another overdeveloped tourist resort, the virtual equivalent of Torremolinos or somesuch. (Mind you, I was told yesterday that in 2nd Life life the inhabitants have moved from mainly building cool stuff to buying expensive branded shoes and colouring them in, so it looks like the package tourists are coming in droves! I await the first Virtual Timeshare huckster with trepidation )

Tourism kills the thing it loves, but in a virtual world one can more easily go elsewhere when Costa Cyber is full of Cr*p!

For this reason, one can imagine subscription services also existing, both as business models where longer term commitment is required to build services, or for private services, or simple to avoid advertising supported ones.

(viii) Bad Behaviour. Yesterday we asked the Linden guy about possible money laundering, tax evasion, fraud etc on 2nd Life. One of the speakers actually noted that deviant behaviour is a norm in society. The answer so far is we must be all be excellent to each other and be self policing. .I can believe that in an early environment it is all fine, but by and large cometh the money (the stampede by the Brands shows its arriving), then cometh the crooks.

We are all the same underneath all this...humans do human stuff, regardless of the medium or the media.

(ix) V-Government - it is clear that if the Real/Virtual world mix occurs in a commercial sense, it needs to exist in a governmental sense too. That doesn't mean I want to see Dave peddling his Green V-Bike in 2nd Life, but it does mean that government communication will need to reach into this world. Who knows, maybe this is the way to break the political apathy in so many developed countries. Anyone up for the Ban No Fly Zones Movement in 2nd Life ?

(x) V-B2B - Videoconferencing, meetings, presentations can all be failrly well done in 3G worlds - in fact there are advantages over traditional Videoconferencing, we were told yesterday by IBM that one unexpected effect of Virtual Conferencing is avatars having "water cooler" conversations, which you can't get in a phone meeting or videocon. Private environments where business can be done will no doubt come into effect, if not on 2nd Life then elsewhere.

Thats a brief brain dump summary. One small step for avatar kind......

Interesting post on GigaOm about women gamers. Neilsen has a new study on gaming demographics (see here).

According to Neilsen, ratios are:

- 2 to 1: ratio of men to women in overall gaming universe.
- 56%: percentage of active gamers who play online.
- 64%: percentage of online gamers who are women.

The Daedalus Project also shows some interesting demographics. From its survey data, the average age of the World of Warcraft player is 28.3 (SD = 8.4). 84% of players are male. 16% are female. Female players are significantly older (M = 32.5, SD = 10.0) than male players (M = 28.0, SD = 8.4).

So where are all these women and what are they doing?

The common wisdom I am aware of is that most women don't like to play competitive games, or those that require a lot of downloading and time investment in characters. Allegedly they mainly play simple online games that are free. A large part of the potential market is not paying subscriptions.

GigaOm notes that "The consensus is that online, women tend to play casual, Java and Flash-powered web games like Bejeweled5, generally passing on download-install-and-play “hardcore” online world games like World of Warcraft."

Interesting. I know many women play non PC based games like Dungeons and Dragons, so its not sword and sorcery per se that puts them off. And also, in "2nd Life" about 40% of players there are women.

What do women want then?

In observing women gamers and chatting to them, and scouring various chat boards on the subject I come away with a few general principles about what women like in games:

(i) creativity - do it yourself, or at least some saty in defining environments
(ii) being part of a non-competitive social network
(iii) using simple, easy to load and use games systems

This sounds a lot like the principles of Web 2.0. Maybe the way to include women is in the application of Web 2.0 principles to Gaming.

Gaming 2.0 anyone?