Massively^™

From Chiba, Japan, AP reports on Sony and Microsoft's upcoming avatar-based offerings at the annual Tokyo Game Show. Associated Press goes to great lengths to avoid spooking what they seem to feel are a parochial and hidebound audience with gems like, 'In the so-called "metaverse" in cyberspace, players manipulate digital images called "avatars" that represent themselves, engaging in relationships, social gatherings and businesses.'

Of course, the notion of graphical avatars as a part of a wide variety of Internet services has persisted for most of the last two decades, but even the sense of this is backwards.To the casual and uninformed observer it might appear that the user manipulates this (ahem) 'digital image' to perform actions, but this is substantively not the case. The user moves or takes action through the virtual environment in relation to spaces and to other users, and the avatar represents the action to others.

It's just that sort of long-arm punditry that seems to make AP compare Sony's Home and Microsoft's Avatar service with Linden Lab's Second Life, despite Sony and Microsoft's respective services having about as much in common with Second Life, as they have with Mortal Kombat. 'The real-time interactive computer-graphic worlds are similar to Linden Lab's "Second Life,"' writes the AP correspondent, in a wondrously surreal moment.

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	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Linden Lab certainly showed signs of fear when Google's Lively kicked off its public beta. Now we're seeing signs more akin to terror, panic or desperation. 'Who wouldn't be concerned when Google comes after their business?' said new Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon to Bloomberg.

Given recent changes and marketing pushes, you can see Linden Lab's management showing a sheen of sweat. Curiously, it seems that Google isn't after Linden Lab's business -- Lively's certainly no competitor to the business that Linden Lab has. However, what Google represents seems to be a threat to the business that Linden Lab wants to have.

This week saw the hiring of Frank Ambrose (AOL's head of technology for infrastructure and network services for a decade) as Senior VP of global technology. While Ambrose has more tech knowledge than the average suit in his position, his primary competencies seem to be negotiations, coordination, contracts and costs -- which all marries up nicely with Linden Lab making a push into corporate, government and military sales, and hiring additional staff to do just that. We're not sure what they're going to be selling, exactly, but virtual environment meeting spaces are probably right at the top of the list.

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	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Forget for a minute that this is an advertisement for the virtual worlds development company, Millions of Us. It's also a great video that discusses the future of these emerging platforms. Narrated by Reuben Steiger, the CEO of MoU, we're taken on a journey through the three major past, present, and future developments in virtual worlds this year. From Sony's Home, to Google Lively, all the way to in-browser worlds embedded on your Facebook pages, the road ahead is pretty exciting!

[Thanks, Eric!]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

While the announcement of the Google Lively public beta may have taken many by surprise, apparently it did not take Linden Lab unawares -- their Second Life messages were already lined up and ready to go.

Indeed considering that information about Lively's launch was available to a number of people who were close to Linden Lab, either as partners or ex-staffers, it seems silly to suggest that Linden Lab might not have known Lively's public beta launch date, unless those contacts were aflame with considerable, searing resentment.

Wheezing, clanking and dripping oil from dark and unnameable apertures, one of Linden Lab's most neglected subsystems -- the marketing machine -- arose from it's years-long slumber and went about it's ponderous, mechanical business.

Linden Lab's newly-minted CEO, Mark Kingdon, has posted another communique to Second Life users, and it isn't hard to see a certain fear in the phrasing and timing.

'The possibilities of Virtual Worlds have attracted a slew of entrepreneurs and even some Internet giants,' writes Kingdon in his second paragraph, 'Some are offering a simple, visually appealing chat solution. Others are more ambitious. Second Life offers something no ones else does - an astoundingly rich array of user-created content and a large, diverse and ever-expanding virtual economy.'

And it isn't hard to see which Internet giant and what visually appealing chat solution he might be referring to, especially considering the timing of the statement.

The Massively crew has spent a little more time hammering away at Google's new virtual artifice, Lively. By now, you've probably seen all sorts of news reports calling it a rival and competitor to Linden Lab's virtual world, Second Life. Technically, that's what we call bollocks.

Describing Lively as a rival to Second Life is like calling a conference center a rival to a library. They're just not servicing the same needs, and the comparison is fundamentally nonsensical. Lively is tightly focused, and fails to intrude on the bulk of virtual worlds space.

So, what's the deal with Lively? Let's take a look ...

Open to the public just today, it seems hard to believe that Google's new Lively service is the much-vaunted virtual world product Project Snowcrash aka MyWorld that has been in secret beta-testing for some time.

Lively is a series of web-embeddable virtual spaces (think Metaplace) that function as a series of otherwise disconnected chatrooms (think IMVU or Twinity). You download the browser plugin for Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer (both Windows only, sorry folks), sign in with your google account, create a room or join one and you're ready to go. Just make sure you've signed into the Lively website at least once -- otherwise you'll have the Joining Room message forever.

A selection of 'hip' human and furry avatars are available, along with an assortment of clothing. There is no user-created content at this time. We'll have some more impressions for you once we've given this a once-over around the office, so stay tuned.

Corr Linden today posted the announcement of a Google Calendar on the official Linden Blog today. The posting remained up long enough to hit the public feeds and the Web newswires, and to start attracting user comments before the post was yanked from the site.

It was up long enough for the post (though not the comments) to be cached and copied nearly everywhere, so here's the link to the calendar if you missed it. At present it only seems to contain Linden staff in-world office hours.

We've no idea at this stage why the post was yanked. It doesn't seem to contain any secrets, sinister or otherwise. You can add the calendar to your Google Calendar account by adding PublicEvents@lindenlab.com.

Cory Ondrejka, co-founder of the virtual world of Second Life and ex-CTO of Linden Lab has switched roles. No, it's not actually another virtual world, but we're mentioning it anyway, because we know you all love Ondrejka, or love to hate him. Either way.

Ondrejka's moving in with EMI (one of the 'big four' record companies) as their senior vice-president of Digital Strategy. 'It's time to take everything I learned about innovation, community, intangible items, markets, economics, and technology building Second Life and apply it to a much larger arena,' said Ondrejka today, 'There are a million and one difficult problems to solve, but I'm absolutely thrilled about my new role.'

No, you've not missed an announcement of an upcoming IPO. We're just looking at what it would mean if you did. There's been talk for years about Linden Lab taking the company through IPO (Initial Public Offering) and going public.

Given the vision and history of the company, and the overall direction of the business, an IPO would more or less signal an epic failure to deliver.

It seems like I've written that before... In fact, just over a year ago when I was a very new blogger on Second Life Insider I wrote "Is the future of the internet on course?" But it's close. I am not claiming in this piece at all that Second Life is perfect. I'm not going to pretend there aren't major changes I'd make in it, as well as major changes in the pipeline that we report on. I'm more thinking from a developmental point of view.

Let me tell you a quick story. You'll probably recognise parts of it. About 25 years ago there was this geeky thing called the internet. No-one but the really hard-core used it. About 10 years later it started to become more commonly available. There was a mixed reaction. Some people leapt in. Some dithered. Have a look at www.nissan.com if you don't believe me - it's not a car-manufacturer. Take the example of bookstores - most traditional bookstores didn't do much, but a few people tried, and a few new people got into the mix. Many of the new ones, and many of the traditional ones fell by the wayside. This totally radical new company started to establish itself. Who hasn't heard of, and almost certainly used Amazon (either in the US or in their own country or both.

Let's assume the next major evolution of the internet is a 3D virtual environment - like Second Life. Someone will become the Amazon, the Google of the 3D internet. We keep hearing that there is a competitor to Second Life coming along - but they keep failing to actually manifest. The odds suggest that the longer this carries on, the more likely it is that Second Life will be the basis of the 3D internet. It's not a guarantee of course - anyone remember Netscape?

So, what do you think? Is 3D internet the next big thing? Is Second Life the Amazon and Google of 3D internet, or is it the Netscape? If it is the Netscape, who is the Firefox? The Internet Explorer? The Safari?

I just recently got my beta invitation to PMOG, the in-browser MMO game that lets you play around real-life websites. I haven't restarted my browser yet to get it installed, but I'm intrigued by the idea of a "meta-" or "exo-game," that places game values over "real" locations. In PMOG's case, of course, they're real virtual locations, but here's a game that is really real: Parallel Kingdom is a mobile MMO that claims to be able to use GPS in Google's Android phone to let players place game information on real world points.

The game is still in beta, and since it requires an Android phone to play (and those haven't actually come out yet), it's really more of just an idea at this point. But yes, the plan is to use GPS to let players "mine resources, build buildings, craft items, trade goods, meet people, start kingdoms, lead wars, and explore the world." As you can see in the demo video above, various virtual resources will be hidden at real world GPS points, and odds are that you'll have to visit those points in real-life to perform activities and play the game.

An interesting idea, anyway. It's hard to picture an ongoing game based around actual travel to real-world locations (although geocaching seems to pull it off pretty well), so it'll be interesting to see what these folks come up with.

This is the second of two parts to the Fireside Chat between Second Life's Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden) and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at the New Globe Theater, a meeting held and sponsored by Millions of Us, a metaverse development company (MDC), with Reuben Millionsofus as moderator. This is the mp3 and transcript of part two of the chat. You can hear and read part 1 here. Enjoy!

[Mp3] Download the MP3 directly

[Thanks, Celebrity!]

2007 was an incredible year for MMOs, with tons of updates to existing games and a benign rash of new titles as well. I'm not much for predictions, but I'll tell you what I'm hoping for in 2008, since you all asked so nicely:

Blizzard to out-Diablo Mythos with their new MMO -- Let's face it, playing Mythos is ten kinds of fun, and most of that fun revolves around the type of gameplay that the original Diablo invented, and Diablo II refined. Mythos currently fills the gaping void left behind by Blizzard's continuing not to update the Diablo universe with a new game, but wouldn't you like to see it done up properly?

Google to provide some real competition for Linden Lab -- Right now, Second Life is the only cat of its breed, and it's snoozing in the sun. The ability for users to create their own content is arguably SL's biggest draw, and it's fueled many careers, but the interface issues, rolling restarts, updates that fix things only to break other things, and age verification problems leave me wanting someone to learn from these mistakes and bring us something better. We know Google's working on something ... here's hoping it's a Third Life.

A new genre -- So far, we've had Fantasy MMOs rule the day, with Science Fiction a close second, and a hodgepodge of other titles kind of experimenting with concepts a little bit. And pirates. But I'm looking for something new. Something that combines my love of cryptography with Cthulhu, perhaps. Or something that lets me relive my days playing cops and robbers. Whatever it is, this is the year to strike!

Resolutions? Hmm. I guess I resolve to keep playing those smaller MMOs and telling you what I think of them, and trying not to be too dismissive of those I find lacking. Ooh, that's gonna be difficult -- I'm quite fond of the snark, I am. What are your New Year's MMO hopes and wishes?