Comments on: Seven Challenges and Priorities for Virtual Worlds in 2008

By: len

len — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:51:15 +0000

The major challenge for social networks both 2D and 3D, text and other, is to enable members to control the behaviors of other members.

A social network is just a representation of the web.

Sad but so: in any population not culled, the entire range of social behaviors will manifest. The harsh lesson of civilized history is that walled gardens exist because we need them, want them, and will trade freedoms to leaders who build and maintain them. The web and and its representation in virtual worlds are no different in any significant way.

Raph Koster has a link to “My Tiny Life”. Recommended reading.

By: W^L+

W^L+ — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:27:15 +0000

Bob, I haven’t yet tried any VWs, but there are a couple of things that I would want before I did:
* Standardized interface between worlds, so they become more open–both to each other and to the outside world
* Ability to use third party clients (probably also requires some kind of standardized interface), including those under free software licenses such as the GPL. Published specification, so that client-builders aren’t banging their heads on their desks.
* Cross-platform is essential: Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD support.
* Some kind of privacy facility: if I have a family or business meeting, I don’t want outsiders joining or monitoring it. Nor do I want everything I do to be publicly accessible. Nor do I want to spend time constructing a building and then have someone else set off programatic “bombs” and destroy it.
* Reading about SL over the past year or so, it seems that there is a kind of proximity that is similar to earth proximity. I would expect that we would go beyond that and make all locations close by all others, even if they aren’t part of the visual scenery at a location. Perhaps the best metaphor for what I’m describing is for each location to be a separate planet, with its own scenery and topography, and other locations being nearby in various directions in 3D space within a solar system, a cluster of solar systems, and finally a galaxy of solar clusters. Of course the actual implementation could use any metaphor once the concept is there: it isn’t meatspace, so don’t keep the same limitations–experiment with other ways to solve proximity versus local scenery versus interlocation transportation.
* Virtual economy: now that we know that commercial transactions are desirable in VWs, any world should have clean interfaces with PayPal, Checkout, and other reputable payment systems, probably with some kind of escrow system to slow down the scammers.

I’ve been watching OpenCroquet to see when it will mature enough for general use. I’m interested in the whole Smalltalk thing anyway.

By: Chris Ward

Chris Ward — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:22:48 +0000

Do you foresee the usual 2 software development streams — the ‘academic’, which in the past gave us BSD Unix, and the ‘commercial’, which gave us ATT Unix ?

I presume that the academics develop software for the purpose of distribution of knowledge, and the commercials develop software for the purpose of solving their clients’ problems with the hope of making a profit.

Are we to the point where Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese universities … the new economic powerhouses … will challenge University of California and MIT, in the race for visibility ?

And which corporations ? Is is the ‘usual suspects’ … IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Google, ATT and so on … but ‘gone east’ to the new opportunities in China ?

Interesting times, for all.

By: John Drinkwater

John Drinkwater — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:02:18 +0000

A good list Bob, though I would make a few amendments.

3. add encourage XMPP use. tbh, I don’t understand why SL didn’t use this in the first place (did they?)
remove 4, not sure how they can join virtual worlds, unless they follow my 8th point
7. add encourage media streams that can be viewed on all platforms, atm, trying to play quicktime streams is a royal pain.

What I would want to add (though I can understand not many would want it, and unlikely to get to this year)
8. decentralisation, take virtual worlds to the REST level – where anyone can host a world with a basic web server, where avatars and objects are URLs… 3d communities could “hang at” real social sites