The creator of Second Life and technology stalwart IBM announced Wednesday they have joined forces to knock down walls separating virtual worlds on the Internet.
The US firms are using a Virtual Worlds Expo and Conference in San Jose, California, to promote enabling people’s animated online personae, referred to as “avatars,” to freely roam from one virtual world to another.
Currently, avatars are trapped in the virtual worlds in which they are created.
Since people routinely spend hours customizing online proxies with hairstyles, tattoos, wardrobes, skin tone and more, they are averse to repeating the processes in multiple virtual worlds.
This fact is thwarting the virtual life universe from reaching its potential as a place to socialize, advertise, do business and make money, according to San Francisco based Linden Lab, which created Second Life.
“You spend an enormous amount of time on your avatar’s appearances and the things it uses to interact and you want to take those with you,” Linden vice president of business affairs Ginsu Yoon told AFP.
“We don’t think the future of virtual worlds is going to involve a lot of siloed experiences competing against each other. The future is going to involve going from one world to another.”
Pioneering virtual world Second Life has approximately 10 million registered users, with nearly ten percent of those “residents” having logged into the virtual world in the past 30 days.
Other flourishing online worlds include Gaia, which is inhabited with avatars inspired by Japanese anime cartoon characters, and Entropia Universe founded in Sweden more than a decade ago.
IBM and Linden are crafting interoperability standards and protocols based on open-source software in the hopes they will result in open borders between virtual worlds.
IBM’s vision of the future of “three-dimensional Internet” includes companies using virtual worlds for tasks such as recruiting, meetings, and employee training.
“As the 3-D Internet becomes more integrated with the web, we see users demanding more from these environments and desiring virtual worlds that are fit for business,” said IBM digital convergence vice president Colin Parris.
Businesses have already followed people into virtual worlds; opening shops to promote brands and even sell items that are delivered to avatars’ counterparts in the real world.
Investors channeled more than a billion dollars (US) into “in-world” companies during the past year, according to virtual world conference organizers.
Virtual worlds will duplicate the explosive expansion of Internet websites that occurred in the 1990s if, as is the case browsing online, users are free to go whether they choose, Yoon predicts.
Gartner research firm predicts that by 2011, 80 percent of the people using the internet will have alter egos in virtual worlds.
“What we are really trying to do is lead an effort that others will want to join,” Yoon said. “None of this stuff is going to be enforced by the will of unreasoned dictate. I’m sure there will be the usual amounts of interest and skepticism mixed together.”
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British gamer Shaun Clark has won the UK’s first gaming gold at the World Cyber Games.
Mr Clark, aka Apollooo, took the top medal in the Command & Conquer 3 tournament at the week-long festival of video gaming held last week in Seattle.
The gold is the first the UK has claimed in the six years that the global tournament has been staged.
Britons also took a silver and bronze in other games to put the UK in sixth place in the overall medal rankings.
Medal tally
Mr Clark struggled in the opening stages of the tournament in which he had to take on the top US and German players of the real-time strategy title C&C3: Tiberium Wars.
However, once past the German ace Mr Clark, who plays for the Team Dignitas pro-gaming team, made steady progress through the playoffs before triumphing in the final. For his work Mr Clark picked up a cheque for $12,000 (£5,877).
David Treacy, aka Zaccubus, managed to win the silver medal in the Tony Hawk Project 8 tournament and picked up $5,000. In the final he lost to American Dustin Valcalda.
British guild Infused Gaming, comprising Luke Shakespeare, Callum McManus, Jaden Dennis and Joshua Nino De Guzman, took the bronze in the Gears of War tournament. They share an $8,000 prize pot.
The USA came top of the medal table and scored three gold medals.
In total the tournament handed out cash prizes worth a total of $448,000 over the three days of the gaming festival to gamers. More than 700 players from 70 nations attended the grand final event in Seattle.
Those taking part in Seattle qualified via regional competitions held around the world in the months leading up to the final.
In 2008 the final will be held in Cologne, Germany.
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It has often been said that the reason computer and video games are more popular then ever is because they look better than ever.
Add to those good looks the action, explosions and fast-paced action in the most popular game titles and you might be forgiven for thinking that they would be a natural fit for TV.
However, the history of competitive computer games is littered with attempts that have tried, and largely failed, to put games and gamers on the goggle box.
The latest attempt came to the UK in September in the form of the Championship Gaming Series (CGS). This aims to put pro-gaming on prime time TV on channels run by its main sponsors Sky and Direct TV.
Live matches and footage of CGS tournaments will be shown on Sky One. The CGS is not the only league to be shown on TV. Xleague.TV shows regular tournaments on cable and satellite channels and run its own, smaller scale, league.
The CGS models itself on US pro-sports and it owns the leagues and teams playing under its banner.
The CGS has created teams on five continents and runs its own leagues in which the teams will compete for a substantial prize pot.
All the members of the CGS teams get paid a monthly wage and each team of ten has players who excel at one of the four competition games: Counterstrike Source, Project Gotham Racing 3, Dead Or Alive 4 and Fifa Soccer 07.
Serious play
Andy Reif, commissioner of the CGS, believes that this time around video games have the best chance of making it as a pro-sport that can attract big audiences.
Prior to taking on the job of CGS boss, Mr Reif was part of the team that owned the rights to beach volleyball.
“When we took that over it was kind of damaged goods,” said Mr Reif. “It did not have many fans, sponsors or media platforms.”
By the time Mr Reif left to take on the CGS beach volleyball had become hugely popular, had major sponsors and plenty of TV coverage.
“I moved to the CGS because I thought video games were a bigger opportunity and its already global,” he said.
The important change that the CGS has made is to create its own teams, said Mr Reif. Before now the world of pro-gaming has been fractured – divided by the games people play and the tournaments they enter.
The field was also hard to penetrate for those not heavily involved, he said.
To get over these obstacles the CGS had changed the rules in some of the games it ha adopted, developed special software to make it easy to follow the action in fast-moving games and makes the success of a team depend on all players winning at their chosen game.
For Michael O’Dell, a former manager of UK pro-gaming group Team Dignitas and now a CGS team manager, the competition is what the gaming world has been waiting for.
“It’s taking gaming as it is now to the level of e-sports we have been trying and hoping we would achieve,” he said.
By giving players a salary the CGS has, at a stroke, boosted the numbers of people that make a modest living out of it.
Before now, said Mr O’Dell, the problem pro-players faced was the uncertainty of their winnings. Although there were plenty of tournaments that offer cash prizes there were no guarantees that pro-players would end up in the money.
But said Philip Wride, a former manager of UK pro-gamers 4Kings and now a game industry consultant, the arrival of the CGS has not been welcomed in all corners of the gaming world.
“A lot of European top teams did not bother getting involved with the CGS,” said Mr Wride.
Some did not want to lose top players to the CGS or lose the chance to take part in tournaments, such as the World Cyber Games or the E-Sports World Cup, that offer potentially larger cash prizes than are available in CGS events.
Culturally, he added, Europeans were not used to sports in which the leagues own and run teams. This too, he said, may have been a barrier to people getting involved.
For his part Mr Reif is convinced that video games are poised to become hugely popular and that the players of today will become well-known tomorrow.
“The audience will continue to grow and grow.” he said. “I’ve bet my career on it.”
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