More virtual worlds and virtual world projects are shutting down. Some may remember Google Lively died a year ago. More recently it’s been vSide, Metaplace, and now Project Wonderland. It really does seem to be the end of Virtual Worlds 1.0. I and a few others have even begun to ponder what will be part of Virtual Worlds 2.0 – rise from the ashes of 1.0? But it’s also a good time to review lessons learned.
Community is a chicken and egg thing
As the old saying goes, there is no shortcut to success. The strategy for most Virtual Worlds 1.0 revolved around a thriving community to interact with and supply content (User Generated Content – UGC). All you needed was an instant community, and apparently you get those by developing some cool technology like 3D scenes, avatars, etc. However at the same time user studies were showing that all that technology still wasn’t enough for typical users. It was essential that they capture a community – it was a chicken and egg problem.
How do you solve the chicken and egg problem, well virtual worlds tried to tackle this in various ways:
Google Lively
Google Lively launched hoping the Google name would bring so many users that enough would stick. But not that many stuck as this Google Trends graph shows.
It also didn’t help that the odd collection of avatars left users utterly confused as to the context of the world.
IMVU
One of the first movers in the 3D chat space, IMVU relied heavily on AdWords to drive early traffic. Being a first mover, IMVU also wasn’t paying much for those AdWords. Eventually they were able to tweak their product enough to find market fit and amass a community. A community heavily based on flirting but a community none the less.
Metaplace
Founded by game design legend Raph Koster, Metaplace’s approach was to appeal to game designers. They built some powerful scripting tools, however that presented its own problem as Simon Newstead’s , CEO & Co-Founder of Frenzoo, pointed out:
3/ Built for the builders, but not for the mainstream users
This one is a bit clearer, there was a great amount of feature support and tools added for world builders, but less tools or attractions for your average every day user. It seemed like a classic chicken and egg situation – not enough users for attracting game devs, and not enough games/content to attract users? The existing games on the site were ok but not up to the same level as many great flash games now, and the social elements and avatar stickiness perhaps wasn’t up to many average users expect. Perhaps MP should have jumpstarted some high quality gaming with internal development and showcase, and in parallel giving users something to get hooked on…
Of course IMVU’s strategy was the most successful, but it’s a little difficult to duplicate as the first mover advantage is gone.
Build community the old-fashioned way – around a product
Just as Google came out of Web 1.0, some virtual worlds will rise from the ashes and drive into Virtual Worlds 2.o. I think Frenzoo is one such world.
It started out as a fashion site, heavily sided toward user generated content. They made it easy to design your own 3D clothing and model it on an avatar. But that was about it when it started in 2008 – no virtual world or personal scenes. However I could create my own fashionable outfit. From day one it filled a need – how many girls dream of becoming fashion designers. It didn’t need the instant community to be useful, yet the more community it had the better an experience for the user.
Having already built a community Frenzoo then transferred them into a virtual world, complete with 3D scenes. It wasn’t a cake walk, but they applied age-old techniques of product and community management to make it a success.
That woke us all up! So the first couple days after the launch we we dropped everything to concentrate on fine-tuning the camera, angle and lighting settings and get our avatars looking better again.
They know their audience, they’ve cultivated their community long before transferring them into a virtual world. It’s the same strategy Japanese CyberAgent took launching the incredibly successful Ameba Pigg.
It can’t be just about the technology
Compare Frenzoo to Google Lively, IMVU, and Metaplace. The product they launched day one was mostly cool technology and they expected the community to magically form around it. When I first jumped into Google Lively I could customize my avatar and set up my own scene. I guess the “product” was self expression through 3D maybe? Everything else involved interacting with other people – the community. It’s the chicken and egg problem again. Trying to form an instant community around technology turns out to be pretty difficult and leaves you with some interesting issues as Simon Newstead points out in analyzing Metaplace.
4/ Who was the audience?
This is an interesting one. When I spent some time on the site I was struck how there seemed to be two distinct groups of users. Those older, technically proficient game dev types who loved being able to tinker and create world. And then a very young tween/young teen female set with “HoT ChiCs” clubs and looking for 14yo boyfriends. It almost seemed to confirm the 2d avatars suited the young female crowd and the game APIs suited the game devs.
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