Category Archives: Virtual Worlds

Virtual events and the ticking clock

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One of the most common complaints I hear about virtual worlds is that they’re empty. Visitors either take that as proof there is nothing to do or that there is no reason to stay as being social is the only draw. Being a screenwriter I see the parallels with movies. The problem with most independent movies is that they’re boring; there is nothing driving them. Screenwriters employ various tricks to create a sense of drive, one being the ticking clock. Movies are all about pressure and tension, the more you can keep from letting it dissipate the better. Think of Cinderella.

Add a ticking clock time pressure to the main plot goal and a little ticking clock to each scene if possible – bomb about to go off, meeting, deadline, race, running out of something important.

- Writing A Great Script Fast In A Nutshell

Unlike most virtual worlds, virtual events are all about the ticking clock. The virtual world an event uses may stay around for days but the virtual event itself is constrained to only a few hours. You’re there or you’re not. It’s more than just bringing people together, virtual events employ a ticking clock to heighten the event, to add a sense of drive.

The ticking clock would also suggest that virtual events not be open ended where time is concerned. Saying that the even goes until everyone has left dissipates the tension. It also wouldn’t hurt to shine the light on the clock every once in a while.

Without context you might be a bit fleeting

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Rick van der Wal alerted me to the post What’s The Story? by Jessica Helfand. She discusses the millions of short (140 character) messages we’re seeing today on Twitter, status messages, and the like. Sometimes funny, these messages can also incite a story.

the wedding cake in the middle of the road

You can see a story, however it also void context – that’s all for you to add. Helfand seems to pine for a more traditional form of story.

Nevertheless, the pithy, out-of-context statement is becoming its own narrative form. Yet despite its appeal, it is almost singularly flawed: isn’t it by its very nature meant to perpetually self-destruct? (How else to make way for the next one-liner?) On one hand, it’s blessed with the patina of abstraction, a gestural cast-off intentionally divorced from context lest it appear too serious.

It’s value is fleeting. How many people remember tweets or funny status messages? For all their entertainment they’re fleeting. Which got me thinking. For years people have been advising the use of story to communicate, most importantly in businesses. We think in stories, so marketing and business should also. Seth Godin has been advising businesses to use story to break through today’s tidal wave of marketing messages. One problem is that they’ve been taking the advice but cling to the most basic form of story – the creation myth. Yahoo! being started by two graduate students from Stanford. eBay and the Pez dispenser myth. Companies are learning that they need to move beyond this most basic form of story. But beyond that these companies also default to stories with little context. Context takes time; the whole strategy of adding story is to maximize the little time you have with customers, why waste that precious time on context. Which leads me to ask, without context are they more fleeting?

Google Lively the perfect example of fleeting

Google Lively closedLet’s use Google Lively as an example. I harp on it and many consumer virtual worlds for a lack of context. You could modify your avatar to be a big headed kid, a bear, or almost anything. Compare that to World of Warcraft where you can be one of only a small set of characters and all taken from the established WoW universe. In Club Penguin you of course have to be a penguin. With SuperSecret you’re a teenager trying to grow up. These might not be the best examples but they have a whole lot more context than Google Lively had. Without context Google Lively proved very fleeting.

Google Lively unique visitors

Google Lively like others in the virtual world space thought they were building a utility and expected users to generate the content and in so doing, the context. They were very similar to the the pithy phrase – the wedding cake in the middle of the road. There was something there but it was fleeting without context.

Offering superior utility

That isn’t to say that they had to have context to survive, they could have provided superior utility. However compared to their competitors it was pretty much more of the same. Hence they were in the context game and sadly they weren’t even suited up to play.

In today’s world where everything is competing for attention if you don’t provide superior utility or context, you’re fleeting.

Virtual events – Another area of success for virtual worlds

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I’ve likened the recent phase of virtual worlds to Web 1.0 – Virtual Worlds 1.0. Much of it was engineers building a solution in search of a problem. However one problem that has been pushed to the forefront by the collapsed economy is virtual events. Dannette Veale of Cicso believes it’s more than just the economy.

Virtual events have a lot going for them, not the least of which being crowds. It can be painfully obvious when a virtual world is empty. It can be the same for web sites, especially social ones. Jack Moffitt, creator of Chesspark an online community for chess players, faced just such a problem. With only a few dollars to devote to an AdSense campaign he like most people spread it out evenly. But it wasn’t until he switched to blowing it all in just an hour a day that he saw real returns. Users were guaranteed to find others on the site and consequently stayed longer.

Consumer virtual worlds spend a lot of their time just trying to keep users online. Time they could spend enhancing the experience when users are actually there. Think of all the tools virtual worlds employ to help you meet others who are online the same time you are? With virtual events this isn’t a problem. People bump into each other as they would at a real event – it’s natural. But as Drew VanVooren points out, it even goes beyond that.

There’s another component that’s come out of the analytics: participation,” explained VanVooren. “[A type A] personality at a physical event would walk down the center of a trade show floor and walk up and introduce themselves. There’s a lot of people that just hang out in the middle of the floor and never participate. Online, everybody has an A personality. You see participation from everyone who enters the event.

Not only do virtual events give context and introduce a time factor, they supply a crowd. That gives them a few legs up and puts them in company with other successful examples of virtual worlds – MMOs and kids worlds.

A lite approach to virtual worlds

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Comcast TownComcast of all companies has an interesting ad campaign using virtual worlds – Comcast Town. The campaign combines a funny jingle, commercial spots, and an easy to use virtual world or more specifically a virtual room builder. It’s Flash based so there is no need for an install and that isn’t the only thing Comcast got right. What they’re really playing on is the fact that most people find virtual world technology nifty. They may not stick around and make the virtual world part of their daily lives but many will spend a few minutes decorating a virtual room. What advertiser wouldn’t like that type of engagement with their products and brand? It’s quick and has more context than technology. As I continue to harp on – virtual worlds are about the context. Comcast Town is a lite example of context leveraging the technology.

But like I said, they do a lot of things right.

  1. It’s got style – from the art to the odd incorporation of squirrels
  2. Reinforces Comcast’s products – phone, TV, Internet
  3. Incorporates other trendy brands – Boing Boing and Notcot
  4. Makes a great use of sound
  5. Doesn’t require an instillation
  6. Has context – pulls much from the commercials and grounds you in building a room
  7. Has a goal – it’s a contest (however weak that is it certainly adds to the context)
  8. Game elements – you only have so much money

Is it viral? I doubt it. It incorporates with Facebook so there is that but it’s not like you’re building an army of vampires. But I think that lends to it’s feeling of being lite.

Overall its a great use of virtual world technology and an example other virtual worlds could learn from – namely context. It’s lite and engaging, what brand wouldn’t want that?

Virtual worlds a hits-driven business?

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Hollywood signHighlighting innovative companies in the entertainment industries, AlwaysOn recently released their OnHollywood 100 and recycled that old saying – content is king.

But the failure of many of these services to drive consistent audiences and attract premium advertisers has made it clear that Silicon Valley won’t usurp Hollywood, content is still king.

That’s not what many in Silicon Valley wanted to hear. Content is king is another way of saying hits-driven business. Are virtual worlds destined to become a hits-driven business?

Successful virtual worlds

Sally Schmidt laid out what it takes to make virtual worlds successful – the 5 Cs.

She then broke down the five key strategic points into the 5 Cs: Creativity (dressing up avatars, decorating homes, designing clothes), Collection (free goods, paid goods, points), Caring (feeding a virtual pet, charity), Community (chat, events, message boards), and last but not least Competition (levels, comparing points wit other players). Her conclusion was that each of the big sites encompass all five key points, but only strongly emphasize a few. For instance, on Stardoll the draw is obviously in the creativity of designing your own clothes and styling your avatar. On Neopets, your role as pet owner promotes caring.

Seeing the success of kids worlds I would also add strong context. We see the importance of context when comparing virtual worlds that had little, like Google Lively, to those that had a lot, Club Penguin. Google Lively was trying to be general purpose, appeal to everyone, and in the end appealed to nearly no one.

Let’s take the first C – Creativity (dressing up avatars, decorating homes, designing clothes). Yahoo! has had avatars. You could customize their hair, dress them up, change their mood, even add a monkey however few know about them and even less use it. Yahoo! is the poster child for general purpose and lack of context, adding avatars did little. Maybe it’s different when it’s 3D, but I would argue that Google Lively discredits that theory.

In the end, without context these virtual worlds become little more than 3D chat and when was the last time you used chat? To move beyond 3D chat virtual worlds need context, something kids worlds have known for a while now.

So why the sour faces?

If it’s about content, it’s a hit-driven business. But for many a hits-driven business is not a business they want to be in. As a business model it’s:

  1. About narrowing your audience - Everyone can use a search engine but how many find horror movies too scary to watch? It’s also a fickle business.
  2. A fickle business – The line William Goldman captured this perfectly in the line, “Nobody knows anything“. That isn’t to say that Hollywood execs are stupid, just that prior to a movie’s release they have no real idea how well a film will do.
  3. The domain of artists – What drew most developers to the virtual worlds industry was the technology, not content.

WoW and the MMO space captures these points perfectly. It isn’t a question of technology as much as content and game design. WoW is incredibly successful while other MMOs of equal or greater technology flounder.

Of course Blizzard, creators of WoW, is based just outside of LA. Silicon Valley has traditionally shied away from hits-driven businesses. We in Silicon Valley live by the model “build a better mouse trap and they will come”. We simply don’t feel safe competing on content, it isn’t our industry. Which is exactly what Paul Heckel brought up in his book The Elements of Friendly Software Design.

Movies did not flourish until the engineers lost control to artists – or more precisely, to the communications craftsmen. The same thing is happening now with personal computers.