mind this - by Lars Plougmann

Exploring the games-are-good-for-you point of view

As a parent, one of the decisions you have to make at some point is the degree to which you allow your child to play online games. Oops, let's rewind and try again: .. the degree to which you guide your child when it comes to playing online games. I suspect that the default stand-offish attitude to games prevalent in my generation is a left-over from earlier generations and I am not sure it is the best position from which to help our children develop a harmonious relationship with games.

The "default stand-offish attitude" usually promulgated by mass media goes something like this:

• Playing outside with other children: Good
• Reading books: Good
• Watching television: Ok in limited doses
• Playing online games: Bad (as in leading to anti-social behaviour, speech impediments and obesity)

I would like to see a bit more nuance in the latter three categories which are all about media experience, my point of view lumps the three types of media together to focus on the content:

• Reading books, watching television and playing online games that are not appropriate for the child's age: Bad
• Reading books, watching television and playing online games that are appropriate for the child's age: Good

A proper discussion of the topic would examine many more aspects of the argument: learning, impact on behaviour, content ratings and censorship etc. I don't yet know enough to form firm conclusions. As a parent I need to understand the topic better in order to be able to guide my child and increase the likelihood that they have good experiences with games.

That is why it is a pleasure to be able to dip into well-informed and inspiring viewpoints in order to inform my own. Two thought provoking pieces that I have enjoyed are:

• The recent talk given by Jane McGonigal at TED where she argues that attitudes formed in games can be productively applied to real life.
• "If gamers ran the world" by Tom Armitage, my former colleague, who outlines some of the useful things that games teach us: dealing with complexity and making smart, informed decisions.

I look forward to explore different viewpoints in future. I think a danger for the next generation is parents who don't understand games. If games can give our children meaningful experiences - or provide new ways for parents and children to interact - that would qualify as an epic win.

Consumer services should focus on mini-2D before going 3D

Visualisation of data is the first step towards interaction with that data. In this case 'visualisation' needs to be understood in a broad sense, e.g. voice response telephone banking represents a way of making your account balance and transactions options understandable.

With ubiquitous web delivery to computer screens, 2D A4 type visualisation is well honed both from a design and functionality perspective. The Digg Swarm and Google's Gap Minder are inspiring examples.

The recent hype surrounding 3D virtual worlds has moved a number of companies to invest in virtual real estates. Most of them big consumer brands who want to be seen as brand innovators but also a handful of banks with other financial institutions talking about it.

There is a spot in virtual world Second Life where some of Amazon's book catalogue can be browsed in 3D. The problem with such an approach is lack of interface value. Everybody is familiar with the book format so buying decisions are influenced by information about books and recommendations, not an experience served in 3D. Banks setting up 'branches' in virtual worlds will soon learn that 3D graphics offer next to no advantage in interacting with customers. What customers really want is to access their bank accounts securely from their mobile phones, not from a virtual cash machine.

Tags: Second Life banking consumer banking mobile banking 3D interface 2D A4

Is Second Life over-hyped?

When Richard Posner spoke about his latest book recently, he was surprised to see a raccoon in the audience. The location was Joi Ito's island in the virtual world Second Life. (Transcript of the event.)

Events like that make visits to Second Life interesting and rewarding, but after attending a real-world seminar about the virtual world by its creators, Linden Labs, I am not sure if Second Life is the-next-big-thing or hype. (Fortune says it is not hype, Clay Shirky says it is.)

That virtual worlds are hot right now was indicated by the fact that several people had traveled from the continent to attend the seminar in London. But some of the people I spoke to were disappointed with responses to audience questions and the Linden Labs representatives being cagey about user numbers (even when some of the user stats sought are already published).

If virtual worlds have the power to attract other than curious early adopters, if they prove an enabler for social and economic behaviour beyond what the web is already capable of then I suspect the field will evolve to a different constellation. Virtual worlds will be too important to be in the control of a single firm. First we will see established firms enter the market for a period of choice and competition but also incompatibility. Then open source server/clients will become available, access to the virtual world will be built into browsers and devices with everybody contributing computing cycles and redundancy, grid fashion. If 3D interaction is important, it will become a democratised platform on which to build experiences, services and businesses.

Funny that exactly ten years ago I was advising a client about their web presence and I suggested not to go for 3D (even though VRML was hot at the time). Would I advise any different today? Perhaps if the client was in circumstances where they would benefit from the attention or if they could make internal use of the platform. Otherwise wait for better hype/not-hype indicators.

Tags: Second Life Linden Labs VRML hype

Watching humans watching avatars - a mixed world event

Last night, PA Consulting Group staged a launch party for their presence in Second Life.

The highlight of the event was Berkeley-based Andreas Kluth's avatar, "Pat Parker", appearing on a big screen to speak about Second Life. (Andreas Kluth is the author of the September 2006 in-depth article on Second Life in The Economist.) While only a dozen avatars were present in the virtual conference room, the speaker held the attention of close to a hundred people gathered at the (real life) London venue.

The illusion of presence was a success. I have been to conferences where a speaker's voice has been transmitted to the room, but without a visual focal point the minds of the audience started to wander and attention waned. Not so with a Second Life avatar appearing human and alive by employing basic body language (the avatar shifted his stance from time to time but his mouth was not moving).

If virtual world to real world interaction seems to work, in-world interaction is a more powerful experience. Claus Nehmzow, who leads PA's Second Life initiative, admitted that he had never met, in real life, the people who designed and built PA's virtual office. When it was decided to hire a receptionist to greet people at the virtual PA office, interviews were conducted in Second Life. He joked that he was waiting to find out what would happen when the human resources department discovers that he has hired a person without knowing their real name and that the receptionist avatar is being paid in Linden Dollars, the virtual world currency.

PA hopes to use their new Second Life presence to advise clients about both virtual and real-world initiatives. The latter could be branch design for retail banks where different models can be tried out at low cost in a virtual environment.

Previous articles about Second Life on mind this:
The rush to Second Life is like the internet in the mid-1990s
Virtual land lease in Second Life
It is not a game

Tags: Second Life PA Consulting Group consulting avatar presence

The rush to Second Life is like the internet in the mid-1990s

A nicely designed room with floating pods to sit in, seemed a lot more imaginative than CNET's facility where I previously attended a conference. This one was a meeting of Web Montag, a crowd of people (initially brought together by Tim Bonnemann but is now self organising) who share an interest in everything web; they  meet in cities across Germany, Silicon Valley and Second Life.

Sebastian Küpers of Pixelpark talked us through his presentation slides outlining Second Life demographics, economy and a few case studies: Nissan, Adidas, Reuters and others I had heard about before. But it was news to me when he mentioned PA Consulting Group, where I used to work as a management consultant.

PA took its time establishing a web presence in the 1990s: Several local offices had published their own websites before a global site was launched. For those of us advising clients about opportunities of the internet, not having a corporate website was a bit of a moot point.

In contrast, PA is amongst the first professional services companies to establish a presence in a virtual world. The architecture is light and airy while borrowing distinctive themes from the firm's HQ building, located in London's Buckingham Palace Road. Communicating with PA consultants' avatars present, I learned that the facility was designed by Rivers Run Red, a London-based brand consultancy whose Second Life clients include the BBC, Adidas and Disney. An official launch is planned for 29 November 2006.

Companies buy space in Second Life in order to market their brand (Dell, Adidas, countless others), be seen as innovative (Reuters and others), reach out to their alumni or other communities (IBM) or as a novel internal teleconferencing and social tool (Reuters). A few have set out to experiment with products or environments that are difficult to replicate in "real life".

It all reminds me of the beginnings on the web. Some of us will remember the fascination with typing some complicated url into an early browser only to see an image of a coffee pot in a lab in Cambridge. Soon after, companies scrambled to create websites: Little more than outtakes from their annual reports. But after countless experiments and a financial bubble, we have a web that we could not imagine living without today. Let the experiment continue.

Tags: Second Life virtual worlds web 2.0 webmontag PA Consulting Group marketing brand innovation

Virtual land lease in Second Life

On a whim, i entered a lottery in Second Life - and won. For the next four months, I am allowed to use several 100 square meters of retail space in an area called Luna. I have a pretty cool idea of what to do with the space but it is dependent on other factors and it may take some time to make it happen, so if you have an idea, send an IM message to my virtual alter ego, Lance Fugu.

There is interesting potential to explore the virtual economy, mixing real life and virtual environment, showcasing art, design, software or pure virtual experiences. I am hoping to share the space until my own idea is ready, and even then I may not need all the space.

(I recently wrote about Second Life on Mind This, prompted by an article in The Economist.)

Tags: Second Life virtual world Luna lottery experiment

It is not a game (Special report on Second Life)

Or at least Second Life is more than a game. This is made clear in an article in The Economist which mentions how Second Life is being used to:

• Increase awareness and understanding of schizophrenia
• Rehearse responses to earthquakes
• Experiment with viral marketing (Toyota is mentioned)
• Provide a consequence free environment for helping autistic children

(The article does not provide the details for any of the locations covered; if anybody knows the places discussed, please leave a comment.)

With a three-page article in The Economist, entering Second Life should become a more respectable activity and I hope it becomes easier to convince friends to check it out without too much early-adopter feel about it.

As they gain acceptance, virtual worlds will enter the spectrum of collaboration tools and social software on par with instant messaging, web conferencing, prediction markets etc.

Tags: Second Life The Economist virtual world collaboration