Archive for June, 2007

Seems that I’m not the only one tracking game development platforms. Although my chart is still a work in progress the folks who produce the Virtual Worlds Conference have begun hosting a Virtual World Platform Matrix on their site. Though you could argue how some of the products are categorized and tick off a handful that are missing entirely, they include most of the MMOG world and platform developers out there.

The home page of the Metaverse Roadmap, an initiative to chart a path forward from the 2D web to the 3D web, provides a few clues:

“What happens when video games meet Web 2.0? When virtual worlds meet geospatial maps of the planet? When simulations get real and life and business go virtual? When you use a virtual Earth to navigate the physical Earth, and your avatar becomes your online agent? What happens is the metaverse.

“Taking its name from the immersive virtual world imagined by Neal Stephenson in his visionary novel, Snow Crash, the Metaverse Roadmap (MVR) is the first public ten-year forecast and visioning survey of 3D Web technologies, applications, markets, and potential social impacts. Areas of exploration include the convergence of Web applications with networked computer games and virtual worlds, the use of 3D creation and animation tools in virtual environments, digital mapping, artificial life, and the underlying trends in hardware, software, connectivity, business innovation and social adoption that will drive the transformation of the World Wide Web in the coming decade.

The MVR explores multiple pathways to the 3D enhanced web, not a single path to a “3D-only” web. An array of 3D web enhancements are emerging, visual extensions to the participatory web technologies now sweeping the online world.”

Learn more at the home page of the Metaverse Roadmap initiative or download the Metaverse Roadmap here (PDF).

The New York Times has run several articles on games in the last week. My favorite is a gallery of game players and their avatars from the Sunday Magazine section that manages to be both delightful and poignant when you see how people “reinvent” themselves for virtual worlds. Go here to view the slide show and see what you think.

Lee Wilson makes a strong case for innovation in his Headway Strategies blog post Where is the Wii for Education? He writes, “Where are breakthrough products like the Wii in education? Textbooks and education technology are stuck in a rut. Just like Sony and Microsoft got locked in a war over processor speeds and cutting edge graphics most of the competition in the education market seems increasingly focused on tangential issues to the customer’s core needs. [...] With everyone writing to the standards for the same 4-5 states textbooks are becoming a low growth zero sum commodity game. In an attempt to differentiate their basal textbooks the major publishers are increasingly cannibalizing their supplemental book bags for “free with order” goodies. They are also bolting technology on in an attempt to sex up the offerings.”

Of course the problem with publishers’ typical approach is that it doesn’t address the sensibilities of the students who use their products. Like it or not, kids growing up with sophisticated web applications and gaming systems like XBox, PlayStation and the Wii can spot bolted on technology a mile away. However when the tech of today is integrated with a product, which I call gamer-centered design, the results can be astonishingly different.

In his article for Serious Games Source Ian Bogost explores how exergaming with DDR and Wii are getting kids up out of their seats. And consider Whyville.net, one of the first virtual worlds for kids and the only one with educational simulations embedded in a highly social online environment. With hardly any marketing or promotion Whyville’s population has grown to more than 2 million tweens who have learned about nutrition, engineering, epidemiology and other decidedly serious topics, very much on their own initiative. That’s the power of technology in education done right.

British metaverse consultancy and marketing agency K Zero reports this week that 85 international brands had established a presence in Second Life by the end of May 2007. In 2006 these corporate immigrants were “almost exclusively from the US. However, Western Europe stepped forward strongly from Jan 2007 and with this came the uplift in virtual marketing from countries such as the UK, Germany and Italy… culminating in 17 major brands/organizations entering in May.”

The company directory category of their blog breaks this down further and offers screen grabs of each company’s virtual space for a fast tour of who’s doing what in this virtual land rush. Taking it a step further, they also present demographics, a brand map and a university map that illustrate where these outposts have been built. Though the SLurls are not listed, K Zero provides everything the intrepid Second Life explorer/marketer/homesteader needs. Let the adventure begin.

What is the purpose of K-12 education these days, anyway? Social Studies teacher Dave McDivitt cuts right to the chase in a cogent post on his blog this week. He writes:

1. Education needs to leave the “factory” model behind. The system was set up and work well for our country 65 years ago but today we need something different.

2. Students use very little of the information that they learn in school. Who really knows that the 100 years war was 116 years? And who really cares. I think about my high school experience. Physics…not using it. Pre-Calc…not using it. Chemistry…not using it.

3. Students do not need to be hindered by “grade level.” We are way to caught up in some kid reading at “grade level.” And if they are at grade level…..then we basically leave them alone instead of encouraging them to excel.

4. Consider what the business world wants from employees. Employees must be able to think creatively, to communicate both verbally and in writing, must be able to organize, must be able to allocate time, allocate money, to multi task, work cooperatively and many more. Where do most kids get these kinds of experience in school?

I’ve heard this argument and the conclusion McDivitt comes to before and I keep arriving at a similar answer. Not that games, simulations and computers are the only solution for all subjects and all students, but applied intelligently and in the right teacher’s hands they can be a powerful learning tool. For more, Bill MacKenty digs into this meme with Discernment and EdTech on his blog as well.

While I’m at it, one thing software product developers may want to keep in mind is that many techniques games employ can be applied to the information architecture and user experience design on all kinds of applications — an approach I think of as gamer-centered design — all the better to engage users and meet them on their own terms. Isn’t that what great product design is all about?