Category: In the Press

Medical Centre granted $3.5 million to study diabetes education in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Draxtor Despres pointed me towards Second Life shows new promise as virtual forum for diabetes education, an article written by Nidhi Subbaraman for the technical section of the Boston Globe’s on-line edition.

In it, Ms Subbaraman reports on a Boston Medical Centre trial which utilised Second Life to help diabetes sufferers better manage their condition, and which has paved the way for an even more in-depth examination of the use of virtual world environments in matters of personal healthcare.

Nidhi Subbaraman writing in the Boston Globe about Diabetes studies using Second Life
Nidhi Subbaraman writing in the Boston Globe about diabetes studies using Second Life

The trial was initiated by  2009 by Dr. Suzanne Mitchell, a family physician at Boston Medical Centre and assistant professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. The intent was to investigate whether and how virtual group sessions held in Second Life might help diabetes sufferers made changes to their eating habits and lifestyles to better manage their illness.

In particular, the trial involved African-American women, many from low-income families and / or holding down busy jobs. This demographic was specifically targeted because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office indicates that a quarter of African-American women over age 55 have type 2 diabetes, which is a significantly high percentage.

Half of the study participants attended hospital classes to help them cope with their condition, the other half were provided with computers and modems and shown how to access Second Life and attend classes in-world. As Ms. Subbabaman notes:

Some days the virtual group “met” at the Second Life BMC classroom, but the group also took field trips into the on-line world. Once, the course leaders led a session on diet and explained how slow, mindful eating was one way to control portions and manage diet. The participants found that when their avatars sat down to eat at the cafeteria location, their utensils moved very slowly, echoing the lesson. Another time the group met at an exercise facility within Second Life, where participants could try out the treadmill or exercise bikes, or take a swim.

Not only did the trial reveal the participants attending virtual activities faired at least as well as those attending regular hospital classes, it also showed that they formed friendships and their own support network, swapping recipes, and trying to encourage friends to join them in-world as well. Most interestingly of all, the study suggested that those participating in the virtual aspect of the study reported exercising more than the group that met in class, suggesting the virtual experience might result in lasting lifestyle changes.

This isn’t the first time that activities in Second Life and virtual environments like it have been shown to have a positive impact on people’s lifestyle choices. In 2012, for example, I reported on a study led by Dr. Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz at the University of Missouri which showed that people who have a strong sense of self-presence with their avatar enjoy an improved self-image and took better care of themselves health-wise, and tended to enjoy better relationships with others.

Dr. Suzanne Mitchell
Dr. Suzanne Mitchell

However, as Ms. Subbabaman reports, the work carried out by Dr. Mitchell and her colleagues has now resulted in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) awarding them a US $3.5 million grant to finance a further 5-year study into how the use of Second Life can help people diagnosed with diabetes better manage their condition.

“We know that in order to actively participate as partners in healthcare, patients with diabetes need self-management support,” Dr. Mitchell said in a BMC press release announcing the grant and the study. “What is remarkable about this study is we’ll be educating and interacting with some of the patients, and they’ll be interacting with each other, all through group visits in a virtual world.”

As with the initial trial, participants will be placed in either the control group (classroom education) or asked to join Second Life. Those involved in the Second life element of the study will not only be monitored to see how participation in in-world group session helps them better understand their condition, but also how the relationship with their avatar in general has an impact on their self-care and willingness to undertake lifestyle changes.

In this Dr. Mitchell and her colleagues are very keen to chart what is called the “Proteus Effect”. This is a term coined by Nick Yee in his 2014 book, The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us– and How They Don’t to define the increasingly complex relationship we have with our digital Doppelgängers, and how it can have a profound and often positive effect on us (also see my article from January 2014).

The Proteus Effect was very much in evidence during the original BCM trial, and was also the effect noted by Dr. Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz’s study, so Dr. Mitchell is keen to explore how deeply it may affect and benefit people afflicted with diabetes.

Currently, it is estimated that some 387 million people globally live with diabetes, and the World Health Organisation estimates that the disease could be the 7th leading cause of death by 2030. given this, studies like the one announced by Dr. Mitchell and her colleagues could offer important new insights into the ways and means by which virtual world environments could encourage better self-management for the disease.

What’s more, it is possible the results of this study could be applicable to helping people better manage a range of long-term illnesses and conditions for themselves and alongside of medical support.  As such, it will be interesting to see how this study progresses, and I very much hope that I’ll be able to carry further updates on the study in the future.

Further Reading

Don’t forget that 2015 marks the first Team Diabetes season in Second Life, raising money in support of  the American Diabetes Association. In particular, November 2015 will see the Art in Hats event, which will lead up to World Diabetes Day. on November 14th. I’ll have up-to-date news on activities occurring throughout Art in Hats in due course.

Geek Dad discusses “Project Sansar”

Posted on by Inara Pey
Obligatory Sansar promo shot via Linden Lab (pretty please, can we have something new, LL?)
Obligatory Sansar promo shot via Linden Lab (pretty please, can we have something new, LL?)

Taking a peek today at the Lab’s press page on the web, I saw that Geek Dad has an article by Derrick Schneider in which he discusses the Lab’s in-development “Project Sansar” virtual experiences platform with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg.

The article, Project Sansar: Giving Virtual Reality a Second Life, doesn’t give out much that is new about “Sansar” for those who have been following whatever news has been made available, but it does tend to further clarify a few things, while re-stating others.

For me, the more interesting part of the discussion revolves around the concept of the “creator”.

Ebbe Altberg: talking Sansar to Geek Dad
Ebbe Altberg: talking Sansar to Geek Dad

Within Second Life, and while it can have a fairly broad generic application, the term is most readily identified with the role of the model-maker; those people who actually create models and objects, whether in mesh or prims.

However, in broader terms, anyone who creates a region or a parcel, be it for their own use or to be shared with others, is equally a “creator”, even if they purchase the items they use either in-world or through the Marketplace.

For “Sansar”, it appears the Lab is using “creator” in this latter context, rather than identifying a specific group of skilled model makers. That is, people who can bring together models and content into a single experience and present it for use by their intended audience.

Obviously, those who build the models are an important subset of this creative group; hence why the Lab has engaged with modellers and “content partners” (itself an interesting term)” during the current closed alpha for “Sansar”. But the model makers aren’t perhaps the central focus of the Lab’s endeavours in building Sansar as some may have taken the term “creators” to mean.

Alleged / supposed / actual (take your pick)
“Project Sansar” log-in screen (?)

This leads us, by way of a discussion about instancing experiences, to matters of revenue generation, which I also found to be of speculative interest. In an almost throwaway comment, Schneider demonstrates just how different “Sansar” will be from Second Life, and offers a glimpse of some intriguing new possibilities for revenue generation which may not have been readily considered thus far, once the platform’s audience and use grows:

If you make a great experience in Sansar … you can resell that experience… which you really can’t do today in Second Life.

Picture, for example, a group such as MadPea Games, able to create and licence / sell entire game / hunt experiences to clients in the physical world, completely packaged and ready to go, branded for their client. but with full credit to MadPea Games. That the experience is actually running on the “Sansar” servers operated by the Lab is neither here nor there as far as the client is concerned, so long as they can use whatever mechanism they’ve chosen to engage their desired audience in the experience.

Equally, this also raises some potential questions around content, licensing and permissions, particularly given the earlier statements around those building an experience not necessarily being those would actually build all the models, etc., within that experience.  For example, how do you cater for the model maker who doesn’t want their creations to be re-packaged and sold on to or licensed out to third parties? Or how do you ensure that models and content remain “affordable” to the majority whilst allowing the maker to generate sufficient revenue to make it worth their while in allowing they models to be “sold on”?

Again, it will be interesting to see how questions like this are addressed – or if they are even an actual concern as “Sansar” becomes more accessible.

Sine Wave Entertainment are also looking at the concept of a
Sine Wave Entertainment are also looking at the concept of a “white label” platform – sinewave.space (which I wrote about here). These also encompass some of their own product offerings, such as Wet.fm, complete with direct discoverability through the web

Discoverability is also again touched upon, with Schneider nicely encompassing the approach being taken with “Sansar”:

Imagine going to a web page that goes in-depth on a given topic — Mayan temples, say — and then says, “here’s a VR experience that gives you another view” in the same way you might see an embedded video today. There will also be ways to find other experiences once you’re inside the ecosystem.

Alongside of this there are the by now familiar references to the likes of WordPress and YouTube, which initially appeared back in June and July. These comments have, to me, tended to confirm my own view (held since I first started reading what was being said about  the platform in places such as the 2015 VWBPE conference) that  Sansar, conceptually at least, is somewhat analogous to the idea of  a platform as a service (PaaS) providing a “white label” environment to potential users. I’ve been promising for a while to expand on this, and rather than sidetrack things here, I really will make an effort to re-organise my thoughts on this and other speculations I have about “Sansar” and get them in print in this blog, hopefully within the next week.

Overall, while (again) not revealing anything that is really startlingly new, the Geek Dad article does make for interesting reading, simply because it does perhaps clarify certain things at least a little bit, and because of the possible questions which might yet be applied to the platform as more is revealed.

Related Links

Con-Fusion about education in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Incorrect thinking: just because a campus region is empty of other avatars doesn't necessarily mean it is "abandoned" (image: UWA campus, Second Life)
Incorrect thinking: just because a campus region in Second Life is empty of other avatars doesn’t necessarily mean it is “abandoned” (image: part of the UWA campus, Second Life)

Second Life (with a nod to the Lab’s Project Sansar) has enjoyed some reasonably good press of late. We’ve seen articles in the likes of Xconomy.com. Variety Online, Re/code, Gamasutra – good golly, Miss Molly, even Moviepilot is getting in on the act.

However, there will still be pieces out there which reflect poorly on matters. Not so much where Second Life is concerned, but on their authors. Such is the case with Patrick Hogan’s piece in Fusion, which John (Johannes1977 Resident) pointed me towards via e-mail.

The title of the piece is enough to set the overall tone: We took a tour of the abandoned college campuses of Second Life.

Patrick Hogan: writing to underline a preconception
Patrick Hogan: writing to underline a preconception?

As one might expect from such a title, this isn’t a reasoned discussion of the whys and wherefores, both good and bad, on the use of Second Life for educational purposes. There is no mention of the work of universities such as Texas A&M, as featured in episode #19 of The Drax Files World Makers, or that of the University of Western Australia. There is no highlighting of the struggle schools, colleges and universities faced as a result of the axing of the education discount or the resurgence of interest following its re-introduction; indeed Mr. Hogan demonstrates he’s not even aware there is an educational discount.

Similarly, no insights are given into how the platform has been used to assist with medical training among nurses and surgeons alike.  There is no pointer to the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) run by the  Universidad de San Martín de Porres (USMP) in Perú, now in its third year, which helps Spanish-speaking educators get started with Second Life simply because it is in demand as a platform for education, and so on.

Nor, frankly should we expect there to be any such discussion, because Mr. Hogan doesn’t appear to be so much interested in Second Life as he does about underlining his own misconceptions about the platform which, like his opening comments, seem to be firmly rooted in 2007.

So does this mean we should ignore what he has to say? No, not at all. Looking through his other articles, Mr. Hogan seems to prefer to skim his subjects with the aim of offering something of a lighter look. As such, he may well be open to gaining a little more educated about this particular topic.

Certainly, and with a view to addressing the readership of the piece, its subjective nature and the misconceptions evident within it should be corrected, starting with the false premise of the piece itself (an “empty” region is in no way indicative of it having been “abandoned”).

These arre not the educational uses of virtual worlds Mr. hogan was looking for...
These are not the educational uses of virtual worlds Mr. Hogan was looking for…

Of course, had he really been interested in his subject, Mr. Hogan could have contacted the Lab, asked a few questions, received some pointers towards various education-related organisations and communities, and been on his way and filling his little corner of Fusion with relevant observations, positive or negative.

But he didn’t. He preferred the lazy route, walking the same, tired furrow that’s all too familiar and boring. His article even manages the obligatory reference to porn that is considered de rigueur for such pieces (check the title byline).

That he does opt to walk this line is really to his detriment, rather than it being any reflection on those who use Second Life or the platform itself.

Quartz offers a gem on Sansar, VR and Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
“come with me!” – in , Could the Oculus Rift help give Second Life a second life? Alice Truoung examines the promise of avatar-based virtual spaces

There has been another recent spate of articles on Linden Lab, Project Sansar, Second Life and the potential for avatar-based virtual spaces with the upcoming advent of VR. Even Moviepilot, whom I took to task in 2014, has been busy looking at what’s going on, while Gamasutra rushed out what is essentially a nutshell version of Eric Johnson’s excellent Re/code article examining the question of the metaverse, which I looked at here.

However, the pick of the latest crop has to be Alice Truong’s article published in Quartz: Could the Oculus Rift help give Second Life a second life?  While the title might sound Second-Life centric and suggestive of a piece looking at how it will faire under the Rift (“not very well”), it is anything but.

What is actually presented is a well-rounded piece on the future of avatar-based virtual spaces which uses Second Life as the measure of their mark and launchpad for their future. Within it, Second Life is examined from a number of angles and Sansar is explored, together with a nodding look towards High Fidelity.

Alic Troung: thought on virtual spaces and avatars in Quartz (image credit: Quartz.com)
Alice Truong: thought on virtual spaces and avatars in Quartz (image credit: Quartz.com)

As with most of the pieces which had appeared over the last month or so, little real news on Sansar (or SL’s development for that matter) is given out. This is hardly surprising, as the Lab does like to hold its cards close to its chest – the relative newness (and thus the difficulty in highlighting specific tablets-of-stone facts) of Sansar notwithstanding.

What makes this article a joy, is that it provides a solid framing for the subject of the Lab and virtual worlds, reaching back to 1999 and the original efforts with The Rig. This is nicely packaged and offers a solid foundation from which Ms. Truong expertly weave her piece. Some of the path she takes will be familiar, particularly where SL and Sansar is concerned. We get to hear about SL’s growth, revenue, the US $60 million collectively cashed-out of the platform by many of its users, etc.

We also get fair mention of the decline in the number of active users on the platform, but again, this is properly framed. At its peak, SL had around 1.1 million active users; eight-ish years later, that number stands at around 900,000. A decline, yes. but as Ebbe Altberg points out hardly any kind of “mass exodus”; and certainly nowhere near the dire haemorrhaging of users we tend to hear proclaimed to be happening every time the Lab makes what is perceived as an irksome decision.

For Sansar, similarly familiar ground is covered – the revenue model (and the comparison with SL’s model and its weakness), the promise of VR, the opportunity to grow a platform for “tens, if not hundreds” of millions of users, the aspect of much broader “discoverabiilty” / ease of access for Sansar in order to help generate more appeal, and so on.

Mention is made of the Lab planning to “commercially release” Sansar by the end of 2016. Given what has been said by the Lab to date concerning time frames for future work, and allowing for Ebbe’s comments of perhaps having something worthy of a “version 1.0” label by the close of 2016, I’m taking the comment to be more of a misunderstanding on Ms. Truong’s part than any revelation as to Sansar’s roadmap.

Hunter Walk (l), the Lab's former
Hunter Walk (l), the Lab’s former “Director of Everything Non-Engineering” as well as a founder of the company, and now a VC in his own right, and Bernard Drax, aka Draxtor Despres (r) offer thoughts on Sansar

Another enjoyable element of this article is that Ms. Truong casts her net wide for input; thus she captures both Hunter Walk and Draxtor Despres. Their comments serve to both offer the means by which ideas can be further explored in the piece, and serve to offer a measure of counterpoint to the assumed mass appeal spaces like Sansar and High Fidelity will have.

Hunter Walk, for example, underlines the most critical problem in growing users Second Life has faced throughout its lifetime – that of accessibility and use. As he states, “ultimately, the work you had to put in was, for most people, more than the fun you got out.”  Not only does this underline the essential truth about SL’s longest-running issue (it’s as true today for many as 2003/4), it lays the foundation for an exploration of some of Sansar’s fundamental differences to SL later in the article.

Hunter also passes comment on the idea of these spaces finding many millions of users, pointing out that “tens of millions” was always an unrealised dream at the Lab for Second Life; perhaps a cautionary warning about focusing on user numbers. He also seems to offer something of a warning on investment returns in such ventures as well, again referencing Second Life, although if intended as a warning, it is more relevant to High Fidelity (which has received around US $16.5 million in investment to date).

Draxtor similarly questions whether user numbers should necessarily be the focus / rationale for building these kind of virtual spaces. Like him, I’m far from convinced Sansar will have the kind of broad-ranging reach to draw in “hundreds of millions” (or, if I’m honest, even more than  the low tens of millions). I’ve explained some of the reason why I think in my review of Eric Johnson’s piece linked to towards the top of this article, so I won’t repeat them here.

Could the promise of 2mixed reality
Could the promise of 2mixed reality” technologies which combine VR, AR and physical world activities yet serve to keep avatar-based virtual spaces a niche endeavour? (image: Magic Leap, via the New York Times)

If I’m honest, my only regret is that while Ms Truong’s tone is (rightly) sceptical in places, there is no outright challenge to the idea that people will embrace avatar-based interactions on a massive scale just because VR is on our doorstep.

Right now, there is a lot going on in the world of technology: VR, AR, the potential to fuse the two; faster communications capabilities, much better mobile connectivity, and so on. All of these could serve to dramatically marginalise any need to persistently engage in avatar-based interactions outside of very defined areas. As such, the inescapable whiff of “will we build it, they will use it” (to utterly mangle an already oft-misquoted line from a certain film) which seems to pervade the talk of high Fidelity and Sansar does perhaps deserve a degree of challenge.

Perhaps I should drop a line to Peter Gray suggesting an interview on those lines…

In the meantime – go read Alice Truong.

Related Links

Ebbe’s fireside chat: Sansar, Second Life and VR

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nick Ochoa and Ebbe Altberg talk Sansar, SL and virtual spaces (image courtesy of UploadVR)
Nick Ochoa and Ebbe Altberg talk Sansar, SL and virtual spaces (image courtesy of UploadVR)

On August 3rd, Upload VR posted a video chat to YouTube which features a cosy fireside chat between Nick Ochoa and Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, which examines Sansar and virtual environments – touching on Second Life in some places.

The 30-minute  conversation is very relaxed and approachable; Ebbe is clearly at ease (possibly helped by the glass of red wine!) and Nick is a very competent host in his ability to keep a conversational flow going. The camera is a tad wobbly in places, suggesting whoever was holding it may have been enjoying a sip or six of the wine / beer (!), but not excessively so. A lot of ground is covered in the time, and while it may be frustrating that some items are passed on rather than followed-up, keep in mind that this is more a conversation than in-depth interview / QA, serving to offer a non-SL audience a flavour of what that Lab is up to.

In terms of Sansar, we do get to learn that times are running very slightly behind schedule, in that we’re still a “couple of weeks” away from the start of initial closed alpha testing under NDA, but everything else remains pretty much as stated: NDA Alpha ramp-up through 2015 into 2016 and a more public beta in 2016.

(image courtesy of UploadVR)
(image courtesy of UploadVR)

We do get to learn a little more about how the closed alpha will run: those invited to join will be able to install and application with hooks into Maya, the tool of choice for initial testing. They build their “scenes” (“experiences”)  in Maya and push a button in the application to “publish” the results on Sansar and obtain links they can share with others involved in the testing. Given Ebbe’s previous comments about “optimising” content for delivery across Sansar, I wonder if this approach will be how things are handled when Sansar is broadened to encompass other external content creation tools.

Beyond this, we get more on the Sansar / WordPress.com analogy, which first came to the fore in an article published by Variety online. This whole aspect of Sansar is a fascinating point of speculation to me, in that it suggests the platform is conceptually analogous to the concept of a Platform as a Service (PaaS), something which I think stands to make Sansar potentially far more powerful and flexible than people perhaps credit. However, as this is only speculation on my part, I’ll leave that to one side for now – but promise I will explore it further in a future article.

Within the UploadVR discussion, Ebbe’s focus on the WordPress.com analogy is tightly focused on the aspect  of “discoverability”. The idea that right now and with SL, people have to join the platform in order to discover the experience, whereas Sansar should be more like WordPress – where people discover the blogs and don’t necessarily care about the platform on which the blogs are run.

A clearly relaxed Ebbe gets into talking avatar dancing
A clearly relaxed Ebbe gets into talking avatar dancing (image courtesy of UploadVR)

Sansar’s revenue model gets a little more clarification, with the “sales tax” aspect clearly being applied to the platform’s GDP as a whole – which is Second Life’s case is an estimated half billion US dollars a year. Previously, there had been some confusion as to precisely where the “sale tax” might fall, particularly following an article in Xconomy.com, so the further clarification is welcome.

A direct parallel is drawn to on-line retail sites where up to 30% might be charged in commission. However, I wouldn’t take this to mean that’s necessarily what the Lab is looking to charge; Ebbe is making comparisons, not stating policy.

A more meaningful question to ask here is to how rapidly can Sansar realistically grow in user numbers order for such a model to be able to push the platform into the black? Unless there is some immediate and large influx of users, it could take a while for the Sansar economy to really get rolling; so conceivably, and depending on the associated overheads in providing the platform, the Lab could be operating Sansar as something of a loss leader for a time after it is “launched” to the world at large.

From here, the conversation broadens out to discuss the virtual opportunities that already exist in Second Life, from content creation through activities to monetization for users, to an overview of the many different communities present in-world, all of which almost seamlessly blends into more of a general chat on the potential and perils of VR which in turn bounces across health, the work of Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford University, and more besides. This actually makes for the interview’s most entertaining 10 minutes, as Ochoa and Altberg, obviously at ease, forget the presence of the camera as they chat.

Overall, this is a comfortable and pleasing discussion – not revelatory or packed with news, but one which is nevertheless interesting and within its own personal richness – not the least is the rapport which is clearly present between Altberg and Ochoa.

 

Examining the reality of the metaverse

Posted on by Inara Pey
Th obligatory Sansar promo image :) (please can we have some new ones?) - Linden Lab
Th obligatory Sansar promo image 🙂 (please can we have some new ones?) – Linden Lab

Eric Johnson has a thought-provoking article over on re/code. In Welcome to the Metaverse, he ponders the lot of avatar-based virtual spaces, past and future, and how a number of companies – the Lab included – are betting that the “new era” of VR is going to be the means by which such spaces will become mainstream.

It’s an interesting piece, offering plenty of food for thought, starting with an opening statement by the Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, on defining human life:

What humans do is create spaces. Some spaces are mobile, like a bus. San Francisco is a space that was created by its users. Whether you go into a pub, a bar, a classroom, a bowling alley, an office, a library … We create spaces and we have people come together in those spaces, and then we communicate and socialize within those spaces.

This is actually the first thing about the article that leaves me with a familiar feeling of feeling at odds with the prevailing view of all things metaverse, albeit for a slightly different reason. With due respect to Mr. Altberg, people didn’t come together as a result of building spaces. They built spaces as a result of coming together. However, as an opening gambit for a study of this thing we call the “metaverse”, it’ll do as an opener.

Eric Johnson, Associate editor, Gaming at Re/code (via LinkedIn)
Eric Johnson, Associate editor, Gaming at Re/code (via LinkedIn)

From here, Mr. Johnson give us the pocket introduction to “the metaverse” via the obligatory (and rightful) nod to Neal Stephenson while simultaneously dispensing quickly with a look at the “past promise” of virtual spaces that didn’t in the end measure-up to the expectations.

This leads the way to a clever little nod to the book which has become this decade’s “Snowcrash”  – in the form of  Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (which is actually a very good read) – as a means to introduce the main three companies he sees as currently vying for space in “the metaverse” – the Lab,  High Fidelity and AltspaceVR.

Chances are the Sansar and High Fidelity are already well-known to people reading these pages, which AltspaceVR may have passed some unnoticed. As the article points out, they’ve been developing avatar-based VR for the last couple of years, focusing on shared spaces (watching a film with a friend who is halfway across the world for example), and scheduled events, including gaming weekends, etc.

AltspaceVR also has some ideas for business applications with their environments, which they are planning to offer on a pay-to-use basis. And while their avatars main have been viewed with disdain by some, there are a couple of points to bear in mind where the company is concerned.

The first is that as a result of watching some of AltspaceVR’s virtual interactions, Mark Zuckerberg caught the social VR bug, and Facebook went after Oculus VR, with the subsequent $2 billion acquisition (which was actually quite a modest punt when compared to the $19 billion the company had earlier spent on a proven technology in WhatsApp).

The second is that the company, which has been around about as long at Philip Rosedale’s High Fidelity, has almost raised a comparable amount in funding – around $15.7 million to date (SEC filings indicate High Fidelity has raised around $16.5 million), and both are working at solving many of the same technical issues – head and motion tracking, eye tracking, etc.,

Beyond this, others interested in making a pitch into the metaverse space, as Mr. Johnson mentions are IMVU, which has around 15% of it’s 130+ staff now working on trying to integrate VR into its existing spaces (a-la the Lab’s early effects with SL and the Rift), and a small New York based start-up, focusing on VR social games with around $300,000 in seeding money. called Surreal, the 4-person company is billing itself as “the first fully immersive virtual world”, which is focused entirely on using VR HMDs (Oculus, Gear VR and Cardboard).

Johnson attempts to split his examination of the metaverse into two views: the short-term and the long-term. In doing so, he inevitably points to the elephant in the room: Facebook. In this, he quotes Palmer Luckey, who gives a fair warning as to whether or not “the metaverse” is around the corner, and which stands as a cautionary warning, in more ways than one:

I think at this point the term ‘metaverse’ is a bit undefined. For any one company to say, ‘We are building the metaverse’ is pretty hyperbolic. Building all the pieces is going to be hard, and the way you imagine things in sci-fi doesn’t always translate over to the way things will be in the real world.

Palmer Luckey: precient words on
Palmer Luckey: prescient words on “the metaverse”?

He has a very valid point; and with today’s rapidly evolving pace of technology, it’s one worth keeping in mind; the technical issues people see today as only being surmountable through the use of avatars may not actually be technical issues a few years hence.

Interestingly, Johnson places this in the “short-term” view – although both Oculus VR and Facebook have always talked in terms of “the metaverse” still being around a decade away. For the longer term, Johnson looks in particular at High Fidelity’s work and also the Second Life revenue generation success (and, despite the naysayers out there SL is a commercial success, both for the Lab and its users, the latter of whom benefited with collective revenues of $60 million from the platform in 2014), before taking another look at AltspaceVR.

There is a lot to be digested in the piece, and it makes for a good read. However, for me, Palmer Luckey’s warning that how things don’t always match the real world tends to stand out a lot when a lot of the approach being then with avatar-based virtual spaces tend to smack of the “if you build it, they will use it” approach.

I don’t doubt for a minute that spaces will have a lot of applications among various vertical markets. It is no coincidence that the likes of Philip Rosedale and Ebbe Altberg talk much of the same language concerning them: education, training, healthcare, business; there is potential for avatar-based VR spaces in all of them. But I’m still not convinced that longer-term, such spaces are going to claim a much large market among causal consumers than is currently the case, for a couple of reasons.

The first is that the vast majority of people really haven’t seen the need to “climb in” to an avatar for their social interactions – and getting a shiny new headset (which Johnson quotes some rather interesting demographics about) isn’t actually going to change that. The second is connected to the headsets themselves.

High Fidelity and Linden Lab see the education sector as a major focus for their efforts – and neither is wrong. But are avatar-based virtual spaces really going to go consumer mass market?

Simply put, it would seem likely that this brave new world of VR could end-up delivering so many fantastic experiences and opportunities to the casual user, that the majority still won’t see the need to invest time and effort in creating a virtual alter-ego of the kind we desire (and we, as SL / OpenSim users are a niche), because so much else is being delivered to them pre-packaged and ready-to-go. Thus, as Palmer Luckey indicates, the chances are “the metaverse” could well arrive in our lives in a manner very different to that being envisaged by High Fidelity and Linden Lab, thus leaving their approach still very much niche-oriented.

Not that there is anything wrong with that either. As both Rosedale and the Lab can demonstrate, it’s done them rather nicely over the years. And it is fair to say that “niche” this time around a liable to be somewhat larger, simply because of the vertical market opportunities they’re looking at.

Even so, and as mentioned, there is this optimistic we “build / they come” aspect to the whole idea of avatar-based vertical spaces that it would be nice to see an article probing the pros and cons a little more. Perhaps that might be something for a follow-up from Mr. Johnson? In the meantime, Welcome to the Metaverse is a thought-provoking read, and for reasons I’ve not even scratched at here (such as the question of on-line abuse), as such, it’s not one to miss.

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With thanks to Indigo Mertel for the Google+ pointer at the weekend.