Category: Opinion

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe hints at a 1 billion MMO in the future

Posted on by Inara Pey

In a wide-ranging discussion at the TechCrunch Disrupt New York event (May 5th-7th),  Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe has spoken about why the company the Facebook acquisition was a good thing, and has described a desire expressed without both companies to make VR a social experience for a billion users, perhaps in the form of a MMO.

The discussion – described as a “fireside chat” with TechCrunch co-editor Matthew Panzarino – is available as a video in a Techcrunch article. It was followed by a backstage interview with TechCrunch’s Josh Constine.

Brendan Iribe, Oculus VR CEO, talks to Matthew Panzarino at Techcrunch Disrupt NY (image via Techcrunch)
Brendan Iribe, Oculus VR CEO, talks to Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch Disrupt NY (image via TechCrunch)

in discussing the attractiveness of the deal for Oculus VR, Iribe indicates that one major consideration was the fact that the company was offered the opportunity to more-or-less continue to operate fairly independently of Facebook, a-la Instagram. Another was that Facebook were prepared to provide Oculus with access to their enormous technical capabilities and services, while offering Oculus the ability to practically cherry-pick which of them they’d like to leverage.

The majority of the conversation, however, focuses on the development of an immersive, VR-focused “MMO” (a term used interchangeably with “virtual worlds” and “metaverse”) with a billion users world-wide. “Metaverse” is a term which has been used by the Oculus team in the past, indicating that they’ve held aspirations in that direction and beyond the gaming market, and Iribe frankly admits that having Facebook behind them immediately means that Oculus VR has a huge network behind them – not only in terms of infrastructure and tech, but in terms of users (1.2 billion of them), which could very much help speed up adoption and acceptance of VR. Commenting at around the 4:35 mark, Iribe states:

We know with Oculus, with a virtual world, if you’re putting on this pair of glasses and you’re going to be face-to-face communicating with people, you’re gonna be jumping in and out of this new set of virtual worlds, this is gonna be the largest MMO ever made. This is going to be an MMO where we want to put a billion people in VR. And a billion person virtual world MMO is going to require a bigger network than exists today. Why not start with Facebook and their infrastructure, and their team and their talent that they’ve built up?

While this is not a short-term goal – the figure of around ten to twenty years is mentioned when discussing how this will all come about. Iribe also notes that there has to be something of a further upscaling of computing power in order to make it all happen, as well as the technology needing to become less cumbersome and intrusive and more readily acceptable and wearable. He suggests it should look more like a set of sunglasses – a direction several VR companies are already heading in.

Th Vuzix Wrap 1200 "VR in a pair of sunglasses"
The Vuzix Wrap 1200DX-VR “VR in a pair of sunglasses”

Exactly how this billion-user environment will come about and what form it will take is unclear. Towards the end of the video, Iribe wisely points-out that VR is still in its infancy, and that it’s hard to predict precisely where it will lead or the impact it will have. However, it seems from his comments that the “MMO / Metaverse” Oculus VR are considering isn’t a single platform (although they see Facebook’s users and network as a good starting-point, as mentioned), but potentially a range of interconnected worlds / environments.

An interesting aspect of the discussion around the MMO / Metaverse concept is that Iribe in some respects echoes much of the work that is going on at High Fidelity. He mentions that one of the attractions Facebook held for Oculus was that it already operates a complex payment system (worth around $3 billion in revenue), which negates the need for Oculus to have to develop one – a problem High Fidelity is still mulling over. More particularly, at some 12 minutes into the video, he describes the working going on at Valve in terms of development avatars and projects this work into the future where he sees avatars have head tracking capabilities, can mimic facial expressions and carry people into the Uncanny Valley – a path High Fidelity are already walking, and would appear to be a good deal further along.

In the backstage interview with Josh Constine (embedded below), Iribe also talks about issues of trust and identity security, and having the confidence that as you move between apps and environments, you maintain control of what aspects of your identity are exposed. This is another issue which has very much been at the forefront of High Fidelity’s thinking with regards to a metaverse of virtual worlds.

Towards the end of the discussion, Iribe mentions the fact that Oculus VR are now starting to work more closely with the education sector in a drive to expand the whole VR ecosystem.

Continue reading “Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe hints at a 1 billion MMO in the future” →

The Secret (Store) sauce of promoting a brand (and SL)

Posted on by Inara Pey

I caught a Tweet earlier on Monday April 28th, which came from Strawberry Singh and was aimed at Ebbe Altberg. It concerned a promo video for a fairly well-known (if relatively new) brand in SL.

Berry-video

I try not to do outright product promotion in this blog (with, admittedly, a few exceptions where brands I’ve come to personally enjoy are concerned), but this video is so gobsmackingly good, I am going to include it here.

It’s for Maylee Oh’s Secret Store brand, and is produced by Maylee herself. Not only does it show enormous talent and shines with a professional finish worthy of a TV ad (just count the beat and watch the moves), it showcases the amazing talent that is available in SL which could so easily be harnessed to work with the Lab to produce some really first-rate material for helping to promote SL to a wider audience.

So, how about it Ebbe? How about putting the feelers out to the talent within SL that uses the platform daily, and seeing how that talent can help you promote the platform that so captivates us? After all, your customers are your best ambassdors!

High Fidelity: a further $2.5 million. Now on the radar?

Posted on by Inara Pey

HF-logoThe latest Drax Files Radio Hour  drew my attention to new that Philip Rosedale’s newest venture, High Fidelity, this week gained a further round of investment capital.

The news on the move appears to have been lost amidst all of the noise coming out of Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR, however, VentureBeat covered the news on Wednesday March 26th.

Whether the latest round represents new investors or those already involved increasing their stake or a combination of both, remains unclear. However, the amount pushes the total level of investment into High Fidelity received close to some $5 million, including the $2.4 million obtained in April 2013 from Linden Lab, Kapor Capital, Google Ventures and True Ventures. Not bad for a company often referred to as “flying under the radar”.

Since Facebook’s move on Oculus VR, there has been a lot of speculation as to what might be next for the acquisition bag – and whether it could be Second Life. I’m not that convinced on the latter. But what about High Fidelity? In terms of Facebook, there might seem to be something of a fit – of not right now, then potentially down the road a bit.

Mark Zuckerberg, in describing his future vision for VR talks grandly in terms of “social VR” – VR which promotes “real” interaction and communications and which has real-world applications. That’s pretty much the space High Fidelity seems to be aiming at. I say appears, because High Fidelity seems to have a finger in a lot of idea pies, but most of the talk is in generalities rather than specifics when it comes to product(s).

Philip Rosedale: could his High Fidelity start-up be on Facebook's radar?
Philip Rosedale: could his High Fidelity start-up be on Facebook’s radar?

But given this commonality, and given High Fidelity is building on the kind of cool, sexy hardware – including the Rift, which apparently will work “out of the box” with whatever High Fidelity is / will be – it’s likely to have more of a bleeding-edge golly gee appeal than the decade-old, over-the-hill and decidedly unhip Second Life. Indeed, where it gets reported in the media, it already has.

Philip Rosedale is also something of a known quantity to one of the key players in FB’s acquisition of Oculus VR: Cory Ondrejka. They co-founded Second Life together and worked together as CEO and CTO until a difference on opinion separated them – and I assume that difference wasn’t enough to prevent them ever working together again. High Fidelity itself has attracted some of the key technology players from LL as well, who will also be known quantities to Ondrejka.

There’s also the matter of timescales. Facebook, as I’ve mentioned previously, seem to be jumping into the VR market-to-be for the long haul, they’re content to let Oculus VR test the waters for them in the gaming arena while looking towards more distant potential markets (and better, lighter and more ergonomic headsets that a broader cross-section of consumers will find attractive). As such, the slowly, slowly approach High Fidelity appears to be taking could synchronising rather nicely with FB’s approach.

Of course, this is all predicated on a number of things: exactly what it is that High Fidelity really has, how it fits a bigger technology picture, etc., right through to matters of equity stakes and controlling interests in the company.  However, in this latter regard, were High Fidelity to demonstrate they have something FB could leverage, it’s pretty clear that Facebook has the financial clout to make a deal worth everyone’s time.

At the very least, might be interesting to see where things go with any third round of investment into High Fidelity in the future …

 

 

 

SL Go: of pricing and models and some thoughts from OnLive

Posted on by Inara Pey

SL go logoImportant note: The SL Go service is to be shut down on April 30th, 2015. For more information, please read this report.

Update: On April 3rd, 2014, OnLive announced a revised pricing structure for SL Go.

While only launched on Wednesday March 5th, OnLive’s new SL Go offering for accessing Second Life from Android devices, low-end computers and TVs (additional hardware required) has already received a lot of kick-back due to its initial pricing model.

As it stands, OnLive, in something of a departure from their normal pricing models, are initially presenting the service on a pay-as-you-go offering starting at $3.00 for an hour in SL (with an initial 20-minute free trial period for new sign-ups), through $8.00 for up to three hours access, to $25.00 for up to ten hours. This is being seen as prohibitively expensive for using Second Life.

But is that really the case? Ultimately, the answer to this is both yes and no.

SL Go by OnLive: streaming Second Life to your tablet - but the pricing model is upsetting to many
SL Go by OnLive: streaming Second Life to your tablet – but the pricing model is upsetting to many

On the one hand, SL Go is being presented as an adjunct – not a replacement – to people’s “normal” means of accessing Second Life; something to be used to get in-world when access via home computer and local viewer isn’t an option. This was very much underlined by Nate Barsetti,  the Senior Manager of Customer Relations at OnLive, and Don Laabs, Linden Lab’s Senior Director of Product with overall responsibility for Second Life, emphasised when both appeared on a Designing Worlds special presentation shown a few hours after the launch of the service.

In such instances, a pay-as-you-go option is actually valid, as it potentially offers a better means of managing costs than something like a subscription payment system, such as OnLive’s new $14.99-a-month CloudLift subscription service, which was also launched on March 5th alongside their new OnLive Go service (of which SL Go is actually a part)..

For example, someone who find they need to access SL for, say, 4 hours a month when they are away from their home PC and viewer would have to pay a maximum of $31.00 a quarter in order to do so. But if SL Go were pitched at the same price as CloudLift, then their cost for the same 3-month period would be $44.97.

Of course, how far the pay-as-you-go payment plan remains attractive is on something of a sliding scale, and a tipping-point can easily be reached. There’s also the fact that were SL to be “rolled into” something like CloudLift, then it becomes more attractive on a subscription service as users gain access to it and other titles provided by CloudLift should they wish to make use of them. But that doesn’t negate the fact that there are genuine use-cases where pay-as-you go is potentially far more cost-effective, and therefore attractive, than a flat subscription rate.

On the other hand, however, SL Go has been presented as a means of accessing the full richness of SL on computers otherwise incapable of doing so. This suggests that SL Go could be used as a more general means of using SL than those on such low-end machines can currently enjoy – and as such, it is where the pay-as-you-go option falls flat on its face, and an alternative means of paying for the service to be used in this way is required, such as a subscription model. And OnLive aren’t actually blind to this fact.

Continue reading “SL Go: of pricing and models and some thoughts from OnLive” →

Could Versu Live On?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Ciaran Laval beat me to the punch on this one, having cogitated on the matter and posted on the matter of Versu being allowed a Second Life.  However, I’m going to blog anyway 🙂 .

Of all of the offerings from the Lab which were axed on February 19th – Creatorverse, dio, and Versu –  it was Versu which I found most intriguing – and also most frustrating, as being restricted to the iPad, it was the only one I couldn’t try.

Versu offered a new approach to interactive fiction
Versu offered a new approach to interactive fiction

The concept and capabilities within it, both as an interactive fiction application and as a potential engine for wider things, such as a means of studying real-world social situations (as the UK’s New Scientist magazine reported in June 2013), were certainly fascinating, and it would be a shame to see them suffer an early death.

As I do feel Versu has a lot of potential, I dropped Emily Short a line on her blog, expressing my hope that a way could be found to allow it to continue. She replied:

I don’t have a concrete answer to that yet, but I’m currently investigating whether it’s possible to regain the IP from Linden.

If so, I’d likely take it forward in a slightly different direction than the Lab would have done, but still with the aim of making some tools available to the general public. I’m actually really pleased with some of the things the authoring tools could do at the end — I was able to put together Blood and Laurels, which is a massively branching, 250K word piece, in a couple of months. I’m obviously biased here, but the output feels way tighter than our earliest Versu stories, has much more plot, but still allows for considerable variety in the outcomes of various character relationships. Basically, it’s a type of IF I have been wanting to write for a long time, and for which most of the existing tools are not a very good fit.

So I’d really like to see both the finished stories and the toolset reach an audience, since outside of Linden and a few conference demos hardly anyone has seen what we did. But a great deal depends on what I’m able to arrange.

Anyway, if I have news on the future of Versu, I’ll mention it on this blog.

Not long after she replied to me, Emily also posted on the subject directly.

Blood and Laurels, a 250,000 word title for Versu had, prior to the Lab's 19th February announcement, been expected soon
Blood and Laurels, a 250,000 word title for Versu had, prior to the Lab’s 19th February announcement, been expected soon

Obviously, and as Emily says, there is nothing concrete here to say Versu will be able go ahead, and negotiations are down to her, the Lab and (I assume) Richard Evans to see how it might be taken forward outside of the Lab’s purview. However, I can’t help but keep fingers crossed on the matter; particularly given there is a chance the tools for people to create their own stories would remain a part of any continuance.

The news that Versu was to be axed must have come as a severe disappointment to Emily. As she notes in her blog reply, Blood and Laurels, which had been reported as “coming soon” to Versu as recently as January 25th, 2014, amounted to a 250,000-word piece, which is roughly twice the length of something akin to a work of historical fiction.

The idea of a company releasing technology IP as a result of a shift in focus coupled with a departure of staff isn’t new. Perhaps the most recent high-profile example of this occurring was when Gabe Newell allowed Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson walk away from Value with the IP for castAR, an augmented reality (and potentially VR-capable) headset they had been developing on the company’s dime. By doing so, Newell enabled them to set-up a company and Kickstarter in order to continue the work. So it’s is not beyond the realm of possibility that an agreement between the Lab and Ms. Short / Richard Evans cannot be reached.

CastAR: Gabe Newell allowed glasses (image courtesy of Technical Illusions / The Verge)
CastAR: Gabe Newell allowed Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson to depart Valve with the IP when the project was effectively canned. could LL reach a similar agreement with the creators of Versu? (image courtesy of Technical Illusions / The Verge)

Meanwhile, Qie Niangao has been musing whether Versu’s technology might find a re-use in SL helping content creators develop more immersive user experiences alongside of, or a part of, the still-to-be-released Experience Tools.

Again, it’s an interesting idea. Pathfinding has not turned out to be quite the AI winner in Second Life that perhaps had been hoped, but whether the actual engine from Versu could be re-tailored for use within the platform is perhaps questionable (as Qie himself also notes). It is also unclear what expertise in terms of Versu’s development remains at the Lab, both Richard Evans and now Emily Short having departed.

Of the two options, I confess I’d rather a means be found for Versu to continue elsewhere in more-or-less the form in which we’ve come to recognise it (just with a flavour for the Android OS!). As already noted, it’s an intriguing approach to IF, and one with potentially huge opportunities.

Note: While preparing this piece, Ciaran contacted me to say he was working on a further piece related to Emily Short’s blog post. you can read it here.

Ebbe: the promise of better communications and a more open JIRA

Posted on by Inara Pey

Since his first official blog post introducing himself, Ebbe Altberg has not only been immersing himself in the activities required of a new CEO on joining a company, he’s been making the time to respond to a series of SL forum posts made in a thread started as a result of his blog post.

In doing so, he’s demonstrated the same candid feedback which has marked many of his Twitter exchanges with Second Life users, and also shown during his recent meet-and-greet with a number of us.

LL's new CEO, Ebbe Altberg, seen here on the right in his guise as Ebbe Linden at a recent meet-and-greet: laying the foundations for improved communications from the Lab?
LL’s new CEO, Ebbe Altberg, seen here on the right in his guise as Ebbe Linden at a recent meet-and-greet: laying the foundations for improved communications from the Lab?

On Communications

One of the major topics of early exchanges with him via Twitter and through various blogs has been on the subject of broader outward communications from the Lab.

Commenting on the forum thread, Amethyst Jetaime raises communications, saying in part:

However I hope you at least take our opinions to heart, take our suggestions when you can and honestly communicate frequently through the official SL channels. Not all of us use twitter and facebook or third-party forums …

His reply to her is encouraging:

Everybody I’ve spoken with here at LL want to improve communication with our customers as well…funny that…

He expands on this in a subsequent reply to  a similar comment from Venus Petrov, in which he says:

And they can’t wait to do that…most common question/issue on both sides of the “fence” has been the same thing! I’m getting love from both sides when I’m talking about fixing communication. I don’t know when/how it got strange but we’ll work hard to make us better at it…motivation is not an issue at all. We just need to figure out process for doing it effectively at scale…

How this will be achieved is open to debate; but the Lab has the means at their disposal to make broad-based communications far more effective, and I tried to point to some of them in my own “Dear Ebbe…” blog post on the matter. In that piece, I particularly look at both the official SL blog and the opportunities presented by e-mail, both of which would appear to meet the criteria of scalability, with an e-mail approach additionally having the potential to reach out to those no longer directly engaged in SL on a regular basis or at all and perhaps encourage them to take another look.

On the Public JIRA

Elsewhere in the thread, Pamela Galli takes the issue of communications to point to the closure of the public JIRA in September 2012:

… In the opinions of many, a good place to start is to make the JIRAs public again so we will know whether an issue is a bug that has arisen, or something on our end. Very often, residents working with Lindens have identified, reproduced, and even come up with workarounds if not solutions to problems. Closing the JIRA felt like a door being slammed, esp to those of us who are heavily invested in SL. (Just grateful for Maestro, who posts in the Server Forum.)

Again, there is an encouraging response:

Funny, both engineering and product heads here also didn’t like that jira was closed and want to open it up again. Proposal for how is in the works! I hope we can figure out how to do that in a way that works/scales soon.

Later in the thread, Innula Zenovka who provides one of the most lucid, clearly stated reasons why a complete closure of the public JIRA was perhaps more counter-productive from a technical standpoint than the Lab may have appreciated at the time. Ebbe’s response is again equally reassuring:

Yep, that’s why we will figure out how to open things up again…plan is in the works…

Whether we’ll see a complete re-opening of the public JIRA remains to be seen. I rather suspect the Lab will be looking at something more middle-ground, such as making the JIRA public, but restricting comments to those currently able to access it, together with those actually raising a report also gaining the ability to comment on it as a means of providing additional input / feedback.

While not absolutely perfect, it would mean that the Lab avoids any situation where comments within a JIRA become a free-for-all for complaints, accusations, and arguments (either directed at the Lab or between comment participants), while offering the majority of the advantages which used to be apparent with a more open JIRA mechanism.

Of course, optimism around this feedback – and particularly around the proposal for the JIRA – should be caveated with caution. Not only may it take time for changes to be implemented, it may also be that technical or other issues may impede something like a more open approach to the JIRA from being achieve to the extent that even the Lab would like. However, that there is a willingness to discuss the fact that matters are already under consideration at the Lab would hopefully suggest a reasonable level of confidence that things can be done without risking the disappointment following the decision that there would be no return of last names back in March 2012.

Whatever does happen, there’s enough in these replies to give rise to a cautious and reasonable optimism that things are likely to be changing for the better down the road. Most certainly, it is good to see an outward follow of communication from the Lab’s CEO that is open and candid.

Long may it continue once Ebbe has had to turn his attention more fully on running the company, and others have stepped in to fill the void, and to ensure the follow-through is both achieved and consistent.