Much is made, you’re right in saying, of the potential user concurrency of Multivese, and the added potential depth of the immersive experience. For sure, in a system where every prim is intracatley detailed, there’s more scope for a more realistic and visually rich environment – but all this extra sweetness belies the potential sugar crash that could follow for brands wanting to explore this new and as yet unpopulated space. Firstly, I’ve seen multiverse quoting as many as 10,000 concurrent users in a single place, at a single time. That number is exciting right off the bat, but if we take a moment to think about what that really means, the actuality starts to outweigh the imagined. Firstly, what kind of experience can 10,000 people meaningfully share, at the same time? Music, is obviously a big one – and I guess sports too (good luck with the licencing rights on that one, though..) and further, can you imagine the difficulty in policing an event that had this many users? Things are hard enough in ‘limited’ virtual worlds like secondlife, where in a crowd of 50 at a media/brand event, there is every possiblity that the three demure businesswomen standing in the corner will in the blink of a particleturn into 30ft tall androgenous teddy bears, spouting hate filled mantras and firing lightening from their paws.. or something similar – Can you imagine this griefer group multipled by 50? by a thousand? Secondly, and my greater issue with this much touted concurrency issue – wasnt the whole great thing about virtual worlds, that it allowed us to build a relationship with our audiences, for brands to move from their existing relationship of ’shouting at the masses’ via the traditional mediums of television, or radio advertising, to having a partnership with them – Sponsoring communities that allowed people to engage not just with a brand, but with eachother? For me, there isnt such a thing as a ‘personal message’ broadcast to 10,000 people.

I’ve mentioned also, the graphically rich virtual environment. Its great on paper right now, but I dont think it’ll be good in practice, anytime soon.

Set aside for a moment all the lower end computer users, the non-technoheads who don’t have a super powerful computer to access these hardware-intensive environments (eg, most likely, the majority of your target audience) and will not be able to access multiverse and similar ‘next-gen’ virtual worlds, and lets have a think about production times, and costs. Wheras in more ‘basic’ worlds like, the aforementioed Secondlife, a relatively small team can turn out a finely polished and complete user experience for a reasonable cost, more in-depth environments like multiverse will, naturally, require a much more in-depth approach to their creation. This means costs. It means larger teams, larger timelines and ultimatley, much larger budgets. Are we really ready for that just yet? And even if we are, is reflecting the ‘real world’ in ever increasing detail really the way forward for virtual worlds? For me, the answer is no. I believe the core essence of successful virtual world experiences has been, and will continue to be, interaction – with the environment, and more importantly, with each other, in meaningful ways. Graphic crispness should facilitate this, but nothing more. Thats its job. Virtual worlds should not be fine art, that require us to spend lots of time searching for the value in their experience – if anything they should be calvin and hobbes, dilbert – something we can all instantly ‘get’ – and laugh about and share with our friends, family and colluges. Nintendo seem to agree, and it doesnt appear to be hurting them much, at the moment.

Virtual worlds are great. Multiverse, too, has the potential to be great. But are we really ready for a next-gen world just yet? Have we really learned everything we can, and reached the limits of our current ‘gen’? I believe that the answer is no. There are many more stories to be told, many more discoveries to be made – and I think blaming limitations for failure is in itself, a greater failure. Obstacles are opportunities in disguise. So I think that really, what we need, isnt a new virtual world, with new capabilities – but a rediscovery of the ones we already have, with their rich tapestry of potential, and their vast, age, country and gender spanning userbase..

Also: the skins are really poor quality. This isn’t worthy of No 7, which is a brand I respect in RL.

I think it’s still one of the challenges in SL in terms of getting skins to work on different shapes, or having to change your shape each time you buy a new skin. Some work better than others, and we’re continuing to work on this with the creators we work with inworld. I’ll pass your feedback onto them and hope we can make some further improvements shortly.

Thanks again

Heleno

The demo for the Christmas skin is working and I bought it. I like the idea of being able to buy a skin for my avatar which reflects a current trend in maek up, but the skin forces appearance changes such as the shape of the avatar’s mouth on me, and the body skin looks very smudgy and brown in places – not a good look with backless dresses.

Albane Ewing

http://lesamesperdues.spaces.live.com/