Virtual Worlds, Virtual LivesThink the Net has changed yourlife? Wait until it becomes animmersive 3D environment.AN ONLINE GAM E is ail odd place to have your repu-

tation precede you. But that's exactly what happened

to me not long ago in the massively multiplayer uni-

verse of EVE Online. My character there, a spaceship

pilot named Walker Spaight, was minding his own

business one day when I got a message from •

BY MARK WALLACE • ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY CAMPBELL

1NOVEMBER 2 0 0 6

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another player, who wanted to know ifI was "the same Walker Spaight fromSecond life," another 3D online world.

Indeed I was, I told him. And theresponse I got back was curious. Myinterlocutor was excited to meet a"virtual celebrity." In EVE I may sim-ply be a midlevel combat pilot, but inSecond Life I am among the best-known figures in a community of250,000 or more. As editor ofthe Sec-ond life Herald, an online newspapercovering events in Second Life, I havebeen digging up stories for the last twoyears, profiling players and their cre-ations (and not infrequently, theircrimes), reporting on the businessesemerging there, and taking to taskthe company that runs the world.

While it may seem as though i'm re-porting on a game, 3D virtual worldslike Second Life are becoming a veryreal component of people's lives, and

over the next ten years they will beginto shape the way we work, play, anddefine our identities. To Philip Rose-dale, founder and CEO of Unden Lab,the creator of Second Life, onlineworlds constitute nothing less than "anew means of human expression."

Interest invirtualworld research

has reallyexploded in

2OO6.-RON BLECHNER, AKA " H I R O P E N D R A G O N "

MORE THAN A GAME

THOUGH PERHAPS ONLY 800,000

people have ever dipped their toesinto Second Life, massively multi-player games are going strong. Gameworlds such as Ultima Online, Ever-Quest, World of Warcraft, and EVEOnline are regularly visited by any-where from 20 million to 40 millionpeople around the world, and thatnumber continues to grow.

But persistent worlds like SecondLife are more than just games. In Sec-ond Life, players don't get points forslaying ores or blowing up spaceships.Instead, users are given a frameworkto create whatever they please—fromhouses, cars, and clothing to anythingelse they can dream up.

In fact. \}\e entire landscape is com-posed of such creations; the companythat runs the world provides only thevirtual real estate that residents occu-py. In that sense, worlds like SecondLife function more as platforms thanas games—they're places where bothoutlandish fantasies and useful toolscan be constructed. Residents rely onthe same spirit (and much ofthe data)underlying Web 2.0 sites to freelyborrow, build on, and mash up eachother's ideas in an environment withunparalleled expressive powers.

Aficionados often refer to this inter-section between 3D worlds and net-worked data as the "metaverse." aterm coined by Neal Stephenson inhis prescient 1992 novel Snow Crash.And the impact of that combinationcan already be felt today.

"Entertainment, education, art. andbusiness are throwing spaghetti atthe metaverse to see what sticks." saysfuturist Jerry Paffendorf, who con-vened a Metaverse Roadmap Summitthis summer to plot the course ofsuch technologies. "Over the nextseveral years, we'll see this kind oftechnolog)' mahire to the point whereit will not be uncommon to follow

hyperlinks from the Webinto immersive virtual spac-es filled with other people."

Constructing those virtualspaces has already yieldedsome interesting opportuni-ties. In early 2006. 26-year-old Ron Blechner quit hisjob as a cellular networktechnician to set up shop inSecond Life. The small com-pany that he founded. Out ofBounds Software, specializedin creating a virtual presencefor nonprofit agencies andeducational institutions, anddeveloped a "3D wiki" that isbeing used to collect commu-nity feedback for the multi-million-dollar redesign of a publicpark in Queens, New York. The paywasn't great, but Blechner's businesssteadily grew; and by the end oftheyear, he had merged his virtual-worldservices shop with a larger one. "Thishas been the best decision I've madein my life," says Blechner.

More significantly. Queens willsoon have a park designed, in part,within a virtual world.

Though they're just beginning totake hold, such online "places" are in-creasingly becoming a part of real-world business, marketing, and de-sign plans. Architects now use Secondlife to create design prototypes for cli-ents. Emergency-services departmentsuse it to develop crisis response strate-gies. Starwood Hotels uses it to designand advertise its new Aloft properties.And the entertainment industry hascaught on big-time. MTV built a vir-tual version of its hit television showLaguna Beach in There.com. wherefans can meet and socialize in a digi-tal re-creation ofthe show's locations.And next August, Duran Duran willopen a "futuristic Utopia" in SecondLife, where the band will give con-certs and chat with fans. Nick Rhodes,the band's keyboardist and songvmter.

says it's "the mostsubstantial moveforward in enter-tainment technol-ogy that I've seenalmost going backto MTV."

Following hot onthe heels ofthe en-tertainment indus-try are major banks, public relationsfirms, auto manufacturers, and othercompanies that have virtual-worldprojects already in the works. Smallfirms like Blechner's—and largercounterparts such as Millions of Us,Rivers Run Red (the company respon-sible for bringing Duran Duran toSecond Life), and the Electric SheepCompany—are helping to turn thoseprojects into realities. (Full disclo-sure: The Sheep are among the spon-sors of my blog, 3pointD.com.)

A NEW MEANS OF HUMANEXPRESSION

FOR TRUE BELIEVERS, the metaverse

represents an opportunity to get in onthe ground fioor of what promises tobe a world-changing technology: aneasy-to-use interface with immenseexpressive power, through which

THE FUTURE MOWTHERE.COH

Focusing more heavily on such

activities as chat and avatar

creation than users of Second

Life do, the inhabitants of

There.ccm use Its space to

interact, piay, and meet peopie.

people can sharenew kinds of infor-mation and inter-act in new ways.Though the meta-verse is unlikely toreplace the Web inits entirety—afterall. reading a news-

-^ paper is easier ona flat computer

screen than in a 3D world—it willexpand the Internet's usefulness inways that may revolutionize people'slives no less radically than the Webhas over the past 15 years. Imaginereading a news story, clicking throughto a 3D recreation ofthe place wherethe event occurred, and then walkingaround it in the company of otherpeople who are reading the samestory at the same time.

Of course, the pirates, pranksters,and thieves who currently plague theWeb will eventually make their way tothis new medium. Second Life eventsare regularly "griefed" by users whodelight in building cages around oth-ers' avatars, for instance, or who re-lease self-replicating objects in an ef-fort to choke the world's servers intoshutting down. Designers of virtualworlds must develop tools to deal •

NOVEMBER 2 0 0 6 / W W W. PC WO H L D ,C 0 ^ 135

with these issues and to make theirworlds' environment more conduciveto harmony than to hostility.

Sites such as MySpace. Flickr, andCyWorld (a 3D MySpace clone) dem-onstrate the strength of people's de-sire to express themselves online eas-ily and richly, andto share what they /^have to say withfriends and fami-ly, and with otherobservers.

Linden Lab'sRosedale believesthat 3D worlds on-line are destinedto play a criticalrole in extendingthat power of ex-

THEFUTURE NOW

THE WORLD OFWARCRAFTOne of the most popuiar oniine

games, Worid of Warcraft hosts

miilions of players connected on

hundreds of servers worldwide.

Its scenarios often encourage

team play and the formation of

"gui1ds"-groups of gamers who

play and chat together.

HARNESSING 3D WORLDS

E-MAIL. INSTANT MESSAGING, chat,

VoIP, and videoconferencing connectpeople with varying degrees of rich-ness. But none of these possess thepower of even the simplest interac-

tions in a virtual~ ~ \ world. Duran Du-

ran's Nick Rhodeswas fascinated tosee a group of ava-tars in Second Lifeall look in the samedirection at some-thing happeningnearby. That neverhappens on a chatchannel. And it'sjust the beginning.

pression and interaction. "The realworld is not as malleable as we wouidlike it to be," Rosedale says. "Becauseofthe degree to which Second Life isalterable, it is likely in a few years thateveryone will have an identity in 3Dworlds. Your identity there^the rep-resentation that will be your body,your persona in Second Life—willprobably be a more accurate depictionof who you are mentally than tlie bodythat you walk aroimd in."

Onhne worlds like Second Life letyou observe, collaborate, and interactat a new level. There, you can attend atalk by Kurt Vonnegut or a live con-cert by Suzanne Vega. You and yourteam can build a venue for similartalks, and track the project's status ona virtual writeboard. Once your showsbegin, you can track who attends andhow long they stay, and upload thedata to a Web site for analysis.

Web-based tools and 3D onlinespaces are already beginning to con-verge. A group ofAmazon.com em-ployees have built an interface forsearching Amazon's inventory fromwithin Second Life. American Appar-el's recently opened Second Life pres-ence allows you to browse and buyproducts in much the same way. So-cial software, shopping sites. Web ap-plications, and even search and wikishave begun to take on new and morepowerful three-dimensional forms.

Imagine a Google Earth that youcan not only zoom into but also walkaround in with other people. Andthink of all the useful ways your favor-ite Google Maps mash-ups could beextended into three dimensions.

As more and more online data ex-tends itself into the real world, it too

will become part of the metaverse.Many ofthe attendees at the Meta-verse Roadmap Summit envisioneda future in which the objects aroundus stream data to handheld devices.

What I'm describing is more thanjust a portable Worid Wide Web. It'sa way to collect and access informa-tion that changes depending onwhere you go and who you're with—-whether those places and people arereal or virtual. It may sound a bit sci-fi, but the advances ofthe past 15years suggest that we'll continue tointegrate our physical selves moreand more tightly with the informa-tional processes going on around us.

There are lots of questions to an-swer, and many hurdles to overcome,but none are insurmountable. As mil-lions of people experience virtualworlds, technologists, legislators, anddevelopers will face new challenges.It's not too early to start thinkingabout these issues. The online worldofthe future is already here. •

Freelance writer Mark Wallace is the edi-

tor of ttie Second Life Heraid and writes

about virtual worlds at 3pointD.com.