I think it's slightly late in the uptake if they are asking whether virtual worlds are here to stay and say they are in a fledgling stage, when they are already established.

The time of virtual worlds is now, the future is expansion of these worlds, the only question in my mind is will there ever be a wall that we hit that stops improvement of virtual words such as hardware or software limitations?

Ravel

I think it depends on what the virtual worlds are targeting (what audience). For second life, I do believe their is a community there, but I think all the press it has makes it look like some sort of gold mine.

I have some strange feelings that most of the people on second life are business people talking to other business people who think that those business people are real players. Then again, the term "players" should be replaces with "user" seeing second life isn't really a game. Though you can play it like a game; its more of a simulation.

Do virtual worlds have a lot of benefits... yes. Does it need to be done for normal applications because you can do it and it looks cool... no. Until I can jack myself into a computer and have full control over my avatar, there will always be a degree of separation that hurts immersion. To me immersion should be a main goal for the future of virtual worlds, what do you guys think?

Kenoji

It's hard to tell this early in it's age. I would say that it's a friendly looking app to get people to interact in, but I don't know if there are any real business friendly uses for the app besides advertising inside of the world.

RaepGoblin

Home could be a great way to meet new friends

Ps3PokemonFanboy

I gotta say, with Second Life as an example of easy to start, easy to register "virtual worlds", that don't quite qualify as a game, I'm disappointed. It's a glorified visual chat room, where instead of *dances* it'll be /dance, and you see a cute little animation. I see the virtual world boom on par with the .com bubble, eventually, people will realize that there isn't anything to it, and people are dumping their money into nothing. There are a handful, at best, of "virtual worlds" that have succeeded, and those few are actual games, and not the Second Life's purely social space.

Talleh

My friend's sister just did a big public presentation dealing with VW and specifically Second Life. I don't understand how something as lowest common denominator as SL got adopted by the media as some sort of next great thing. It's user base is below average in size and quality and from what I've read the content seems to quickly slip into, "A/S/L CYBER? LOL!"

Solaricide

I dislike virtual worlds. Everything they stand for can be done with IRC.
This goes for HOME too. :P

@Ps3PokemonFanboy:
No, it couldn't. HOME is the PS3 equivalent of going to irc.gamesurge.net on the PC.. You meet up with some people, you game. Not much more to it. You're not going to get socially involved with those people.
@Talleh: Ha, you got the "visual chat room" argument in before me, and you are totally right. Here's to you.

Eranmane

Seems to me that SL and others are mostly used as a space for cyber-sexual exploration and for other things where visual and audio information together is beneficial, like showing a product lineup to a potential customer or giving a business presentation to a group without anyone having to travel.
As these worlds get more immersive, they're likely to split into separate areas/applications for sex and business etc.
I don't think it's going to be as lucrative as companies are hoping, though, because when real estate gets too expensive or advertising too pervasive, someone will set up another world and people will jump ship, like the MySpace to Facebook transition. The base tech for creating a virtual world will probably be quite widespread in the future -- setting up a virtual world won't be much harder than setting up a webpage now. So while SL and other first-movers might reap benefits as a centralized commercial space / gathering area, a lot of the audience for cybersex and business presentations, etc. is likely to split off for various reasons including audience quality and security.

erlik

I think SL is dying slowly, but the concept still lives.

They really need a new graphics engine to handle these things, and a different visual direction. Something that will run well on most computers, yet look good and last for years to come.

DavidFU

I don't know. I hate SL, but you guys are aware of all the creativity tools that actually make it what it is, right? You know about the scripting and (lame) modeling resources that let people make just about anything? There are entire sections of the in-game world devoted to player scripted and made, entirely working game engines. You would know about this before posting on it, right?

Not that it matters. Second Life is still lame and is still choking slowly. The problem doesn't have anything to do with the idea of a virtual world going out of style, it's because no one wants to commit to really putting proper effort into one. Second Life still suffers from horribly sub-par default artistry, highly insufficient technical policies, and generally myriad issues that could be solved by the devs giving a good old fashioned crap. It seems that the problem with running virtual worlds is that nobody just wants to make money with a good product, they want to make EASY money.

P-Flute

I am positively sure thatin virtual worlds indeed represent a new Internet revolution: Web 3.0 will be 3D Internet!

VirtualMatrix

Dying a slow death *lol* ... here is a graph of the signups over the last 6 months .... http://taterunino.net/signupstotal400.png and over the past 2 years user base has gone from less than 1 million to over 15 million users ! .... Far from dying a slow death !

HagarDioscuri