Wednesday June 16, 2010 BiRG Lab Meeting - Chris explained that “Synthetic World“coined by Edward Castrova is seen as more of a business tern in some groups, and the word “Virtual World” is seen as a common and universal terminology.
The First Virtual World was made in 1962 called the “Sensorama” which used stimulation of the senses to create the virtual world. Avatars were first introduced in 1974, known as “Eyeball Avatars” because of their perspective being the player’s on-screen view of the action. Next was role playing games not much more than chat rooms.
Speed ahead to today with Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) and Massively Multiplayer Online Real Life Games (MMORLG). The MMORPGs like “World of Warcraft (WoW) are mostly paid subscriptions. The online gamer assumes a character whereas the MMORLGs like “Second Life”, currently are free, and the online gamer is able to “edit” their Avatar.
Chris described an interesting reality with these online gaming environments is the term known as
“Magic Circle” meaning the activity done in real life crossing into the virtual life actions. Chris defined this as more of a “gate” than a proposed “barrier”
Another interesting aspect of “Linden Land”(Second Life, named after the currency used “the linden”) is the monetary flow of sometimes up to one hundred ten million linden dollars (110,000,000) a day. This equates to around three hundred fifty thousand (350,000) real U.S. greenbacks.
Chris pointed out that,” …Second Life is perhaps not ‘for life’. It seems many folk do tire of it at around 18 months with only around 20% going for longer than two years. Again this isn’t a real issue for brands as the cumulative user hours across the board puts Facebook, YouTube and other social spaces to shame.”
See you Chris, maybe, in SL or is it LL!
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