“First life” versus “fake life”— When realism is important in the Immersive Internet

By Sam Driver with Erica Driver.

At Dassault Systemes’ (DS) DevCon 2008 conference and industry analyst event in Paris on June 17th-18th one of the key themes was “life-like” or “first life” (which was a bit of a friendly dig against Linden Lab’s Second Life®) experiences in virtual environments – these are terms DS executives use to refer to hyper-realistic interactive experiences. DS is taking the concept of realism in virtual environments to a whole new level – to the point, in fact, where digital representations of real-world objects can actually work in virtual environments!

 

During one of the keynote sessions at DevCon, Dassault Systemes senior VP and general manager Lynne Wilson showed a demo of a digital camera being used in a virtual environment to snap pictures within that environment. Here’s a snapshot of the camera, with a few instructions embedded, and you can play with the interactive demo yourself by following this link to DS’s 3DVIA.com site. (You will have to download and install a media player plug-in to be able to experience it.)  

It is not surprising that as DS develops new tools for creating virtual environments the company places a heavy emphasis on realism. After all, this is what DS as a computer-aided design (CAD) and product life-cycle management (PLM)vendor has been doing for many years – helping its customers create realistic digital models of products and parts. Realism is Dassault Systemes’ bailiwick. And it’s not surprising given the company’s background that DS executives today attach a greater value to virtual objects that could someday be manufactured in the physical world than to 3D objects that will never be more than digital or virtual. But as virtual environments become more common in the workplace, DS may find that its focus grows to include rich 3D digital models of products that are never intended to be manufactured into a physical product – their sole purpose is to function in virtual worlds, immersive learning simulations, etc.

Also, many virtual worlds today lack realism (not including mirror worlds like Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth). A typical experience in a virtual world today is much more like attending a haute couture runway show than hitting a suburban shopping mall. High fashion clothing is (in my view, anyway) pretty much non-functional, fits only a select (skinny) few, and is terribly impractical. It is measured on style, not utility. In contrast, clothes you can buy in most real-world shopping malls are not nearly as radical (luckily for my conservative dress style), generally hold together and stay put (luckily for anyone who may see me in public), and have a broader appeal to the average Joe. In virtual worlds you can find lots of stuff that looks incredibly cool but is no more functional than wallpaper.

All this talk about “first life” and life-like experiences in virtual environments really got me thinking. Life-like virtual environments have their place, to be sure, but are not inherently superior to less realistic virtual environments. My recommendations:

• Focus on realism when . . .  You work for a product company or retailer and want to get customer input and feedback before you ever build the first physical prototype. Or you want to create and use or sell virtual items for use in virtual worlds, immersive workspaces, and serious games — items that increase users’ sense of immersion in the environment through a high degree of realism. Or you want to use highly realistic 3D digital models in interactive advertising – for example, to allow customers to race a model of your new hybrid vehicle against your competitor’s digital model of its hybrid in a virtual world or video game.
• Realism is not so necessary when . . .Making a virtual environment or object realistic means you’re not taking advantage of the qualities of virtual worlds, where anything is possible. Why walk down virtual city streets or drive in a virtual car to go shopping in a virtual mall, when you can just teleport there? Why replicate in a virtual world product or environmental qualities that came to be not because of good design or ergonomics but because it was the cheapest way to go? You don’t want the Immersive Internet equivalent of using workflow technology to automate a poorly designed business process. Another reason to focus less on realism is when you are creating a virtual environment that is focused on the social aspects of virtual worlds – such as enabling people to find each other and engage with each other, or express themselves through the appearance of their avatars.

The bottom line: don’t stick to common perceptions of reality just because it’s what you know or it’s easier or you’re afraid of what people might think. The Immersive Internet lets us actually improve on reality in some ways. (Hey, who hasn’t dreamed of flying  . . . in a virtual world, you can!)

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

BIF-4 is coming up in October — will you be there?

by Erica Driver.

Last fall I attended the most impactful conference I’d ever been to: the Business Innovation Factory’s sold-out BIF-3, which was held in Providence, Rhode Island. I talked about it for weeks ― more like months ― to anyone who would listen and wrote a couple of blog articles about it (“Reinvention Requires A Near-Death Experience” and “Serendipity: A Critical Innovation Success Factor”). What made it so special was 1) it took me outside my field (information technology) for two solid days, and 2) the TED-style format put leading innovators on stage for 15 minutes each to tell their story. Literally. None of this boring PowerPoint stuff. I heard about the design of the trauma bay of the future and watched an artist-in-residence paint during BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter’s story-telling. As serendipity would have it, I ended up relying heavily what I learned about design in a strategy session I had with a software vendor a few weeks later.

So ― while it pains me to be thinking about October when summer is just kicking off here in New England, I am eagerly looking forward to BIF-4. The event will again be held in Providence at the historic Trinity Rep theater. The storyteller lineup is almost complete, and there are a few storytellers on the list who are of particular interest to me and might be to you too:

• Dr. Richard Satava will talk about his pioneering in the use of Immersive Internet technologies like video and 3-D imaging, telepresence surgery, and virtual reality surgical simulation.
• Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling will be talking about how they founded Blue Shirt Nation for Best Buy. Blue Shirt Nation is a corporate sponsored social network that is voluntary, open source, operates outside of the corporate firewall, and is moderated by its users. Via the site, Best Buy associates help each other solve retail store operation issues.
• David R. Yaun, VP of corporate communications at IBM, will talk about IBM’s annual Global Innovation Outlook program, global “InnovationJam” program, and “ThinkPlace” idea generation program.
• Clay Shirky, a writer, consultant and teacher, will talk about the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. As an adjunct professor at New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program his courses address the interrelated effects of the topology of social networks and technological networks, and how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.

If you are planning to attend BIF-4 on October 15-16 do let us know. We’d love to get together before or afterwards, or meet up with you at the event.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Spear and magic helmet? Elmer Fudd had it right

by Sam Driver.

We often hear about the effects that virtual worlds, most often massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), have on “real life.”  Sometimes, it is to the tune of “wife aggro,” the term for someone who has played a few too many hours of a video game, and has to tell the online gang that he’s got to log off.  (This is an archaic term because many video game players are women, and they are just as likely to get bound up in the adventure, conversation and excitement of worlds born of the Ether as their male counterparts). More recently, we hear about academic studies like those coming out of Stanford University that suggest that we feel many of the same emotions when something happens to our avatars as we would if it happened to us. This finding has a real-world impact on work life as well as home life.

Many of the ideas that develop in game worlds are destined to be transformed into business tools. As an example, many people play video games not only for entertainment, but because the environment is crafted to draw them in for one more success, one more level, or one more excellent treasure (also known as loot).  Sophisticated marketing and design efforts go into MMORPGs to reward people for spending time in the game. Similar initiatives are inevitable in business, and if implemented correctly, could provide a whole new retention and reward channel for successful employees. 

The challenge is to overcome the common attitude that games have nothing of value to enhance business.  In “What’s Opera Doc?” Elmer Fudd is a caricature of an epic hero singing about his unbelievable  spear and magic helmet. Bugs Bunny’s sarcastic response to Elmer Fudd’s loot matches most reactions to the idea that virtual objects can have significant value.  In the end, the power is revealed to be true, which I believe will happen with both serious games and virtual rewards. 

It won’t be long before employers can provide a similar “loot” system for employees as the start of this new retention and compensation channel.  Employees are used to bonuses for performance, promotions and raises as the standard rewards.  These are often distributed annually or quarterly at best and in this instant-gratification world, may not be as powerful a tool as repeated mini-rewards. As an avid game player myself, I would attach a much larger value to virtual loot I could use in-world than I would a wooden plaque that recognizes an achievement I made last quarter. As the immersive electronic reality merges with the rest of reality, the opportunities for employers to instantly recognize and reward employees with virtual boons will become a powerful management tool.

© 2008, ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

So Darwin, Lamarck and God walk into a bar…

by Sam Driver.

Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and God are all central players in the theory of evolution. Most people are familiar with the theory of evolution, proposed by Darwin. And many are familiar with religious theories of how all living things came to be. Few will recall from the dusty memories of high school biology Lamarck, who, in my opinion, had the coolest interpretation: if you work hard enough and train yourself well, you will enhance some natural ability, and you will then pass this along to your children. The Lamarckian ideal is relegated to the archives of scientific theory long since disproven. This is disappointing because Lamarck’s theory was the only one that allows for the creation of super heroes.

We can argue till we’re blue in the face about which of these theories is most correct. Perhaps there is a bit of truth in each of them. Here’s where smart business people have a valuable tendency: the ability to recognize the better qualities of an idea, take these idea particles as their own, and leave the rest behind. Applying this business-oriented approach to the theory of evolution, we are left with some boiled-down thought nuggets:  

• Evolve, adapt and experiment all through your career (Darwin).  Success in business is often not a result of training in schools or other classwork, but learned on the job.  Successful empolyers and employees are those that are constantly learning, improving and adopting better tools.  Successful business people recognize these traits, reward them, and promote these changes within the organization.
• Train yourself in good habits, and you will instill them in others (Lamarck).  Businesses that recognize success breed more success, and newer collaboration tools and emerging internet technologies provide a vital breeding ground for these advanced ideals to be passed on within and among businesses.
• Have faith — in yourself, your team, your goals (God).  As technology makes it easier for people to do business remotely, we will all have to develop a rich reputation tracking system to ensure that we can trust our peers without the “look them in the eye” method of communication and collaboration humans have depended on for so long.  Early adopters of this approach show that it can work, and work well, providing a massive cost savings, but we will have to shore up our tools to handle larger and more complex remote interactions in the future. 

© 2008, ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

I want "Presentation Hero"

by Erica Driver.

I *love* Guitar Hero III and Rock Band. These video games feed the disease of my big bad rock star alter ego. For an hour or two, I can believe I no longer sing out of key. The progression of age and expansion of waistline temporarily halt. I spent an embarrassingly huge portion of my winter vacation with friends in front of the Xbox with a plastic guitar in my hands. It was a blast.

Now, here’s what I’m thinking. A big part of my job is doing speeches, teleconferences, and Webinars. Some are formal, on a stage in front of a thousand people. For others, I’m sitting in my office with a headset on, pressing the “next” button on the Web conferencing tool, desparately hoping I’m keeping my invisible audience on the phone engaged. And sometimes I’m in Second Life, trying to deal with my avatar, voice connectivity, text chat, and flipping through slides – all at the same time. In all cases, I rehearse my speeches before I deliver them, especially if I am presenting material for the first time.

• My current practice mode is, well, Jurassic. Call me a dinosaur, but the way I rehearse presentations today is I print the slides out in 3-inch squares and re-arrange them on the carpet in my office until I think the flow is right. Then I put words in the notes section and print the slides out, and I go over them in my head and then out loud until I’m comfortable. (Hey, it beats my early days, when I drew smiley faces on 8×11 sheets of paper and stuck them on the wall so I could rehearse looking at people in my audience for 5 seconds at a time!) Ahead of time, I often have no idea how my stage will be set up or how many people will be in the audience. I rehearse speeches as though each was going to be the same as the last. And I’m rehearsing alone, all by myself.
• What I want: Presentation Hero! I want to rehearse my presentations in a virtual environment that is just as fun and immersive as Guitar Hero III and Rock Band. I want to be able to select a virtual space to rehearse in that approximates the space (physical or virtual) where I’ll be doing my actual presentation. It could be an executive boardroom at the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company, a ballroom at the Javits Center in New York, or a moon base conference center in Second Life. I want a virtual rehearsal space that feels about as big as where I’ll be doing my actual presentation, with about the right number of artificial intelligence avatars in the audience and the right size stage. I want to select whether my artificial audience is wearing suits or T-shirts. I want to clip a virtual lavalier mike onto my virtual shirt and hear my voice as though it’s coming through the sound system. I want to get the jitters. I want to plan out my movement around the stage. I want to be able to record my rehearsal and play it back – both the audio and visual. I want a little 3D tag cloud to show me how many “ums” and “ahs” I had, and in what sections of the speech. 

An early indicator of things to come: IBM Research has created what it calls a “rehearsal studio” in a 3D virtual environment. IBM employees can use the environment to rehearse sales pitches and other business activities. It’s not a stretch to picture this kind of capability available on the market on an on-demand basis, inexpensive to rent. I give it 2 years, and I can’t wait.

© 2008, ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Place your bets: brand vs. fan

by Sam Driver.

I am actively following an evolving business competition in the role-playing game sector, and I see it portending changes taking place in many other sectors. At stake in this particular case is a nearly 40-year-old roleplaying game brand — Dungeons & Dragons – that has been owned and operated by more than a handful of businesses over the years. Since the late 1970s, D&D as it’s often called has been on the scene as a geeky brand of imagination entertainment.  It started as one man’s dream and has now entered the popular consciousness, appearing in movies, print, and online, with a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based on it. (See our June 3rd blog article “MMORPG guild leaders: Gurus in the midst.”) Geekiness aside, the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game is a lucrative brand with a passionate following of players, many spin-off products, and a long, nostalgia-filled history. 

Lately a drama has been unfolding:

• The newest release of the product is not backward-compatible. As Version 3.5 of the D&D rule set aged, sales naturally diminished. It is easy to see that in order to refresh sales of the brand, the product needed to be reinvented.  Fans will buy it.  They are fans, after all.  Let’s update the game for the new millennium and create a whole new product line to sell. Voila! The makers of the game, Wizards of the Coast, created a 4.0 version of the D&D rule set. How to market it? Tell the community that the bugs in v3.5 are overwhelming and unfix-able.  (Cue sinister marketing music.) There’s one big problem. Version 4.0 of the game is not backward compatible. As a result, the revised game system invalidates all previous versions of the game. Players have to learn a completely new set of rules, which means going out and buy a whole new set of rule books. Ka-ching!
• Enter on the scene the open source community, with a viable alternative. Paizo Publishing has entered the market with an alternative rule set to D&D, and we have a recapitulation of Greek myth proportions on our hands. Paizo created a new product called Pathfinder to extend and repair the V3.5 D&D rule set. As it turns out, not only are the problems with V3.5 perfectly fixable, but the open source community, under strong leadership, produced a phenomenal rule set in under a year, and this rule set continues to evolve under the dedicated effort of more than 15,000 contributors. 

This a classic battle of the expert few versus the minds of many, and as I watch it unfold I am finding it hard to see how the expert few can win here. On one side of the battlefield we have a fairly small band of professional game developers and marketeers working full time on the D&D product – (hopefully) well-paid, with the strength of a long-standing brand behind them. As is common in the gaming industry, the people who make the game are at odds with those who play it — the fans, who all believe they know how the game could be made better, if only the game developers would listen to them. Rising up from amongst these passionate fans, we have a small group of leaders who are managing thousands of crusading activists who are donating their time to a fierce fight, working to change the game to the way they want it to work. 

What made it possible for Paizo to rally 15,000 contributors and pull together a solid product in less than a year? The community building capabilities of the Web – social networks, blogs, wikis, and the like. I am foreseeing open source projects like Paizo’s Pathfinder rising up all over the place. My June 3rd post about the Fold.it project highlights a great early example in the field of biochemistry. The community building capabilities of the Web allow groups of passionate, smart individuals to find each other and become, in their numbers, very powerful. Kudos to those like Paizo who figure out how to leverage the wisdom of passionate crowds. Keep your eyes on this trend.

© 2008, ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Know when to fold 'em

by Sam Driver.

With my background in genetics, protein biochemistry was never my favorite class. There was always a friendly rivalry between genetics and biochemistry, and it didn’t help that the biochemists always had prettier molecules than we did in our DNA and RNA.  So leave it to a team of biochemists to rub it in with the introduction of Fold-It (see Figure below). Sour grapes aside, I downloaded and played the game. It’s fun – the game aspects, ease of use, nice visuals, rapid play and positive feedback and rewards engaged me. The protein structures are rendered in bright colors and the sum total is enough to get you to forget you are doing (yawn) chemistry.

You might expect that the scientific community is using a game to try to educate students and entice them into the field, but what makes this story so interesting is that is not actually the stated goal of the game developers at the University of Washington. In fact, the main idea behind the game is to reach out into the larger world and access the imaginations, creativity, and brain power of more people than the scientific community would normally have access to, in order to solve complex problems. Many more people. This is important because:

• There aren’t enough scientists or powerful enough computers to figure it all out. If you assume that any given protein folding problem is probably only looked at in earnest by dozens or even a couple of hundred people worldwide, you place a lot of pressure on these individuals to visualize complex folding patterns. Computers can’t do it this visualization as well as people can, so the game is an effort to bring new sets of eyes and the brains behind them to solving the puzzles. 
• Solutions may come from unexpected sources. Extending the workforce from maybe a couple hundred scientists to perhaps tens of thousands of interested individuals will bring the time required to find a solution way down, tapping into visualization geniuses who may never have studied chemistry in school.  This is an exceedingly cool solution to a limited-resource problem, which is a central inhibitor to nearly all scientific research.  It illustrates the potential of using a global, multi-user 3D environment to increase the pace of drug discovery, and it creates a fun game for people who may not have any interest in biochemistry to really help the cause, if only by accident.

The big question looming in my mind centers around the intellectual property that may develop out of this game.  An often joked about lawsuit, Antonio Hernandez vs. Internet Gaming Entertainment Ltd., in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) sector, could point at the center of the issue: do players have any IP rights to discoveries made in the game environment? This may not be the particular legal case that decides the matter, but when you are talking about potentially discovering something that is turned into a diagnostic tool or pharmaceutical, be assured there will be legal wrangling. But threats of lawsuits should never hamper innovation. So I’m heading back to my desk to fold some more proteins. Come join me!

© 2008, ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

MMORPG guild leaders: Gurus in the midst

by Sam Driver.

One of the strengths of virtual worlds like Second Life and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like Dungeons and Dragons Online (see figure below) is a facility to create user-defined groups and for people to self-organize into teams, or guilds. In game environments, player groups form around performing a mission: a challenge created and pre-defined by the content provider. All players in a MMORPG pay the same fees and have the same level of access and the same tool sets at their disposal. You’d think that players joining a group would all have a similar goal in playing the game. A common assumption people have when they group up in a virtual environment is that all participants in the group share a common agenda and values and have similar knowledge of the environment and desire to succeed.   

In Dungeons and Dragons Online, one of the games I play, players join a virtual world in which brave heroes do battle with monsters, dragons and otherworldly spirits. Each individual chooses a role that should fit nicely into a self-organizing group. A balanced group has powerful sword-wielding fighters, wizards that can control the battle field, and priests that channel divine power to protect the group. Players know these roles and, in an ideal setting, perform their roles for the benefit of their whole group. BUT – and it’s a big but: 

 

• It can turn out that people in the group don’t necessarily share values, skills, or much else. What you end up finding in game environments is a wide variety of players who, as they develop a particular skill set, vary in skill level, overall outlook, and fit with the group’s culture. Some players are highly experienced and impatient with novice players, often leading to friction in the group. Other players don’t subscribe to the game to be entertained, but to make real-world money harvesting virtual money and objects to be sold (illegally) online. Language barriers and time zone variances can lead to significant communication problems. And some players don’t use the communication tools (e.g., voice, text chat) that the game provider offers so coordination among group members can be difficult. 
• An individual’s skills have a big impact on their own and other players’ enjoyment of the game. The skills an individual develops and brings to the game environment make a huge impact on how the game is played, and the quality of the experience the group has playing the game. Unfortunately, only a basic system is in place for players to qualify potential group members, and often player groups pick up unknown members, which can lead to high variability in the game experience, ranging from thoroughly enjoyable to absolutely soul-sucking. 
• It’s up to guild leaders to build the right team and help players develop needed skills. Successful groups self-organize under the banner of one or two individuals who establish a guild. These self-appointed leaders take responsibility for assembling the group, selecting members, and making sure members have the skills they need for the group to complete its missions. Successful guild leaders provide a much better in-game experience for the players in their groups, avoiding many of the aforementioned problems through acts of community-building. And good MMORPG guild leaders inspire real world loyalty and emotion in their teams – just like good managers might in the office. But in many cases, guild leaders are not the same type of leader you would see in a typical office setting. Introverts tend to thrive in virtual worlds and MMORPG environments, where they develop tangible and valuable leadership skills without formal training.
  

As more businesses create immersive environments and utilize serious game concepts, guild leader skills will become important on the job. Lessons learned from game environments will have a tremendous impact on the Immersive Internet, and my experiences in the dragon-slaying business bring a couple of thoughts to mind:

• Built-in reputation systems will be critical. It might be tempting to think that if peoples’ real business identities are mirrored in a virtual environment used for work, a rating and feedback system isn’t necessary. But these networks will grow rapidly to incorporate people who have never met each other in person, possibly from all over the world. In business environments just like in MMORPGs, people need tools to make it easy to form groups (e.g., by identifying people with needed skills or traits or availability) and rate and provide feedback on each other after completing tasks or activities or projects together (parallel in the game world: completing missions or quests together). Imagine a system like eBay’s, but with a more sophisticated grading mechanism. 
• Training is crucial — and you may already have a guru in your midst. Introducing new technology to the workplace doesn’t automatically mean an improvement in efficiency, productivity, or new ways for the business to succeed. Training and providing incentives to people on how to benefit from the immersive environments must be a central tenet of any implementation, and for help with this wise managers will turn to the guild leaders — the individuals who have risen up through the ranks in the virtual worlds they frequent, MMORPGs or other. 

© 2008, ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.  

 

ThinkBalm has launched!

ThinkBalm is a sole proprietorship operated by leading industry analyst Erica Driver and entrepreneur and inventor Sam Driver, a couple of independent thinkers focused on business use of the Immersive Internet. We provide strategy consulting and contract writing services to technology vendors and people working on initiatives to use the Immersive Internet to transform work inside their organizations. We launched ThinkBalm in June, 2008 to meet the growing need for insights and strategic advice in this hot emerging area. ThinkBalm’s philosophy is all about competence, efficiency, integrity – and fun! We are located in beautiful Little Compton, Rhode Island, USA.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.