How Virtual Worlds affect Real Lives

Virtual worlds will affect every aspect of everyone's life and in the future will be central to community, particularly as live events are broadcast and spread around the world mixing and meshing with virtual events.

People often confuse virtual worlds with role play games. They are not the same. Role play games have several embedded features to them which can be copied in virtual worlds but are not necessarily part of the virtual world.

Virtual worlds are the domain of real people, who use this medium to connect with and communicate across distance. The share ideas and ideals. Meeting up and creating their own selective communities, rather than those that are physically imposed upon them by location.

Virtual World domination

At present there is only one dominant player in Virtual Worlds for adults. This player is Second Life. Recent distribution of its core software has weakened it's position as the only platform, however it remains the dominant brand.

This distribution of Linden Labs source code was a strategic move that rebounded on them. They did not account for people's greed and meglomania. Instead of their naive belief that developers would help to make the basic platform better. Programmers built competitors from the source code.

This meant that offspring were springing up from its flesh everywhere. Unlike other 'open source' offerings, the lack of competitors or a pricey market leader such a s Microsoft meant that Linden labs were perceived to be 'the enemy' to be vanquished by the programmers and coders.

For inden Labs, this has meant the necessity of subsequent diversification for Second Life and entry into other market spaces. This has been achieved with partnering some of it's own 'child' businesses and buying out others. They have recently also entered the 'content' arena with the acquisition of Xstreet.

Scalability in Second Life

Other issues for Second Life are questionable scalability. Forever pushing at that 100 people maximum in a 16 acre area, it now has another apparent boundary of 75,000 concurrent users, after which logging on is a problem. Bandwidth also causes users to have a poor experience at present too and users expect a quality of service for any product they purchase or use. In Second Life this is seeming to be compromised at present.

That said, it is still the dominant platform, with more diversity than other platforms are capable of delivering and more people there too. Education is prominent with courses such as 'Beyond Google' by the Open University now being offered. It has become the de facto platform of choice, to challenge it, a competitor has to adopt and adapt many of its basic principles.

User experience

The main thing that Virtual Worlds offer is a user experience. Linden Labs provide an excellent and evocative user experience, good or bad, it provides stimulus for those brave enough to go through the preliminary challenge of getting to know how to use the software. People are naïve to expect to be able to use it in one hour, like driving a car or learning Windows, it takes time. Oddly enough, the excitement people feel about this experience often leads them to neglect their basic training with the software.

With experience, having gone through the learning cycle, people realise the potential of this platform to transform their lives.

People initially make a friendship, often with another newcomer and explore the 'world'. If they continue, they find commonalities and shared interests. For some it is simply finding a cool gadget or a nice pair of shoes, for others it is finding a peer group or social connection. This usually draws them in to other people and wanting to take ownership of their own 'part' of this world.

The things that are important in our lives are family, friends, home and personal expression. These are all fulfilled inside the communities of virtual worlds.

Benefits of virtual worlds

Some people in these worlds are currently active because they have special reasons to exist inside their heads. Some are housebound for physical and psychological reasons, others are cut off from their peers due to their physical location. These platforms benefit these people greatly, enabling us to continue long distance relationships and not discriminate because of physical affliction or imperfection. Indeed emotionally vulnerable people can also benefit from these methods of interaction too, provided they find the right environment.

Stereotypes are dismissed or exaggerated, even played with by crossing race, gender and age. By being what you want, you can escape from what you are perceived to be by those who apparently 'know' you and judge you out of hand.

You can find friends with similar yet unusual interests, so having hem local is unlikely, but connecting with someone across the world is easy. Virtual worlds therefore benefit people wishing to share knowledge and create friendships with kindred spirits.

Up river from friendships are personal relationships such as witnessed in 'Brie and Seany', romance and sex are and always have been high in the game of technological innovation. This will never cease.

As well as virtual events. meet ups happen in the real world such as in The Greyhound in Kensington. Real and virtual friends meet up at the same time, and mix reality with the virtual experience in an unexpectedly rewarding mix for everyone. This make the difference between a separate virtual and real existence and draws both together uniting personalities and forging even deeper friendships than occur either in reality or virtually.

Communities are the mainstay of society and their extension into virtual platforms is simply as important as the railway, telephone, radio, TV or Internet. We are all interested in 'connecting' with one another. Humankind is forever looking to have bonds forged with each other. Virtual worlds affect real lives not because they are different, isolated, imagined lives, but because they are simply an extension of real lives, one where w can experiment in physical safety before venturing out and taking risks with our lives and expend time and commitment.

Action and regret in the Twilight Zone

For me, there is always a hiatus in travel between finishing your visit and actually travelling. I call this the 'Twlight Zone', because as far as everyone you have visited is concerned, you have left and are no longer relevant to their lives, but your actual departure doesn't occur for many hours.... 

I am currently in that zone. You can't sleep, you can't eat, you just wait.. regretting things you didn't get done during your trip and dreading the many hours still left to spend, just waiting in this limbo of irrelevance to anyone's lives that I call the Twilight Zone.

You try to fill it with an endless landscape of meaningless tasks. I am sure that if a study were done, more books would get read during this time than any other. I now have 10 hours to while away, 6 in the hotel, until I get thrown out (officially called checkout) and then 4 in the interim period in which I will idle away ambling around the shops here and in the airport. If I were to scrutinise my trip, the purpose of my visit was over after the first day here - it usually is. The rest of the time has been filled with social visits and meaningless banter, whiling away the time until I leave.

Regrets, always. I heard it once sad that you only ever regret the things you didn't get done, and have always found it to be true. As actions are far harder than ideas and 'stated' intentions they take much more energy to get done, and often a lot more courage. This hiatus to ponder allows me to reflect upon this very thing. Actions are the only thing that takes our ideas and converts them into reality. 

Indeed, I have heard so many 'ideas' and 'intentions' over the past few days that I am completely full of them and am simply able to regard them as no more than hot air. Intentions and ideas unfulfilled lead only to regret, missed opportunities and inaction. 

Inaction, albeit sometimes not conscious, is in itself 'action'. it is failure to ensure things are done, failure to deliver, failure to keep promises, excuses given etc etc. But however it is dressed, it ends up the same 'what if?' and usually ends up in regret. However this regret is meaningless because participation was taken. Action was in fact taken, even though that action was the action of non-action.

Presently I am regretting not delivering some of the messages I tried to effectively. Regretting not seeing some of the people I hoped to do. Regretting not doing some of the things I wanted to, such as taking the last day here to see my son whom I haven't seen for over 2 years. Regret leads to self-criticism and dissatisfaction. 

Given the current climate generally, many people now out of work will regret all the things they never got done during that time. However if you look at it pragmatically, you never would have done the things you yearn for having done because by your 'active inaction' your decision was already made. Therefore best to stop regretting and let go if the idea that you would have done 'if only things had been different' - you never would have done. Simply accepting this and letting it go is the best remedy for regret.

Regret is never action, it is always inaction, but taken as a positive, it is a decision made and acted upon. Regrets are usually only reflected on in twilight zones such as these, and approaching death, where you have the slack in life to enable you to see how pathetic it all is.

Making Money in Virtual Worlds

There is a popular misconception that it is easy to make money in virtual worlds people even believe that there paths can be paved with gold.

This is a myth, similar to the one that anyone can make money on the stock market. Both come from the impression that some people have made it very rich for very little effort or investment. However, like most things that yield high dividends it is due to working the system and having knowledge - preferably from an 'insider' source.

As it was with the now failing stock market, everyone's cousin is suddenly an expert on this matter. Uncle Bob is now a Digital Media expert. After his job as a shelf stacker at Woolworths, he now turns his talent to networking in virtual worlds and engaging within social networks.

Auntie Dora has become a PR exec in Digital Media with a list of clients that don’t know exactly what she’s doing for them. However, her PR sounded good so they are confident that she knows what she’s doing. Thankfully they haven’t got a clue, because she hasn’t either. For her, at last, her long chats over the garden wall are paying dividends in baffling people with her rhetoric.

Previously unemployed cousins are now Heads of Digital Media in companies they founded themselves. It sounds good anyway and because they used to carry the tea tray in a PR firm they know all about PR too. These people all get away with it because we, the rest of the world, are the uninitiated in this new digital world.

It is easy for anyone to become a Digital Media guru. It is a young discipline with a low cost of entry. All you need is free accounts with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Upcoming, Plick and a few virtual worlds, such as Second Life. Next step is to get someone to write about you – any online or media press will do. You can even give yourself a false identity and write about your alter ego so you become a publisher and blogger as well.

Finally, publicise yourself as being the best PR for digital media. This is a sure fire way to grab companies’ attention. They will immediately look up to you as someone with some credibility and knowledge of the situation, mainly because they have no knowledge on this area themselves and are groping in the dark more than you are.

Congratulations, you are now a Digital Media expert.

This is a scary scene and not uncommon. At this point, if you represent a company or your own enterprise, you would do well to remember the dot com bubble where everyone got on the bandwagon and some got sorely burnt. Virtual or digital media space is the new ‘dot com’ – or ‘dot con’ bubble if you get it wrong.

'Me too' is a very compelling scenario and no one wants to be left out in the cold. However, this phenomenon is moving along at such a rate that no one can keep up. Either people are afraid of being left behind so grab whatever looks like the best eye-candy or alternatively are too blinded by media headlights to move at all.

My advice is, as with all innovative technologies, when faced with a new environment or technical innovation follow best practices used in the past when adopting new technology.

Check out your provider for their track record, speak to their existing and previous clients to assess satisfaction. There are already a lot of disaffected and disillusioned companies out there that spent a lot of money for very little return. It would no do your CV any good if you were to help your company become one of them.


I hope this illuminates potential pitfalls in this expanding market. Please post a comment here should you need further opinion.