3d3c Real Virtual Worlds 2010: Definition and Visions for CIOs

The goal of this paper is to define the field of “Real Virtual Worlds,” and to reveal its potential through visions in virtual Physical Therapy, Schools, Concerts, Shopping and Races. It is my assumption that the field of Real Virtual Worlds is destined to become a major force in 5-10 years. Much like the Internet, Real Virtual Worlds, will change, enhance, but inevitably sometimes hamper how we learn, have fun, work, and perform other human actions. The key message of the paper is that we need to arrive at high levels of 3D3C (3D, Community, Creation, and Commerce) in order to harness the potential of virtual worlds. This paper aims to inform IT managers and industry players about the field of Real Virtual Worlds and its potential, as well as the actions they could take to embrace it, balancing between innovation and value. These actions, their urgency, nature, scope, and timing, take different shapes as a function of several parameters: Specific Industry, Maturity of the Field, IT Innovation, Impact of Change. © 2010 Dr. Yesha Y. Sivan Submission for the MCIS2010 Conference Note: An earlier version of this paper was published in Cutter Journal in 2009. I would like to thank Raz Hyperman (CIO of Direct Insurance, Israel), and Gil Bickel (CIO of SAP Labs Israel). Special thanks to my long-time friends at STKI Dr. Jimmy Schwarzkopf (Research Fellow and Managing Partner), Galit Fein (VP and senior analyst) and Einat Shimoni (VP and senior analyst). 3d3c real virtual worlds 2010: definition and visions for CIOs – mcis2010_submission_32.doc2 -© Dr. Yesha Y. Sivan Dr. Grace Augustine: Is the avatar safe? Jake Sully: Yeah it's safe. You are not gonna believe where I am! From the movie Avatar. 1. IT MOTIVATION: PREPARING FOR A LONG TERM PARADIGM SHIFT Information Technology (IT) managers need to have a split personality: they need to be conservative, yet innovative. On one hand, they have to maintain older systems and keep current processes working smoothly. On the other hand, they have to examine continuously new IT technologies that can alter the business. Around 1990, a “game changing” technology – the Internet – emerged. New businesses. like eBay, Amazon and Google that embraced the Internet in innovative ways, thrived. However, companies like Tower Records, Barnes & Noble and Rand McNally, who failed to embrace the Internet early, were less fortunate (Tower folded, Barnes & Noble missed the on-line business that now belongs to Amazon, and Rand McNally failed to capture the on-line mapping business). In the field of information technology, every 10 to 20 years we witness a technology shift, comparable in magnitude to that of the Internet. Such paradigmatic shifts can break older firms, reshape entire industries, and create enormous value and wealth. Missing such a shift, however, could be detrimental to businesses and IT suppliers alike. Consider the shift from mainframe computers to mini computers (which IBM missed and Digital captured), from mini-computers to PCs (which Digital missed, and Compaq captured), and from PCs to the network computer (which Microsoft missed and Google captured). I use the adjective “real” to distance virtual worlds from the gaming worlds. “Real” hints at a much far-reaching potential. While clearly, today virtual worlds are used mostly for games and fun – Real Virtual Worlds (which I will formally define later) have the potential to alter our lives. (Note: For the sake of brevity I will use Virtual Worlds or simply Worlds). I maintain that Real Virtual Worlds will – in due course – offer such a paradigm shift. What we see now (2010), with Second Life, World of Warcraft, Club Penguin and more then 100 other worlds, is just a beginning. In comparison to the Internet age, we are at the “Gopher” stage (Gopher was a pre-browser method to view hyperlinked materials). The timing of full impact of virtual worlds in not yet set. We observed a spike of interest in 2006-7. 2008-2009 were more social in nature, with Facebook-like technologies catching our attention. 2009-2010 (now) seems to be more mobile in nature with iPhone/iPad/Android technologies at the center of the public’s focus. The release of the movie Avatar in 3D, the growth of 3D TVs, and the emergence of phone-based augmented reality seem to re-push the field of virtual reality. In any event, IT mangers should plan and measure their approach to this powerful emerging technology. 2. BACKGROUND: SECOND LIFE AS A CASE OF A REAL VIRTUAL WORLD The young field of Real Virtual Worlds has its roots in two fields: Virtual Reality and Gaming worlds. Other related fields are also affecting the virtual worlds range from economy (for example, of virtual goods), sociology (nature of communities), and law (copyrights and ownership), to biology (new brain based human-computer interfaces), computer science (performance, reliability and scalability), and mathematics (algorithms for 3D rendering and animation). 3d3c real virtual worlds 2010: definition and visions for CIOs – mcis2010_submission_32.doc3 -© Dr. Yesha Y. Sivan Second Life (SL) is the first World that fully demonstrates the potential of Real Virtual Worlds. During the last three years, I have explored this world, visited places, made friends, reviewed technologies, and used it as a research ground. In short, I confess to being biased by my own experience (see for example, Sivan, 2007). SL was conceived in 1999 by Linden Labs as an implementation of the Metaverse (this term is often used in professional circles to denote Real Virtual Worlds). Any user may install the software and create a three-dimensional character for him/herself (AKA “avatar”), adjusting features such as the shape of his body, skin, hair and lips. (Note: “he” and “she” may both be used hereafter to denote both genders). He may select to wear a hat, shirt, or skirt, and add rings, earrings or nose rings. After the body is constructed, the user may purchase a car, a plane or a yacht; he may build a room, an apartment or a castle. He can meet people, robots, or dragons. At first glance, many view SL as a game – a direct descendant of games such as Sims, World of Warcraft, and Doom. Veteran users will probably recall the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons and other paper-based fantasy games. Indeed, many of the action patterns and techniques of SL resemble these games. This is a good starting point. But the rest is far more profound and meaningful, exciting and scary. The interaction of avatars, the believability of what you see, and the fact that everything is connected with real money, all create a new level of experience, a kind of parallel world, a different world – a Real Virtual World. A world where anyone can choose his/her own life-style and actions: from a life of hedonistic leisure and entertainment to a life of lucrative work and creativity (in the real world). Pepe is one of these avatars. She is a dancer at a nightclub. Her figure, her blonde hair, and her fluent speech (with a Spanish accent) make her very popular among visitors to the club where she works. Pepe hired a fashion consultant, who matched her looks and clothing to her career. Thus, her blonde hair was matched with her police shirt, which bears the letters “SLPD” – an internal joke that means Second Life Police Department. Figure 2-a: Pepe – policewoman or dancer? (sample avatar) Pepe is in the center of a human, social and commercial enterprise, which also includes dancers of both sexes, DJs, club owners (who rent out private rooms to visitors), land owners, landscape designers, building contractors, architects, lighting experts and musicians. What, in fact, makes SL a Real Virtual World? Let’s consider Pepe’s story (as an example): 3d3c real virtual worlds 2010: definition and visions for CIOs – mcis2010_submission_32.doc4 -© Dr. Yesha Y. Sivan • Pepe and the club she works in have a three dimensional representation (3D). The users can zoom in and out, pan and explore everything from the texture of her shirt to the coil in the lamp that is located 10 meters above her. While Pepe moves herself, other users can roam around the room. • Pepe can dance on the stage, because she belongs to a group of dancers of the club (Community). Groups allow several users to act together in the Real Virtual Worlds, to buy land, to work, to get certain permissions etc. While at work she uses the group of the club; when she shops at the Canimal fashion store, she uses the Canimal group ; while she studies English, she is part of a small group called English as a Second Language (ESL) for Spanish speaking people. • Pepe is both a creator and a beneficiary of other creations (Creation). She creates by mixing and matching her outfit, the color of her skin and her hair, her jewelry and her shoes all of which were created by others. She can also buy furniture for her small county house and arrange it. With the right permissions, she can also create a garden for herself. With adequate programming skills, she can program the flowers in her garden to grow, or just buy the growing flowers from someone who has those skills. • All of her actions, for work, fun, learning, or relations rely upon an economy that connects the virtual world to the real world (Commerce). She can make money by working at the club, she can pay for her house, she can make money by selling flowers, and she can pay her English teacher. The claim of this example is two staged: first, the combination of 3D, and 3C (Community, Creation, and Commerce) defines a new medium. Second, as Real Virtual Worlds become more 3D and more 3C, we will fulfill the immense potential of the medium. 3. A FORMAL DEFINITION: 3D + COMMUNITY, CREATION AND COMMERCE Let’s formally define Real Virtual Worlds as an aggregate of four factors: a 3D World, Community, Creation and Commerce. (For a longer review of 3D3C see Sivan, 2008). 3D World: A dynamic world where viewers see objects like avatars, houses, and cars. The world has land, a sky, a sun (or maybe more than one sun), wind, gravity, water and fire. Avatars move around freely (for example, in SL you may fly up to a height of 200 meters). The user can further examine the world from different points of view (roaming camera). Community: Man is a social animal. Unfortunately, during the past century we gradually distanced ourselves from socializing – mainly through the advent of television. We sat alone in front of the screen, watching passively and without much interaction. We did not react, we didn’t create and we couldn’t see how others felt or reacted. The Web actually enhanced this feeling of “isolation” (in a manner of speaking). Then emails emerged, followed by the “chat,” the cellular phone, SMS – and multi-player worlds. So we are now actually returning to the Community, to friends, to people. Amazon began this trend by allowing readers to review and recommend books. Later, companies like YouTube allowed users to upload video contents. Moreover, of course, we have blogs (which include comments), social sites such as Facebook and MySpace – the ultimate in this genre where anyone may create a personal site to communicate with his friends. (Please note – all avatars in SL represent real users. There are no computerized avatars as in regular computer games such as World Of Warcraft). Creation: Second Life’s greatest invention and technological achievement was in giving users the capability to develop their own “things” (or in SL jargon: objects). In fact, the entire contents of 3d3c real virtual worlds 2010: definition and visions for CIOs – mcis2010_submission_32.doc5 -© Dr. Yesha Y. Sivan SL (barring a few sample and demo objects) were created by users. Constructing objects may be done at several levels – first, by moving pre-constructed objects from one place to another (i.e., rearranging furniture in a home, or setting up a nightclub). Second, an object (i.e., a house) may be assembled from basic components such as walls and ceilings, followed by “painting” them with various textures. These basic components, called primitives, allow the construction of complex objects at a very high level of precision (see the SL example of Susan Vega’s guitar, which is made out of more than a hundred primitives). Linden hit the nail on the head when they built a programming language (LSL Linden Script Language) into the world. LSL allows users with programming abilities to endow their objects with behavioral attributes. As a result, we can see fish swimming in schools, a game of golf, pistols that shoot, and even Pepe’s dancing. Largely, these are expansions of the capabilities found in worlds such as Sims, combined with industrial CAD software packages. Commerce: Linden has created a new currency the Linden Dollar (or L$, for short). There is a defined exchange rate between the Linden Dollar and the US Dollar – in 2008 one US$ was worth about L$265. The entire economics of the SL world is based on this currency. The credibility of this economy is built on two levels – one conceptual and the other technical. At the conceptual level, Linden established and operates its own exchange. Within it, Linden guarantees the exchanging of L$ to US$ immediately and at any time. For instance, if Pepe earned L$2600 from tips, she could access the Linden website and exchange them for about US$10 which would be immediately transferred to her real account. Going the other way, if Pepe needed L$6,000 for a new hairdo, she could immediately buy them for about US$20. At the technical level, Linden has currency and commerce integrated into the game. For example, every object can have purchase-ability and price. Ultimately Real Virtual Worlds stem from the integration of the 3D, Community, Creation and Commerce. Second Life reveals the emergence of this integration. In SL you’ll find a price for objects, permissions (i.e., an object may be restricted from being sold), and ownerships. The commerce is structured into the world itself. For example, let us assume that we enjoyed Pepe’s dancing (and her Spanish accent) and wish to tip her. We point to her and transfer money to her by clicking a button. If Pepe wants to buy a new blouse, she goes to the shop, points to the blouse of her choice and buys it for L$2,000. The blouse is defined as a unique object in this world, and Pepe will not be able to copy it. The shopkeeper will receive L$500 for the blouse, and the blouse manufacturer will receive L$1,500 (in accordance with a previously defined business agreement between them). At the end of the month, the shopkeeper will pay rent to the landowners, also based on a predetermined agreement. This integration of a 3D world, organized and managed communities, immediate creation capabilities of objects and services, and a virtual commerce which actually becomes real – is the basic allure of SL in particular and of Real Virtual Worlds in general. 4. TYPICAL WORLDS VIA THE 3D3C PRISM Next, using the 3D3C framework, let’s examine typical Worlds. These Worlds represent a spectrum of worlds; they were selected to highlight various aspects of the 3D3C definition and not because of their impact on the field. (An earlier version of this table was first presented in Metanomics, a virtual broadcast, hosted by Bloomfield (Ed.), 2007). Sample Worlds 3D Community Creation Commerce 1. ActiveWorlds *** * *** (per case) 2. Club Penguin * * * * Alex Eshed 12/7/10 8:55 PM