Who Wants to Live in Cyberspace?

By Marie D'Amico, 

Virtual Worlds are Digital Pipe Dreams

Tired of living in the real world? Well, just mouse on over to the digital factory-new fad to ease your ennui, virtual worlds. Turn-on, log-in, never log-out to graphics and text-based user interfaces in which an avatar, or digital representation of yourself, can explore, entertain, and educate. Companies are betting billions of dollars you want to play, work, and live in virtual worlds from games in which you’re a participant in a virtual theme world to personal digital assistants (PDAs) which send and manage your electronic mail within digital replicas of Hometown, USA. Maybe so, but I’m basically betting someone has been slipping hallucinogens into their jolt of java.

Video Game Virtual Worlds Are Here

Video game virtual worlds are nothing new but plenty profitable. Most current home-based entertainment systems, like Atari , Nintendo , and Sega , revolve around video games in which the user is a participant in a virtual theme world. In Sewer Shark , for example, you’re a crew member endeavoring to stay alive in a rat-infested underground. In this context, virtual worlds make sense and strike it staggering rich because their platforms, dedicating gaming machines, are cheap, fast, and easy to use and the virtual worlds themselves are often rendered in a professional Disneyesque fashion with handsome animation. These video game virtual worlds, however, still primarily gratify only the teen male market. Why?

First, video game virtual worlds lack the social aspect of gaming, playing with against other people. While they can be played by two, most video game interaction occurs solely between a child and his computer. Blockbuster Entertainment found the number one reason for dissatisfaction among game players was "the lack of a comparably skilled person to play." It’s a universal truth; whether you’re an adolescent or an adult, Solitaire isn’t one-millionth as fun as Go Fish . Second, the shoot ’em content of most video game virtual worlds fails to attract women and older players. As a member of the XX genus, I enjoy investigating murder, ý la the board game Clue , but I don’t enjoy doing it, ý la Doom . Since the pubescent male market is becoming video game-saturated and once white-hot revenue-generating companies like Acclaim , Rocket Science , and 3DO are dying on the digital vine, companies are searching for solutions.

Catapult Entertainment, Inc. , for example, is trying to solve the social flaw. They sell a 2400 baud modem, XBAND, which allows kids, for the reasonable rate of $4.95 a month, to connect to and play against other kids. They recently reduced XBAND’s price from $69.95 to $29.99 which has moved it up to a kid’s eye-level shelf at my local Toys ’R Us but hasn’t produced the 75,000 to 100,000 subscribers "in the first three months" they predicted in December ’94. Why not? Unbelievably the answer lies in their slogan: "On XBAND, you never know who or ‘what’ you’ll be matched with." Is that fun? When you were young, did you invite strangers over to your house to play games? No, you invited your friends. I know 0s and 1s are temptingly powerful but they’re not a panacea. The solution to the non-social aspect of video game virtual worlds isn’t to provide virtual unknown playmates who can’t compare, and never will, to carbon-based life forms.

Location-based entertainment systems, however, may be able to solve the social shortcomings of video game virtual worlds. Companies like Magic Edge , Sega , and Virtual World operate digital theme parks where groups of people form teams, learn about their virtual world, and enter pods to play a game within it. Analysts estimate this market only generated revenues of $19M in ’93 and $34M in ’94 but investors find it inviting nonetheless. Both Iwerks Entertainment and Virtuality Group, makers of these systems’ hardware and software, went public in ’93 and raised millions. Virtual World Entertainment , which was founded in ’87 and operates virtual reality (VR) gaming centers in nine U.S. cities and Australia, Canada, and Japan, was purchased for $20 million in ’92 by Tim Disney, Walt’s great-nephew. These places, while not profit centers now due to the astronomical price of the arcade-type equipment, could be successful renditions of video game virtual worlds since they combine these games with real humans. Their current content is too violent; they should take a lesson from Walt; build family-based, entertaining virtual worlds, which people attend in social groups, and you can laugh all the way to the ATM.

Move Over to the Desktop

The dedicated gaming machine market is saturated, modems to virtual playmates are pointless, and VR arcades cost gazillions. Where’s a developer to go? To join the hordes howling for money at the desktop. A single-user, entertaining, virtual world CD-ROM like Myst appeals to a wide demographic range because of its gender neutral, non-violent, eerily beautiful content, and has rained fame and fortune upon its creators. Unless they make a successful sequel like Myst II , however, they will only receive revenue once from the sale of the title. But, as the thinking goes, if they provide Myst to one of the major online services such as America Online , Compuserve , GEnie, or Prodigy , people will pay for play hours which will total more than the retail price of the product, and both developers and providers will make mucho moolah from everyone’s modems.

Wrong. Take a look at The ImagiNation Network, previously known as the Sierra Network . It’s got countless content, much more than murder and mayhem, usually transported on-line from the best-selling CD-ROM and diskette-based games of its former parent, Sierra On-Line . While it’s been operating since ’91, it still sports a subscriber list of only 55,000 because competing against a computer, just like XBAND’s fiction of a fake friend, isn’t any fun. If you wait to shoot till you see the whites of their eyes, you’ll be deposited at your desktop until Gates gives all his cash to charity. Online gaming virtual worlds also lack two of the successful aspects of dedicated gaming machines, unless a user has a T1 line or ISDN, they’re neither fast nor cheap. A user can play a CD-ROM for an infinite number of hours for about $39.99; online that’s about 40 hours. Compuserve, for example, has found users generally play online games only until the first, frightening bill.

Just a Bunch of Amateurs

If online video game virtual worlds don’t work, what does? Based upon the popularity of multi-user dungeons (MUDs), ( see Touch-type Virtual Reality, Vol. 4, No. 9, p. 7) , in which users create communities, many developers have decided, to be successful, they must furnish their online virtual worlds with more than games but with people, places, and paraphernalia. Things that remind of us of that place ET said we all want to go, home. At Digital World ’95, Worlds, Inc. , for example, demonstrated Worlds Chat , a three-dimensional, multi-user environment designed as a digital microcosm of the real world. Viewers in the audience were practically hurling their Visa cards on stage to subscribe; you can download a free copy from http://www.kaworlds.com and see what caused the commotion.

While Worlds, Inc. may be drunk on all that digital attention, if they’re going to appeal to more than the narrow niche of nerds at the conference, their proposed world must improve by adding some, or all, of the advantages of either video game virtual worlds or MUDs. First, as with any online service, Worlds Chat is neither fast nor cheap. As technology improves, faster lines are installed, and more users go online, those detriments may wither away. Second, unlike video game virtual worlds, Worlds Chat doesn’t furnish the cool content, it expects the users to design and supply the attractiveness and amusement into the world. This may be a fundamental flaw.

Video game virtual worlds are designed by professional and talented Hollywood-style graphic artists, animators, script writers, directors, and producers. They know how to make interesting and intriguing content; it’s what they do for a living. Similarly, people pay to read books written by Edith Wharton because she spent decades honing her literary craft. People pay to see the works of Roy Lichtenstein because he’s a proficient painter. If you look at comic strips or comic books, enduring and remunerative text and graphics-based virtual worlds, they are authored by professionals like Garry Trudeau , who win Pulitzer Prizes. The average Internet user isn’t even on the same food chain as these professionals, visually or verbally, using either a keyboard, a pencil and paper, a stylus, or an awkward mouse in eight-bit color. A world written and drawn by people like you and me looks like the rejects from last Saturday’s night Pictionary game.

Why don’t MUDs have this quandary? Because they avoid the average person’s non-talented drawing defect by staying solely text-based, they involve more social chatting than world building, and most themed MUDs revolve around pre-existing virtual worlds such as Star Trek . With Star Trek , for example, Gene Roddenberry has already supplied years of creativity via books, television series, and films, within which MUDers can operate. Users need not themselves invent a world peopled by Humans, Klingons, and Romulans, and governed by The Prime Directive; Roddenberry’s already done that. Ms. Allee Willis , a musician and multimedia artist, bleakly notes current virtual worlds tend towards "cold, sterile technically endowed virtual environments built devoid of a lot of the fun and spirit that feeds the human soul." Star Trek was never truly sleek or sophisticated; it was just well, humanly fun.

In addition to these flaws, online virtual worlds pose another problem, from which existing entertainment medium are they going to steal users? Americans already have cheap, easy to use, professionally-rendered, and relaxing sources of entertainment in the television, videocassette recorders, and dedicated gaming machines. The world’s most popular syndicated show, Baywatch , is easier on the eyes, ears, and intellect than a combination of a Macintosh, a modem, and an Internet account. While the digital elite may have hours to go online, the average American exhausted household, with 1.9 children, barely has time to cook dinner, let alone create a virtual world.

Simplify My Life

Gary Forsee, President and Chief Operating Officer, Long Distance Division of Sprint said in his keynote address at Digital World ’95, "our enthusiasm obscures our understanding of what consumers want"; consumers want their "lives simpler, more productive, and more entertaining." Take pagers, for example. They support user interfaces more simplistic than DOS but business users are satisfied because they simply need a fast, easy, method of communication. And, both Steve Glenn, Co-Director of the Virtual Reality Studio at Walt Disney Imagineering and Linda Stone, Director of Microsoft ’s Advanced Technology Group, agreed "people like to communicate more than they like to play." If so, can virtual worlds provide simplicity and productivity in a non-entertainment, communication-based milieu? Many are striving, none are succeeding.

Microsoft Corporation , with its Bob user interface, took a novel approach to a virtual world front for everyday, common uses, but it’s poppycockish. It clutters up the desktop with its cartoonish and Just Grandma and Me -like screens and it’s condescending to adults. When using a word processing document, it is of no added benefit to be able to move a virtual fireplace to a virtual bookshelf. Similarly, General Magic ’s Magic Cap user interface to Sony’s Personal Link personal digital assistants (PDAs), replicates a Norman Rockwell-hometown on a handheld device. The problems? First, in our multicultural society, no one lives in such an idealized place anymore. Whenever I see the downtown post office, I’m always waiting for a misgruntled postal worker to start shooting with an AK-47. Second, the cutsey virtual world makes it ten times harder to achieve any business task such as taking notes, sending electronic mail, or facsimiles. In business, most users’ motto is just the fax, ma’am. For business application, a better approach would be a simplistic user interface supporting a rich, content-filled virtual information-based world.

Dare I Ask Why?

Finally, dare I ask why so many are hell-bent on virtual worlds? I don’t see any redeeming social value in building entertainment or business virtual worlds besides a positive return on investment for the developers. Children and adults both spend an enormous amount of time in front of electronic devices such as televisions, monitors, and game machines. The growing popularity of coffeehouses, bookstores with couches, and live poetry readings seems to indicate people want social outlets in the real world, not more virtual outlets. If a future virtual world could help make anyone’s life more productive, I would agree it’s worthwhile. But, as an additional source of gaming or an inane front for a rolodex, I don’t think virtual worlds are sensible, valuable, or good.

William Gibson , who coined the term cyberspace, recently announced on a promotional tour for the movie version of his book, Johnny Mnemonic , he didn’t and still doesn’t own a modem. He may want to write about virtual worlds but, like most people, he currently doesn’t want to play or live there. If virtual worlds are to be the next billion dollar baby, they should either supply some fantastic fun we cannot obtain elsewhere or improve the quality of our lives. If they cannot satisfy either of those criteria, then they will remain just where they are today, digital pipe dreams.

Sidebar A: Digital Media’s Treasury of Digerati Quotations

My favorite sentiments provided by digerati on the subject of whether people want to live in a virtual world:

Amy Bruckman, Founder of MediaMOO:

"I like to use the virtual and the real to enrich one another, striking an appropriate balance, and getting the best from both."

Nancy Dickenson, Freelance Executive Producer, HarperCollins Interactive:

"So, why would I sign over my life to a world created by Jolt happy programmers with venture capital and SGI machines? It might be a nice place to visit but, what happens when cash flow starts to dry up?"

Guy Kawasaki, author and media maven:

"As I stood on the edge of Cyberspace, I had the distinct feeling of vertigo. Then I looked down and realized I was only six inches off the ground."

Alex Knight, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Internet Services, Delphi:

"I’m skeptical about virtual worlds as a fundamental interface paradigm - nobody wants to take the virtual elevator to the virtual shoestore in the virtual mall. That said, I do think they hold great potential for chat, gaming, and other collaborative experiences."

And the winner:

Andrei Codrescu, poet and professor:

"You can’t live there; it’s a Republican plot."

Questions? Send me email .

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© 2006 Digital Media