Tag Archives: metaverse

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The battle to build the definitive virtual London

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composite virtual LondonHere comes the latest iteration of the land-grab. Given that the metaverse offers theoretically infinite space in all four dimensions, no one need fight over lebensraum… but Victor Keegan points out the business value of having the definitive virtual version of a city like London:

Build a 3D London and you can rent out apartments and shops, get advertising, boost heritage sites and familiarise tourists with the capital before they arrive. And, of course, go out clubbing and meeting people.

During a recession, won’t people want to stay at home using broadband, already paid for, rather than going out? Won’t they want to shop without the hassle and parking problems of Oxford Street?

Keegan’s not the first to realise this – five different organisations are building or have already built a 3D version of the UK capital. The Second Life iteration of London is already up, running and renting out properties, but the proprietary versions (which will doubtless be bigger money-makers in the long run, and hopefully less frustratingly bug-ridden) are hot on its heels, including a yet-to-be-unveiled Microsoft offering that is apparently described by a rival as “phenomenal”. [image by *spud*]

What isn’t mentioned is what the City of London itself thinks about all this (although the Ordnance Survey people have already delayed one project by a few years by claiming exclusive rights on their maps, despite their bill being footed by the taxpayer). If there’s money to be made from a virtual London, I’m certain that the real London will feel it deserves a cut of the action; it’s no less ridiculous than a lot of current intellectual property lawsuits.

So, will the famous (and not-so-famous) cities of the world start selling exclusive licenses to metaverse developers? Will developers with less scruples build unlicensed replicas anyway? Will there be a panoply of Londons, Amsterdams, New Yorks or Belgrades – the X-rated versions, the Christianised or Islamicised versions, the simplified versions for school trips?

And once the bandwidth and bit-rates get high enough, will we ever want to trudge around the originals?

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Death and taxes – IRS advises taxing metaverse economies

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raining money in Second LifeNo one but their creators can be entirely sure of how much money is sloshing around in the economies of MMOGs and metaverses like World of Warcraft and Second Life, but given the sheer number of regular participants in both (and the brisk markets for in-game items using real world money) it’s certainly not pocket change. [image by Ravenelle]

That’s probably got a lot to do with why the United States IRS is being advised to start taxing virtual economies:

“Economic activities associated with virtual worlds may present an emerging area of noncompliance, in part, because the IRS has not issued guidance about whether and how taxpayers should report such activities,” Olson wrote in her report. She points out that almost all income is subject to tax—even prizes, winnings, and barter exchange. She also acknowledges, however, that tracking and reconstructing so many tiny transactions would be a huge burden, and that attempting to place a value on virtual transaction could present serious challenges.

No kidding; brief and silly scares about terrorist money laundering aside, the potential of black and grey economies lurking in the metaverse is pretty obvious. But considering how easy it seems to be for the meatspace megarich to slip through the net, is this going to prove too tough a nut for the IRS to crack?

For example, when does the money become taxable – when it leaves the virtual space in question, or as soon as it is earned by a citizen? What happens when exchanges operate between virtual worlds? Will the new offshores be based on server farms as opposed to Caribbean islands?

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Kim Stanley Robinson to appear in Second Life… as a coyote

Stan Shackleton, Kim Stanley Robinson's Second Life coyote avatarSecond Life may be off the headline radar now the hype has died off, but there’s still plenty happening there if you know where to look. The latest genre author to appear in-world as a public speaker (following after such luminaries as William Gibson, Charles Stross and Terry Pratchett) is Kim Stanley Robinson, who will be donning the form of a coyote while he gives a presentation to Second Life’s transhumanist clade, Extropia. [via NewWorldNotes]

Robinson’s appearance is scheduled for this coming Saturday, 17th January, at high noon Second Life Time/PDT; full details at the Extropia Events blog (to which is also due the credit for the screenshot of Robinson’s coyote avatar, Stan Shackleton).

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US Army jumps on the Second Life bandwagon… just as it stops moving

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I’m not sure whether to be amused or baffled by the news that – just as almost every other big organisation has given up on Second Life being anything more than a virtual playground – the United States Army is going to set up a recruitment station there. Is there a suitable military acronym for the sensation of having missed the boat… or (perhaps more aptly) having missed the point?

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All change in the metaverse: EVE embraces democracy as Reuters turns tail on Second Life

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EVE Online screenshotThe space opera science fiction MMO game EVE Online was recently rocked by an insider-trading scandal. Unlike World of Warcraft, the EVE universe is singular and persistent: you can’t move your character to another server, so anything that happens effects everybody. [screenshot by Pentadact]

As such, it’s imperative that EVE‘s makers CCP maintain a strong and transparent bond of trust with their paying players, the latest development of which is the Council of Stellar Management – a peer-elected group of players who act as advisers to CCP on matters regarding gameplay. [via BoingBoing] How long before this (or another similar) monitoring system becomes big enough to harbour its own layers of corruption?

Still, at least CCP are making the effort to keep their userbase on side, unlike Linden Lab. The media glow on Second Life has been spasmodic since the initial burst of enthusiasm last year, but today’s big metaverse headline is about news agency Reuters pulling out of Second Life, with former stringer Eric Krangel launching a zinger of a parting shot from his new post at Silicon Alley Insider [via The Guardian]:

Abandon the idea that Second Life is a business app. I wasn’t in Second Life to play, I was there on assignment for Reuters. The login server would crash. I’d try to reach sources, but Second Life’s IM window would hang on “waiting” all day when trying to figure out who was online. “Teleports” … would stop working and I’d get locked out of my own office. These weren’t one-offs, they were my daily, first-hand, happens-all-the-time experiences. For all its bugs, Second Life is tolerable as a playground, but enterprise users will never and should never use it for business. Re-focus on the core mission: Keeping the hobbyists happy and converting potential recruits into hardcore (read: fees-paying) users.

Unfortunately, Linden Lab can’t even seem to keep its paying customers happy, as protests over recent price hikes have demonstrated. I doubt this spells the end of the line for the metaverse – or even for Second Life itself – but the brave new world doesn’t seem quite so brave or new any more.