The Virtual End?

I'll be updating this post over the next few days. An article in today's New York Times reports that Google is shutting down its virtual endeavors - the avatar world known as "Lively" - concluding that it really was not worth all the effort and investment. See:

NY Times, Sunday Nov. 23: "Google Unplugs Lively as Hype Fades Over Virtual Worlds"

also, an interesting blog about the reality behind that avatar crowd:

Second Life Herald: "How Many Bots in the World Are There? Half the Green Dots are Bots"




DECEMBER 6, 2008

Okay, so those couple of days turned into a couple of weeks. Nevertheless, I don't like to leave a job unfinished, and so I return to this post to report on my findings.

Apparently, Google, inc. dipped their rainbow toes into the virtual waters earlier this year to test the general public's reactions (and just possibly to generate a profit). They must have felt some sort of competitive presence from Linden labs and other established operators of the virtual community (e.g. World of Warcraft). "Lively," which is the name of the program launched by Google, was implemented as an experiment from the beginning. So really, the folks at Google were not making any promises. They were just checking things out.

And, it seems, things did not look all that good. They did not attract the millions of visitors and users of Second Life, nor did their setup (as far as server capabilities) support the intricate graphics and extensive spaces that people look for in a virtual experience. Several blog posts accompanying the NY Times article reflect this. They report "Lively" as being little more than an animated chat room, poorly publicized, and less than entertaining to those who seek out such things. So Google opted out, stating that they were more interested in focusing on what they do best; that is, providing a top-notch search engine. This was probably a good move, in light of the recent troubles at Yahoo! and all the implications of spreading one's corporate talent too thin. It is better (and more economically sound) to excel in a single area than be mediocre in many. That is the philosophy adopted by the Googleites. They felt that the time, resources, and talent it would take to expand "Lively" into a more competitive entity could be better spent elsewhere.

One line in this article really caught my attention. The mention of Reuters opening a news bureau within Second Life in 2006 - and abandoning the effort earlier this year, in November - was intriguing. I decided to do a little research on this, to see just what happened.

In 2006, Second Life was at the height of its pulic trendsetting. It was still fairly new and innovative, and everyone wanted in. So the Reuters news bureau arranged, whether as a gimmick or an experiment or as a legitimate operation, to have one of their reporters stationed within the virtual world full-time, as an avatar, to do his reporting from within Second Life. His stories, which are archived on the Reuters web site (see http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/author/eric/) ranged in subject from political campaigns and voter opinion polls (within SL) to corporate publicity efforts inside the virtual world. He discussed the Second Life economy, Linden Labs executives, and tidbits of interest from other virtual worlds. But, in the end, there was not all that much to present as news. Reuters reporter Eric Krangel, whose avatar name was Eric Reuters, stated in a final post from the SL Reuters news station that "The very things that most appeal to Second Life's hardcore enthusiasts are either boring or creepy for most people: Spending hundreds of hours of effort to make insignificant amounts of money selling virtual clothes, experimenting with changing your gender or species, getting into random conversations with strangers from around the world, or having pseudo-nonymous sex..."(Krangel). He mentions several ways in which Second Life can be improved; one of these that I found particularly insightful was that SL should stop "posing" as a legitimate and practical place to conduct business. He indicates several problems, such as overloaded servers that crashed frequently, a "mess" of a user interface, and malfunctioning teleport and instant message features. He grappled with these and other difficulties on a daily basis while trying to complete his assignments, and came to the sound conclusion that "Second Life is tolerable as a playground, but enterprise users will never and should never use it for business" (Krangel). I agree with him on this - in the few short weeks that I spent exploring the virtual world, I found little more than an abundance of scantily clad avatars generating obscene noises and gestures in crowded dance halls, while most other locations were deserted. Conversations were easily interrupted by anyone in the vicinity. Meetings were complicated by slow server response times and even crashes. Without a top-notch graphics card, the "world" was painfully slow to load and display its fantastic landscapes. It just did not function well enough to be useful.

I've been thinking all along that this stuff is better left alone as a 21st-century form of entertainment. From the comments I've read, many think virtual worlds will survive and even prosper throughout the current recession, as people seek escape routes from their everyday troubles. But from the corporate perspective, the hype is truly over. Virtual worlds are destined to disclose their real purposes, for profit or loss, entertainment or education, burlesque or business - the next few years will decide.

Works Cited:
Krangel, Eric. "Exclusive: Why Reuters Left Second Life, and How Linden Labs Can Fix It." Silicon Alley Insider Digital Business: 21 November, 2008. .

"Help Me Redesign the Web" by Roger Black: A Glimpse of History on the Information Superhighway

Link:
Flash Animated Action courtesy of Yahoo, Inc.


If there is one thing that I really don't want to acknowledge, it is the inevitability of change. I like to get used to things, break them in, wear them out, and then get myself another similar such thing without having to learn how to use it all over again. It's just reassuring. But in the world of Information Technology, and especially the Internet, predictability is the enemy of progress. There is no safety zone for people like me. We have to keep up with the Joneses or be laughed out of our jobs. So it is with a sigh of glum resignation that I read this article in Technology Review. No, the general populace is not satisfied with having all the available knowledge of the modernized world a few microseconds away. They want it to look pretty, too. So pretty, in fact, that the Information Age seems to be fading quickly into the Dawn of the Quasi-Dimensional Interface. (I know it's hokey, but I'm still impressed with The New York Times Archives).

The article "Help Me Redesign the Web," by Roger Black, is written as a chronological summary of the progress of web page design, from the humble beginnings of the Internet as a research project to its modern-day role as a vehicle of expression for anyone with access to a web browser and a creative urge. The author reasons that those generations that have grown up with Internet access can only logically be expected to adapt it to their culture and their needs. And this, he says, is exactly what is happening today. It is not that the page-by-page structure of the World Wide Web is insufficient for its intended purpose, or lacking in anything. It is simply, at this point, too old-fashioned to excite the younger masses who are destined to control it. They want the appeal of innovation. They want a newer, improved World Wide Web with invisible transitions and effortless adaptability. He states that "...for all its powers, the browser is trapped in a world of pull-down menus and dialogue boxes" (Black 2). The menus and boxes were acceptable to past generations, but today's web designers and graphic artists have something else up their sleeves, apparently.

I checked out a preview of The New York Times Reader, which was mentioned in the article as being a cutting-edge site designed entirely with Flash animation. It does have its advantages, and used in this context, I can see nothing but an improvement over the standardized format of a web page. It can get very tedious when one needs to use a scroll bar to read each line of text individually, back and forth across a page as well as up and down. The design of the NY Times Reader eliminates this problem entirely, by allowing the user to fit the screen to their monitor. This sort of thing will certainly be beneficial to the exploding mobile device market. On the other hand, I have encountered many sites where the flash animation is so engrossing and mesmerizing that the information it is supposed to introduce becomes secondary and uninteresting. This is where I feel that bigger problems will arise. As we get increasingly wrapped up in the presentation of media and catchy graphic logos in motion, it is obvious that the Internet has shifted decidedly away from its initial and noble purpose of providing and sharing information. But the purpose is still there, and is inextricably tied to the nature of the beast that is the Internet. I would just hope that, with the emerging transitions in web page design and technology, that purpose does not get buried beneath a 3-D heap of animated trash.


Work Cited:
Black, Roger. "Help Me Redesign the Web." Technology Review, May 2007: MIT.

Web Page Design - From the Pros, Nothing Short of Excellence

R/GA, inc. (www.rga.com)

I spent some time this weekend exploring the digitized and dynamic world of R/GA on the web. R/GA is a leading agency for digital and computer-assisted film, animation, and still-image studio production with offices in New York City, London, San Francisco, and probably a few other places as well. Given their focus on the integration of digital media into the art and business of entertainment, promotion, and advertising, it came as no surprise to find their website seamless, fluid, interesting, and visually appealing.

The first thing I noticed when checking out their home page was the use of color. The stark black background is a favorite of many modern and artistic organizations (in any media) for a good reason. It does an excellent job of showcasing the photo image which is squared off on the left, and stands out brightly from the grey or sometimes white text on the page. It gives the effect of being a window into the R/GA world, inviting the user to explore further. The squared-off shapes, along with just a touch of red in the photo, serve to accent the red square in the R/GA logo. In addition, the drop-down menus on the top of the screen are bordered by a thin red line - just enough to add visual interest and connect the entire page to the R/GA symbol.

Another property wisely and sparingly used by these web designers is spatial positioning of the elements. Although the layout is asymmetrical, it is balanced well and there are no underlying visual conflicts. Ample empty space is left to let the graphics and introductory paragraph stand out. What I really liked was the hidden menus, that free the screen of clutter and yet provide quick links to other parts of the site. Again, the use of color here could not be any better. Menu titles instantly turn red (the same shade, of course, as the logo) when a mouse is hovered over them, and the subtitles beneath them are likewise highlighted by a red bar when selected.

The rest of the website unfolds quite nicely. Several pages feature flash videos, and these are showcased on a black background, much like the home page. An applet that runs while the videos are being loaded adds interest as well as consistency in color and theme. Most of the pages supplying textual information use a reverse color scheme; that is, black text on a white background. To me, this almost gave the effect of having opened up a book, with the cover and illustrations done on black and the text no less attention-grabbing where it needs to be. The squarish geometric theme is maintained throughout, with the exception of one page. The page that gives the story of the company's founder and CEO is presented as text superimposed upon a fade-out photo of Mr. Greenberg, on a black background. The fusion of styles, of the text-based and video-based pages, does a wonderful job of highlighting the transitional and integrational vision of the company. Their mission here stands out beautifully and needs no explanation (a web layout is worth a thousand words!).