Whether taking the lead or being dragged along behind, businesses are fast discovering the need to enter a virtual 21st century. Exec jumps into the Metaverse to find out more
Written by Gary Chambers
It is with a sense of cynicism and even trepidation that many people approach the subject of virtual worlds. A far-off land that rolls out from the imagination of its many participants was once the domain of the gamer. The image reserved for this kind of interaction was unkind, perhaps even ignorant. Frequenters of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) were branded geeks, uncool, incapable of real human interaction – the scourge of a society growing less healthy, less sociable – and fatally, less interesting.
The creation of Second Life was perhaps the first major milestone in their redemption, the first real indication that the tide was turning. And the reaction to it was predictably mixed. The introductory videos were little more than teaser trailers, artistic rather than informative, depicting a dolphin gliding across a lake before transforming into a seagull and flying off into the deep orange virtual sunset. Investors confessed to being confused, not sure what it was they were being shown. “That’s fine, but how do you kill it?” said one.
This all happened back in 1999, developer Mike Oldfield pitching his idea of a future unbound by social restrictions. It was unrefined at best, with no obvious target audience: A game without objective, a social tool with too little structure, a platform for interaction with seemingly little practical application. But something about it struck a chord with millions worldwide. Maybe not immediately, but by 2006 it was getting some serious attention from the mainstream media as big business started to toy with the idea. But why? Because of one magical word: potential.
Endless possibilities
To suggest that virtual worlds have taken off in an unprecedented way would be inaccurate. The truth is that they haven’t. Not yet, anyway. Many are touting the Metaverse (virtual universe) as the next great conquest – a breakthrough that will rival the impact of the Internet. And there is a strong feeling that they might well be right, though nobody seems able to say why – for all the hype, the potential, the money that surrounds virtual worlds, no business has found the perfect application, the ideal way to monetise the technology. But it is strongly felt that they will. Perhaps the technology needs a little time to become more mainstream and more accepted, because as a truly social platform it needs one commodity above all others: people.
The key, however, seems to be in companies and individuals who are willing to experiment with the technology and set a trend for all to follow. Nick Wilson of Clever Zebra, a virtual company that runs virtual business expos, certainly seems to think so: “I think the early adopter will benefit, but not necessarily by jumping in with both feet and making a very public splash. They should be experimenting privately, on a small scale, figuring out how virtual worlds can fit into a business – into their business.”
Clever Zebra is a relatively young company and looks to be feeling its way around, but that’s no bad thing. It just means that they don’t have anyone to follow and for the most part are feeling their way around in the dark. But Wilson isn’t worried. “I don’t care about falling flat on my face,” he laughs. “It’s happened before and I’m sure it’ll happen again.”
That’s not to say that he – or any other early adopter, for that matter – will, as there is a lot to suggest that the economic future of virtual worlds is very positive indeed. But it’s not exactly problem free: “I think the biggest thing we’re waiting for at the moment is for all this stuff to get easier,” says Wilson. “Right now it’s hard. It’s hard to get started on your own, and it’s much harder to get started as a company. Most users of big public worlds like Second Life have a dreadful experience the first time they go in.
“We were holding a seminar recently, and all of a sudden the whole world just ceased to be. And when we did get everything back, people were being logged in at generic welcome centres, not where they were supposed to be. So this stuff is still very, very early days.”
The early commercial success of virtual worlds has been well documented: business-to-customer operations in the metaverse are showing impressive levels of success. Virtual companies are selling virtual products to virtual people for virtual money, and it’s translating into big bucks for businesses. But the notion of virtual working between businesses or within a single company has been less well exposed. Some companies, however, feel they have found an ideal solution, a justifiable reason to become fully immersed in virtual working environments.
Giant global companies such as IBM, Siemens and Sun Microsystems have been working hard to develop virtual platforms for any number of purposes. Roo Reynolds, the curiously titled Metaverse Evangelist at IBM, has talked at length about all the developments going on publicly and privately at Big Blue. “There are different bits of IBM specialising in different areas,” he explains. “In our particular department we’re working on the internal virtual world – I’m given a lot of freedom to talk to people and get people excited about virtual worlds generally.
“I go to as many internal events and I get invited to as many department meetings and that kind of thing as possible, in order to get people excited about what we’re doing and give them a way in – give them a way of getting involved as well. So it’s as much an internally facing role as it is externally facing.”
A practical solution
One area that should be of particular interest is the possibility for combining the material world and its virtual counterpart. It is by no means a straightforward concept, but it is an idea that has significant mileage. Virtual reality, in terms of simulation, has been a well-developed concept, especially in the pharmaceutical industry where testing chains of molecules is vital for producing effective products. But this style of simulation and training has only taken tentative steps into the manufacturing industry, particularly on a collaborative scale.
It’s one thing allowing people to work with semi-autonomous computer elements that operate procedurally – it’s an entirely different experience being set down in a virtual environment with real people and a flexible system that reacts naturally. For testing purposes, it seems almost ideal, allowing companies to test machinery and test product ergonomics without the inherent costs and risks of a physical testing process. This is one area that many big players are looking into and with particular success.
“Virtual worlds are really a way that people can visualise things more naturally, more quickly and in a more focused manner,” says Steve Russell, who works in Knowledge Management at Siemens Corporate Research. “If you notice what’s happened in the evolution of data, data was point measures – even in manufacturing and other arenas. A point measure is whether something is working or not working, there are simple controls like a temperature gauge or a pressure gauge or some kind of vibration indicator. Then there became matrices, full-fledged formulas to guess where you’re heading, so show statistical prefaced control charts – a lot of mathematics. Even analytics are moving into 3D. They are becoming time-oriented, where they move in time. Now you can also say, ‘well what if I change this line?’, so it becomes interactive.
“It’s like a three-dimensional chart, a three-dimensional spreadsheet.”
Applications could range from detailed simulations of a manufacturing process, with all the parts fully alterable and interactive, to work in biotechnology with detailed simulations of molecules and chains. The metaverse and virtual working environments are, to the largest extent, a blank canvas, limited only by the constraints of the technology and the imagination and innovation of all the people involved.
Clearly the future of Metaverse and virtual environments is extremely rich, and as the technology grows and the ideas grow, virtual working will surely hit the mainstream. And many feel that moment is not far away.
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