One of my key interests in virtual reality, or virtual environments is the way it is able communicate an experience, linear immersive experiences (otherwise known as stories) in particular. We use stories for more than entertainment, stories hold tremendous value for social progress and preservation of culture (history), the industry (advertising), creativity and inspiration (fiction), [...]

Posted on: August 24, 2008 | No Comments »

The Postbank (Dutch ING bank) in Habbo Hotel and eBay in the console race game GRID. It’s nothing new to see brands make an appearance in games to reach out to various demographics. Marketing agencies have discovered the secret of communicating with those markets hard to reach through traditional advertising. But yesterday at Branded Games [...]

Posted on: June 28, 2008 | No Comments »

I do not care about the moral implications of the recent controversy surrounding the 5th anniversary of Second Life. I wouldn’t have visited it, I don’t think its a big PR event, and quite frankly probably wouldn’t have even known about it at all if it wasn’t for the stupidity of Linden Labs. I’m really [...]

Posted on: June 1, 2008 | 11 Comments »

Remember June 2007? If you where in Second Life at that time you probably would remember it as ‘the month of the failing asset servers‘. Nearly constant over capacity caused the servers controlling the objects in Second Life to consistently fail, causing much anger amongst its residents over lost objects etc. Of course by now [...]

Posted on: May 30, 2008 | 4 Comments »

Every time I see digital technology move away from our traditional desk top set up (desk, chair, PC, 17′+ monitor) I get excited about the new opportunities of breaking this static environment of interaction with data. When the Wii introduced a mainstream audience to alternative ways to interact with applications I was shocked at how [...]

Posted on: May 14, 2008 | No Comments »

The movie and cartoon giant Disney is on a quest to bind their audience to them in a series of Virtual Worlds developed for kids in different (consecutive) age ranges, growing up inside the fantasy world as Disney creates it. Disney became a serious player in the virtual worlds industry with their acquisition of the [...]

Posted on: May 5, 2008 | 3 Comments »

When I posted ‘The Teen Dilemma’ it was already obvious how Linden Labs was missing out on the big potential for the next couple of years - the teen based worlds. Neopets claim of 30 million unique users, Club Penguins sale and nickelodeon’s announcement to open a series of virtual worlds made sure even the [...]

Posted on: April 8, 2008 | 9 Comments »

Lets face it. Web applications such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Gmail spoiled us. Major services who are absolutely free to a vast majority of its users. Even advertising is almost frowned upon unless its very unobtrusive. The ‘we want it all, we want it now, and we want it free‘ mentality is something we wont [...]

Posted on: February 19, 2008 | 1 Comment »