Filed under: News and developments, Research by Digado

The Virtual World News website recently conducted a survey and published its results on trends for 2008. Amongst 45 Virtual Worlds experts (a lot of the usual names, Electric Sheep, Millions of Us, IBM, etc.) answered the following 5 questions:

1. What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?
2. What business goals have you set for 2008?
3. What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for the virtual worlds industry?
4. A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on the industry?
5. How will the above changes affect your specific segment of the industry in 2008?

Overall the magic word seems to be ‘growth’. The general consensus is 2008, although not without challenges, will be the year of growth for virtual world. Virtual World will pop up and seek to attract their niches (as opposed to Second Life, who has always lacked a clear definition of their targeted audience).

One of those challenges will be users being unwilling to adopt the ‘beta software’ worlds, overcrowded spaces and general lack of purpose. I think the major, more real concern doesn’t seem to be listed. At least not amongst the top results, which is the fragile reputation of Virtual Worlds getting damaged even further, and crowds beyond the early adopters unwilling to adopt ANY 3d technique as a real platform. Yet.

You can see our answers along with the other views and forecasts by requesting the full report here.

For 2008 population growth forecasts across the major virtual worlds click here.

Posted on: December 19, 2007 | Share on: