New Ventures in Virtual Worlds

摘要

Virtual worlds are becoming increasingly sophisticated, enabling organizations and individuals to "step into the internet." A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment where individuals assume an identity as an avatar. Avatars inhabit the virtual worlds and interact with each other via computer-based chat or more recently, voice. Virtual worlds are common in multiplayer online games (such as Citypixel), virtual environments (such as Second Life), and role-playing games (such as Lineage). Due to increasing broadband internet access, virtual worlds are rapidly emerging as an alternative means to the real world for communicating, collaborating, and organizing economic activity. For example, one of the most popular teen worlds, Habbo Hotel, has approximately 7.5 million unique users; and Cyworld, a combination of Second Life and MySpace, has more video traffic than YouTube and boasts that 96 percent of all 20- to 30-year-olds in Korea are users. In the virtual world Second Life, more than 50 multinational organizations, such as Adidas, BMW, IBM, and Vodafone conduct operations; Harvard is holding classes; over 400 individuals earn more than USD 2,000 in net profit monthly through their online activities; and Anshe Chung, the avatar for a Chinese-born woman living in Germany with 25 employees in China, became the first USD millionaire resulting from her virtual real estate activities. Companies such as Protonmedia and Qwaq provide Fortune 500 companies, such as Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Motorola, Intel, completely secure, private virtual business worlds to collaborate and conduct economic activities.