Virtual worlds and the ongoing rise of Second Life
First off a brief BBC news report on the worth of virtual worlds.
“More than 10 million people will subscribe to MMOGs by 2011, and many millions more will play online games driven by other payment schemes, such as advertising and virtual purchases, the report predicted.”
MMOGs: massively multiplayer online games. e-learning is increasingly focusing in this area in terms of content delivery and in part this is what makes Second Life appealling.
“Mr Harding-Rolls said a number of new MMOG genres were emerging, including: # Virtual world building games, such as Second Life # Virtual pet rearing games, such as Neo pets # More casual MMO puzzle games # Sports games in which you have to buy items and build up your character. ”
“”The inherent social and community-building aspects of MMOGs are widening the sector’s influence on other social networking sectors and online games markets,” he said. ”
Of related interest are the recent stats release by comScore with regards to Second Life.
“The study revealed that approximately 1.3 million people ran the official software and logged-in to Second Life in March 2007. This represents an increase of 46 percent in the number of active residents from January 2007.” I’m not sure I would agree that this figure represents ‘active’ users however and may only include those who have visited the site out of interest and have not returned. Nevert heless the 46% increase is significant.
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)