The world of the videogame has greatly evolved over the years, with new genres appearing and new ways to play games opening up the experience to a much wider audience. Add to that the evolution of the World Wide Web over the same period of time; its abilities, the growth of broadband and the way it can be used for communication and networking for example, and you’ll discover something that’s come from both influences that could possibly change the way we do business forever.

Welcome ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’, to the ‘virtual world’. Often lumped alongside Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) like World of Warcraft, Everquest and Lord of the Rings Online, these virtual worlds that are being created are actually very different.

To start with, a virtual world such as the amazingly successful Second Life cannot be classed as a game, because there are no quests, and no end goals. You don’t advance through levels as you would in an MMOG. Instead Second Life is an ever growing, ever changing world, where everything that’s possible to do has been created by the users themselves.

Second Life isn’t alone either; there are many of these worlds appearing online; Entropia, and Active Worlds for example, but currently it has to be said that Second Life has been getting the most interest and media attention.

It is still early days for the concept, however already Second Life’s benefits are becoming clear to companies and businesses are the early adopters are currently experimenting with what it has to offer.

“At the moment compare it with the beginning of the internet,” explains Tim Koppers, co-founder and chief of marketing, at virtual world branding company SLionhead. “Businesses are experimenting with 3D virtual worlds. And the full power of these worlds isn’t discovered yet.

“Different companies see the potential of 3D virtual worlds and Second Life in particular. That’s for sure, but you always have a lot of companies (80 per cent) who are not innovative and will wait until their peers have made a success with 3D virtual worlds. In our opinion most companies know that 3D virtual worlds are going to be big the next couple of years but are currently afraid to do something with it.”

“Second Life has grown from under 100000 users to over 7000000 users in a little over a year,” adds Austin Morris, president and virtual integration officer of web developer and programmer QTLabs. “Several businesses have joined in with mixed success. In the early days of the web, many companies wondered why they would need a web page and how it will benefit them. Now it is a vital part of any business, whether or not they sell products online. We believe that 3D Virtual Worlds are the future of the web and will be just as important in the future as a web site is today.”

As the web offers both great social and work services, these abilities are integrating into virtual world environments – for example social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and MySpace are helping to blend both business and social aspects into the Second Life experience, but other technologies are also making it appealing to businesses.

Second Life is powered by a number of proprietary new technologies, but those that really add appeal to businesses include real-time 3D streaming, cross platform portability, easy to use in-world building tools, built-in custom scripting tools and very soon 3D voice, allowing business communications to improve even further!

Its easy to see how companies can benefit from holding virtual meetings in second life; they can hear each other, ‘see’ each other (even if only in avatar form), share files and videos etc, and even work on building prototypes etc in game, making so much possible. Especially in this era of globalisation, where people across the world might be working on the same project, getting together to get the job done has now become much, much simpler.

“Of course, meetings and conferences in Second Life do provide several advantages over telecoms,” notes Morris. “IBM has been using it for meetings and has realised that employees come early, stay late and forge relationships with remote fellow workers that would not have been forged via phone conversations. Our vision of the true impact that 3D worlds will have on business is building communities around products and services similar to what MySpace and Youtube have done but with much more collaboration and sharing amongst its members.

Indeed, in-world creation is a big aspect of Second Life, so much so that its creators; Linden Labs, is clear that anything you create in the world, you own the IP to. With clear ownership of IP being vital to any developing economy, the company has done well to set this in place, as it’s quite clear this has helped the world become the success it currently is.

Its ‘guidelines’ set in place are making it possible for new companies to be started up in the virtual world that make money in the real one, in addition to currently successful real world companies making a leap into the virtual world and making more money there; you can even make real-world purchases in Second Life etc.

So much is now possible; collaboration, training, distance learning, new media studies and marketing are just some examples.

As Linden Labs’ website highlights; “Hold a virtual meeting with your sales managers located in Europe and Asia. You can present the new sales initiatives and discuss them with your team real-time.

“Build a new world that allows Second Life residents to interact with your products or services and enables you to test out new designs and concepts before introducing them to the real world. Or perhaps you have a product that you would like to sell in Second Life.

“Create an innovative learning environment for students and faculty. Explore new tools and techniques for information and scientific visualisation. Design collaborative meeting spaces and interact with colleagues from across the globe. Whether you're thinking of enriching an existing curriculum or experimenting with completely new educational goals, Second Life is a platform for innovation.”

“Businesses can do everything they want to do in the real world, but faster and bigger,” notes Koppers. “Things such as time and location are of the past. You can now create user experiences, brand awareness, involve creative people into your brand, let them create co-create products, and hold meetings/conferences, for example,” he adds.

Second Life offers some great opportunities for companies, and yes, they’re definitely taking advantage of them. For example, The US Center for Disease Control and the University of California at Davis used a specialist consultant to build a simulation in Second Life, to work out how emergency workers should unpack medical supplies and equipment for fast response after a biological weapon attack. Using scripts and objects, designers simulated factory or warehouse layouts, showing where potential bottlenecks would lie.

But the advantages of Second Life are endless; every company can find a benefit of entering the online world.

For Thomson NETg's Doug Bassett, Second Life has been very successful at spreading the word about what Thomson NETg has to offer. An online training company, it has created an entity in the virtual world which has been very successful on many levels.

“I think one of the reasons we're so popular is that we provide training in several different forms. While people visit us they might listen to a Podcast or two on a variety of business or technical topics. They can take a seat in an amphitheatre, or in front of their own personal monitor, to catch one of our live training classes taking place that day in real time. We've noticed that our relaxed, exploratory environment encourages people to come by and hang out with us for a while - and perhaps learn a little something in the process. It has really helped us to connect with a portion of our intended audience that we couldn't otherwise reach through more traditional means,” Bassett says.

“In Second Life you have the ability to show people anything,” he continues. “We can place people directly inside technology to illustrate how it works. Say you want to show how a firewall functions. In Second Life, you can have a person become a bad packet and experience the act of slamming into a firewall. And then they can see: there's no way they're getting through that firewall. So the lessons become much more interactive and much more fun. Second Life opens modalities that haven't existed before - especially in an online environment. We can, for example, act out stuff in human resources classes. We can create elaborate role plays and ask people: 'So what do you do with this situation?' And people work it out right there on our island. Because of skin ability, virtual quality, and flexibility of Second Life, we can put any situation anywhere - even something that wouldn't feel natural in a classroom or would be too expensive to create offline."

It is still very much early days for business use within virtual worlds, but Second Life is already proving the concept to be a success, and as time moves on, it is expected to expand; making more business opportunities possible and therefore more companies will come on board. However, for many, the future of virtual worlds is not so much about technology it uses as it is about the people involved and bringing a much more natural way of communicating that is breaking down the walls that have separated humans geographically and culturally.  

“The culture that is forming within Second Life is indeed one of its own and not just a combination of the various real world nationalities and backgrounds. It is being created by us and has its own norms, morals and ethics that are only now being developed. It is up to us to make that a positive experience, only then will companies begin to see the true benefit,” notes Morris.

“Many of the benefits have yet to be realised, but again the parallel to the web must be pointed out,” he continues. “In the beginning of the web, many companies could not figure out the benefit of ‘online brochures’. Now it is a necessity and the benefits are still not as quantifiable for many companies. A restaurant for example may have a web page, but more than likely does not generate direct sales from the web page. In Second Life the ability to reach customers, communicate with them and keep them involved in a much more interactive environment is great. Advergaming in general is expected to grow from a $40m a year industry in 2004 to $400m by 2009. One of the advantages is the ‘captive audience’, when someone is playing a videogame or exploring a virtual world, they are much more engrossed for much longer periods of time than television. Many of the benefits have yet to be realised in this new and exciting realm, but we are finding more and more each day,” Morris concludes.