Virtual Worlds

Over at Wired today, the eagle-eyed Ryan Singel has a story about a new U.S. government initiative intended to root out terrorists working and playing in virtual worlds.

As Singel writes, the so-called Data Mining Report (click here for PDF) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence includes information about "Reynard," a "seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the Intelligence Community."

The Data Mining Report continues, suggesting, "The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Dennis Fong is someone who has a lot of street cred in the world of video games. A former world champion in games like Quake and Doom, he's also the founder of XFire, a company that enabled easy instant messaging among gamers that he later sold to Viacom for oodles of money.

Now, he's got a new start-up, known as Raptr, and it seems to have some very influential people rather excited.

I got my first introduction to Raptr Friday at the Startup Showcase at the Game Developers Conference. The session, which was organized by Charles River Ventures' Susan Wu, put five entrepreneurs on the spot to give short presentations about their company. Wu and several industry experts then got the chance to weigh in on each presentation.

Essentially, Raptr is a social network for gamers, but one filled with useful applications--at least for those for whom hard-core gaming is a way of life.

But since there are millions and millions of people like that, the company has an instant and wide market.

… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--On a regular basis, two of the things I most like to write about are Lego and virtual worlds. So when I first heard about Lego Universe, a Lego-themed virtual world, well, I was more than a little interested.

Lego Universe, which, sadly, is still about two years from public release, will be a full-scale MMO (massively multiplayer online game) aimed at Lego's core audience, kids ages 8 to 12. But in keeping with the company's awareness of the millions of adults who are utterly devoted to the iconic toys, there is expected to be something for … Read more

For years now, the popular virtual world, Second Life has been available only for PCs, Macs, and Linux machines.

There has always been talk about whether SL might ever make it onto consoles like the Xbox or PlayStation 3 and some scattered discussion about possible mobile phone implementations.

Last year, in fact, I saw a hack that allowed someone to access SL, albeit in a very, very superficial manner, on an iPhone.

But now, according to a press release I got Tuesday morning, a company called Vollee is planning on releasing technology that will make it possible to run Second … Read more

If ever there was a time for a famous futurist to be giving a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference, this is it.

When Ray Kurzweil, the author of The Singularity is Near and one of the most noted futurists around, takes the stage at GDC 2008 in San Francisco on Thursday to talk about "the next 20 years of gaming," he'll be weighing in at a moment in the industry's existence when the lines between games and Hollywood and advertising are blurring, when the term "gamer" encompasses 75-year-old grandmothers and when the … Read more

STANFORD, Calif.--If you've ever wanted to star in a famous band's music video, a start-up called BigStage will soon give you your chance.

Well, not exactly. But BigStage, which is based in Pasadena, Calif., is planning on letting users insert avatar-like images of themselves into a premade music video for an as-yet unnamed--but very famous--band.

The thing that makes this very interesting is that BigStage has developed a system that lets anyone with a digital camera create an extremely realistic avatar by plugging a photo of themselves into what it describes as a fairly easy-to-use interface.

Then, … Read more

STANFORD, Calif.--Mitch Kapor, like many people, is well aware that virtual worlds are often very difficult to use.

The founder of Lotus 1-2-3, who also happens to be the first investor in Second Life publisher Linden Lab and its chairman, spoke at the Metaverse Roadmap meeting here today on the topic of what can be done to make using virtual worlds a better experience.

"I'm obsessed with what's going to make these things easier to use," Kapor said, his face lit with excitement. "I think a piece of hardware is involved."

And that … Read more

STANFORD, Calif.--If one thing is clear about the immediate future of virtual worlds, it's that every toy company is going be setting something up.

That was the prediction of Raph Koster, the co-founder of Areae, which has created a virtual world platform called Metaplace, at a meeting of the Metaverse Roadmap here Friday. Koster got up to speak to a group of the leaders of the virtual world community and announced he was going to be the day's cynic.

"We (were asked) to talk about what's exciting," Koster said. "But I'm pretty … Read more

Usually when you hear the awkward acronym "MMORPG," which stands for massively multiplayer online role-playing game, it's referring to some title in which elves take on dragons, or orcs battle with giant swords against shamans.

You know, your typical World of Warcraft stuff.

But on Wednesday, the newest MMORPG went into private beta, and there's not a battle axe in sight.

We bring you, courtesy of famous blogger and investor, Joi Ito: Hello Kitty Online, the new online game from Sanrio Digital.

In addition to many of the regular features of an online game, like a … Read more