We all know that virtual worlds catering to KT&T segments are hot property right now – lot’s of worlds already launched and plenty in development.
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That’s all well and good but I’ve been thinking a lot about us grown-ups and the opportunities and factors influencing greater take-up in the adults space. To be realistic, there’s not actually a whole load of choice available for adults wishing to explore virtual worlds at present and to a high degree Second Life has no competitors (yet).
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And it’s interesting because all these worlds for kids etc have been (and are) created by adults. We’ve just completed an initial business planning and strategic project for a new kids/tween VW where the creative drive is coming directly from some children – we’re using their vision and ideas. But this made me realise just how under-served older people are in the virtual worlds space.
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But, putting the actual platforms aside for a moment, it’s worth thinking about what sorts of activities or experiences would actually stimulate greater penetration and make in-roads from the early adopters into the early majority. Early adopters typically account for 13.5% of the general population whilst the early majority are a much larger group, representing 34% of the GP – sizable and attractive.?
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As shown in the graph right, it’s the adoption gap which I’m talking about here – and specifically how mirror worlds can potentially bridge the gap.
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So what are the issues with current VW’s with older audiences? Retention and orientation are two of them. Many users struggle to make it through the sign-up and first hour process and of those that do, many churn off shortly afterwards because there’s nothing to do, or probably more accurately they’re unable to find something to do. Referring back to orientation, perhaps one solution is brand-holding, explained in greater detail here.
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We know first hand that people struggle to find relevant activities and experiences in Second Life due to the high number of searches to our site for the phrase ‘Interesting Places in Second Life’ (try the search here) – we have a large selection of posts specifically about interesting places.
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My theory is this: Virtual worlds will attract new older users (adults) if they provide a greater sense of ‘context to the content’. By this I mean providing virtual places which are less chaotic/unknown and more familiar to the users. This of course means real world places – mirror worlds. But this is only half the theory and answer (with Second Life funnily enough already giving us a glimpse).
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Using mirror worlds to re-create history in virtual environments is I think a great way of broadening the appeal of virtual worlds for adults. This gives them use and value. Imagine being able to explore present day New York but have the ability to time-travel and see how the city looked 5, 10, 50 or even 100 years ago. Urban planning, infrastructure and architecture could all be explored, as well as cultural elements. Using Second Life is an example here, there’s an awesome Paris in the 1900’s SIM? and Chichen Itza to demonstrate this.
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This concept has a wide range of applications including the obvious one of tourism. But fundamentally, this type of value and exploration based virtual offering builds on in some cases familiarity but then expands the experience using key aspects of virtual world capabilities.?
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What’s the business model here? Well, starting with business models for existing mirror worlds such as Twinity or Near, these are a combination of advertising revenues and rental incomes/virtual goods. I don’t think these ideas work here. After-all, you wouldn’t want users to have the ability to change places/landmarks/buildings from the past because it would spoil it for the others.
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Perhaps one concept here would be income from brand activity. Much has been said before about how virtual worlds are all about engagement. Maybe in this context history-based virtual worlds could encourage companies to explain and present the stories behind their brands, using time as the background.
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Thinking more about business models, there will have to come a time soon where the sheer quality of the environments AND the immersiveness and enjoyability of the experience enables companies to actually charge people just for access into the world. Sure, this is a very tall order but may go against the grain with respect to general internet mind-sets, but this happens in the real world. You pay to watch movies, enter theme parks and even to travel at a basic level, so why not for virtual worlds?
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Here’s some videos showing early examples of historic virtual world environments.