Recently myself and Josh Tabin interviewed the founders of FireSabre Consulting who have built a business in Second Life constructing virtual environments for businesses, schools and nonprofits. The founders, Fred Fuchs and Kevin Shaum, who go by their avatar names of Gus Pliskin and Tinker Lafollette, are based here in Houston and took us for a tour showing us some of the worlds and models they have created.
http://www.vimeo.com/462611One of the great things about using Second Life for school environments is the ability to demonstrate physics concepts in 3D space. Gus and Tinker showed us some of the recent projects that they have been working on, which include projects on both what are called the Main Grid and Teen Grid (separate areas with different permissions and protections for the age groups involved). One of FireSabre’s biggest projects, and most long-running, is the Suffern Middle School on Ramapo Islands, a private estate in the Second Life Teen Grid. The Ramapo Central School District Suffern was the first school or school district to develop a presence in Second Life.
FireSabre represents what the future could look like for schools and other training institutions. The Future Room (which you can see in our video) is another example of an environment that FireSabre created to demonstrate different communication methods and concepts in Second Life. Based on what we saw and heard, we look forward to seeing more of what FireSabre and Second Life will bring in the near future.
You can see the latest news on what FireSabre Consulting is up to here.
It was recently announced that 2ndLife has hit a plateau in terms of subscribers. And some are even citing what is being called “entropy.” One of the dominant players in 2L asset development services, Electric Sheep, also recently laid off 1/3 of their personnel.
Virtual Worlds are a huge opportunity, but I would strongly consider looking into other platforms which are showing greater appeal to the advertisers. I don’t believe 2L is on its way down for the count, I just see a tremendous amount of shift towards worlds which are more easily accessible and also maintain greater content controls. The whole concept of user generated content, which 2L is so well known for, is going through an evolutionary cycle.
Other platforms to consider:
Kaneva
]
Multiverse
There
Gaia Online
NeoPets
Areae’s - Metaplace
MTV’s - Laguna Beach
and many others… [I can think of one local platform you might want to talk to
For a little industry insight, you might reference this free report from Virtual Worlds News, where they interview 45 managers from leading VW companies for their predictions.
http://www.virtualworldsmanagement.com/forecast2008/
Robert: what is this “2L” you speak of? We Second Lifers refer to our virtual world as “SL”.
SL does have its technical limitations, though several changes now being beta tested — WindLight, Havok 4, and the Mono scripting engine — are likely to help out with both stability and scalability.
Also, one man’s bug is another man’s feature. The content controls that you see as essential, we see as barriers to entry, likely to hinder the growth of a virtual world that depends on user-created content. Because SL is so open, because there are few content controls — and none of the bureaucracy, fee-paying, and deal-making that go with them — SL is uniquely hospitable to cottage industry, and to amateur creators looking to go pro. That means a huge marketplace of subcontractors for businesses such as ours.
At any rate, we don’t expect to persuade you; but we do feel Josh and Kurt’s readers deserve to hear both sides of the story. Good luck with your own venture; the market for virtual worlds for minors is pretty crowded right now, and it will be interesting to see if a new entrant can succeed.
Recent entries in our blog cover this in more detail.
http://blog.firesabre.com/