My presentation at the Webinale conference about how virtual worlds change the web business is now online (only in German language, sorry guys):

Didn’t read yet, but seems to be very interesting:

My virtual economy -related Master’s thesis (University of Helsinki, economics), titled Macroeconomic Indicators in a Virtual Economy, is now publicly available. As the name of the thesis implies, I ended up concentrating on the macro approach to virtual economies.

Read on: Macroeconomic Indicators in a Virtual Economy | Virtual Economy Research Network

Via Nora – Thank you!

Lightspeed Venture Partners have a really great blog. This is a post about managing virtual economies:

For new game designers, keeping virtual economies in check is a non obvious but extremely important element of game design. While most designers spend a lot of time thinking about how to add money into a system and how to price virtual goods, some do not spend enough time thinking about how to balance these two elements. If you allow users to transfer virtual currency between each other, trade in virtual items will emerge. If the economies are unbalanced, you run the risk of side effects such as inflation in pricing of virtual goods or too many “high power” items in the wild.

Read on: Managing Virtual Economies « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog

Shopping becomes social – again (shopping always was a social activity, but not on the Internet):

Yesterday the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple’s patent application for “Enhancing Online Shopping Atmosphere.” The main improvement Apple sees, at least here, for online shopping is to make it a more social experience: “One drawback of online shopping is that the experience can feel sterile and isolating,” explains the application. “Customers in such an environment may be less likely to have positive feelings about the online shopping experience, may be less inclined to engage in the online equivalent of window shopping (e.g., will not linger in front of a display), and may ultimately spend less money than their counterparts who shop in physical stores.”

Read on: Virtual Worlds News: Apple’s Patent for a Shopping Virtual World

The web is great because it is independent of space and time. However, this makes the web very boring. Imagine for example you could talk to your friends in real life only via your mailbox (asynchronous and indirect). Social interactions and connections require a common space and synchronicity. So virtual life needs a virtual space, i.e. virtual worlds or social networks with some “live functions”. Facebook is a good example: first they introduced a Twitter-like feature (status updates), now they added chat. Next, they will add chat rooms, maybe.

Have a good time!

The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment. I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein.

Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces (1967)

You are doing a Web 2.0 business? Than read this:

Ultimately, it’s clear that Web 2.0 folks can learn a lot from creating the types of incentive systems that folks in the virtual worlds industry can often do.

Read on at Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen: What every Web 2.0 entrepreneur should know about virtual goods

Yesterday, I participated for the first time in a Web Monday, located at the Media Design University.

Several start-ups pitched, among them our friends from MyAlikes and a website called WhatsYourPlace. One of its creators, Tobias Lampe, had interesting theories about virtual goods, which overlap to a great extend with our ideas:

• Virtual goods enable internet users to show what they have. Tobias called this phenomenon trophy effect. As an example he mentioned the gifts you can buy on Facebook.
• Main aspects for the success of virtual goods are: exclusivity and ownership.
• Another important characteristic of virtual goods is their economic rivalry. Wikipedia contains the following definition: “Rival goods are goods whose consumption by one consumer prevents simultaneous consumption by other consumers”.
• And last but not least: virtual goods can be a core element of new social online communities.

Hang in there!

The place where virtual worlds and social networks meet is called Unype (from Skype). This mashup is crazy! Try it yourself:

If you know Will Wright, you probably know he is one of the most successful game designers, e.g. of SimCity, The Sims and – coming soon – Spore. At GDC in San Francisco he showed the audience his recipe for success:

(picture is from Golem)

This model does not only apply to games, but also to movies or any other media, e.g. websites. It’s a model of participation: first, you have a story, a concept, a world etc. , e.g. Star Wars. People deconstruct it into its components, e.g. Darth Vader, Death Star etc., and play with these components, e.g. use it in ads or products. From these components new stories arise, e.g. Star Wars Lego. The cycle is complete.

Have a good time!