Friday 24 October 2008

Gamers and Politics in USA

Barack FTW 11/4! -- Why Gamers Should Back Obama

Obamawarcraft

I think it's high time that people get past this notion of gamers as passive couch potatoes divorced from the world around them. I've seen gamers raise thousands of dollars for worthwhile causes like Penny Arcade's "Child's Play" charity and games for US troops overseas. Gamers can be ardent defenders of Net Freedom or even protestors for Chinese nationalism. Heck, they have their own blog devoted to politics.

That stereotype dismantled, here's my five reasons why gamers should back the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Barack Obama, for U.S. Guildmaster, I mean, President:

  1. Obama Groks the Power of the Internet: Obama gets that that Generation X and Y are using the internet as their entertainment center, their social hangout, and their primary source of timely information about the world. No, he didn't invent the Blackberry, but he does understand that the Gamer Generation connects with each other in substantially different ways than generations before.
  2. Obama Defends Net Freedom: Obama understands how important Net Neutrality is. The ability of next-gen game developers to create online games depends on a vibrant and open internet environment, unfettered by artificially throttled and filtered access.
  3. Obama Knows We Need Broadband: Barack Obama believes that America should lead the world in broadband penetration and Internet access. And you know how sucky it is to play Halo over a sketchy internet connection. We need cheap, fast wired and wirelesss broadband in every community in America.
  4. Obama_computer Obama Supports Stronger Math & Science in Schools: America lags way behind the rest of the industrialized world in math and science aptitude in its high schools, which over time will lead us to have a workforce ill-prepared for the 21st century and less college students getting degrees in computer science and engineering. That means less skilled coders and game developers in America. Which means that American games companies will lag behind Japan and Korea and other countries in the multi-billion dollar games industry. Obama takes this problem seriously and wants to seriously invest in strong science and math educational programs from K-12 to university-level in America.
  5. Obama Will Appoint 1st Amendment Defending Supreme Court Justices: User "DigDig" on Gamepolitics.com adds an important point about the kind of judges that President Obama would appoint to the Supreme Court. He notes that "Obama judges are much more likely to interpet the 1st Amendment more broadly and include video games, and to say that that should be enforced on the whole country (federal and states)... Nothing a president does will have as lasting an impact on the country as the kind of judges he nominates to the courts." Thanks, DigDig!
  6. Obama Totally Pwns in Unreal Tournament: He's the only player I know who can go head to head in a Scavenger against a Fury equipped with Berserk and come out ahead. Talk about presidential. (Ok, maybe I made that up. But I hear his Wii Bowling score is 278.)

If you agree that Obama is a "game changing" candidate for the Presidency, why not join the Gamers for Obama group? And whoever you pick, don't forget to vote!

Teens in Second Life debate the 2nd Obama/McCain debate

Teens in Second Life debate the 2nd Obama/McCain debate

TSLdebateparty_008

Tonight I organized, with the help of my colleagues Rafi and Joyce, a presidential debate watching party in Teen Second Life. We had a very good turnout of about 28 teens, several of whom stayed for the entire 90 minutes -- which is asking a lot of a teenager on a school night. Pretty much every single one of them was an Obama supporter, which should come as no surprise from my previous post on the subject. Still we had a good discussion and debate on the issues that I think helped them to think more broadly about the political process in America.

Overall it gave me hope about virtual worlds being the public sphere in a digital age.

We used the fireside chat area of of Global Kids island, which is a great informal space to have these kinds of discussions. It's hard to be too stressed and uptight sitting around a campfire! One of our interns Mat helped decorate the space by putting up a bunch of American flags and buttons for each of the six sets of candidates on the ticket.

Tweet Theater on GK Island

We wanted to make sure that the teens had access to as much useful information as possible during the event. One of our biggest coups was getting the Capitol Hill folks to let us bring over to the Teen Grid their awesome Tweet Theater that displays the ten most recent tweets about a particular candidate. Joyce did a nice job re-building the theater in the Teen Grid, even adding a bit more flair to it. Thanks to Kiwini Oe and Kei Moana from SL Capitol Hill for helping us out!

The kids really enjoyed watching the real time stream of commentary about Obama and McCain scrolling behind them as we chatted.

We also set up an audio stream of the debates from an NPR affiliate that provided an MP3 stream that we could link to. Sadly, we were not able to bring in a video feed. But we did provide several links to other websites that provided webstreams. I watched the debates over Hulu.com, which had excellent resolution and no hiccups at all.

We also provided links to the respective websites of John McCain and Barack Obama, as well as links to sites with more information comparing their positions on the various issues, including CNN, MySpace, and American Public Media's excellent candidate comparison quiz.

TSLdebateparty_006

The teens were fairly bored during the economy and health care portion of the debate. But they perked right up once the candidates starting talking foreign policy. Several of them were interested in Darfur and human rights. A couple were concerned about college tuition costs.

All in all, I thought this was an effective way of getting teenagers to be more engaged with the political process. I think they felt more comfortable being in a setting with a bunch of their peers rather than in a roomful of adults. Several of them seemed genuinely concerned about certain issues and got to express that to each other over the text chat. And they got to have fun, often at the expense of one of the candidates, but that's to be expected.

TSLdebateparty_009

I'd love to compare this to a real world gathering of a bunch of teenagers to see if we would get similar outcomes. One advantage of Second Life is that the teens can be both listening / watching the debates while also engaging in text chat with each other about what the candidates are saying. That would be really hard to do in a real life setting. And they can dip in and dip out of the event for as long as they have available, instead of travelling to some real world venue and potentially having to commit to a 90 minute event. Plus there is less risk in expressing our views in this semi-anonymous space, versus in real life where the performance anxiety associated with speaking out your views is much greater.

At the end of the evening, the teens seemed quite keen on doing this again for the last debate. We'll see if we can organize something for what may be the decisive event of the entire election.

NOTE: You can read a more in-depth report on this event, with quotes from the teens over at Holymeatballs.org.

State Department hosting Second Life event on education in virtual worlds this Thursday

State Department hosting Second Life event on education in virtual worlds this Thursday

This Thursday, October 9, I am honored to be participating in a panel discussion on "Education without Borders" sponsored by the United States Department of State. The panel will address how virtual worlds can be used to reach out to people "conquering issues of physical distance, nationality, and culture." The panelists for this event include:

    state dept event SL 0908_004

  • Ken Hudson, Virtual World Design Centre, Loyalist College
  • Christopher Keesey, Ohio University Without Boundaries
  • Sue Shick, Department of Instructional Technology and Academic Computing, Case Western University
  • and myself, Rik Panganiban, Global Kids

The event is specifically being put on by the Bureau of International Information Programs at the State Department, along with Cambridge Education, and the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy. Participants in this closed forum will be drawn from educators from an impressive 14 countries: Iran, the UK, Hungary, Latvia, Turkey, Finland, Bulgaria, Spain, Scotland, the Netherlands, Wales, Denmark, Canada and the United States. Unfortunately, this event is not open to the general public.

This is far from the first foray of the U.S. State Department into virtual worlds. In 2007 they sponsored a panel discussion on people with disabilities and a jazz festival in SL.

Playing Video Games - Motives, Responses, and Consequences

Playing Video Games - Motives, Responses, and Consequences 12/5 12noon ESB1001
Dec 5 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Engineering Sciences Building 1001, Santa Barbara, CA

Despite the popularity of video games, we still know very little about the motives, responses, and consequences of video game play, especially from a long-term perspective. The study of video games is relatively new to the field of media communication. This talk provides an overview on video game research from a social scientific perspective. Questions like “what are the video games people play?“; "why do people play video games?”; “what do people do with video games, and what do video games do to them?”, and a selection of latest research findings will be discussed.

RenĂ© Weber's research is primarily focused on questions like “Why do people use and enjoy mass media?”, “How can we explain and predict the selection of media genres and media content?”, “How do people receive and interpret media content?”, and “What are the effects and consequences of using mass media?” Specifically, he is interested in cognitive and emotional effects of television and new technology media, especially new generation video games.

He is developing and applying both traditional social scientific and neuroscientific methodology (e.g. functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging/fMRI) in order to study media effects on humans.

René received his Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) in Germany for his work on the theory and methods of TV audience prediction. He developed a system that was tested and positively evaluated by media research professionals over a period of nearly two years. With his dissertation he introduced modern artificial intelligence approaches (e.g. neural networks) in communication research. He worked for the SAT.1/PROSEVEN networks in Germany as well as for NBC New York/Los Angeles. He was Assistant Professor in Research Methods and Statistics at the University of Technology in Berlin/Germany and an Associate/Guest Professor in Media Research at the University of the Arts in Berlin/Germany. He also worked as Post Doctoral Associate in the Entertainment program at the USC's Annenberg School for Communication, Los Angeles, where he served as PI for a German Research Foundation grant on "Quality of Entertainment" and as PI of studies using brain imaging techniques (fMRI) to test effects of playing video games.

He earned several awards and honors, e.g. Michigan State University’s “New Faculty Award” for the study “Neurophysiology of Entertainment” or Tuebingen (Germany) University’s “TL Foundation Award” for the study "Does Playing Violent Video Games Induce Aggression? Empirical Evidence of a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study”. For his dissertation he won the “Best Dissertation Award” of the German and Swiss Marketing Associations.

Game on for British developers

Game on for British developers

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News

Advertisement

A quick tour around LittleBigPlanet

British game developers have long been among the most influential and creative talents working in the global games industry.

Games on home computers of the early 1980s were pioneered by British game writers such as Ian Bell, David Braben, Matthew Smith, Chris Yates, Jon Hare, Andrew Braybrook, and the Darling brothers, Richard and David.

Two decades later and despite the transformation from cottage industry to global entertainment powerhouse, British talent is still setting the pace.

From the multi-million selling Grand Theft Auto series made by scores of developers in Scotland to the auteur efforts of talents like Jeff Minter, the UK's tradition in video games is unparalleled.

And in the next two weeks the gaze of gamers around the world will not just be fixed on the UK in general, but on the small town of Guildford in particular, thanks to Fable II, from Lionhead Studios, and LittleBigPlanet, from Media Molecule both of which have been developed in the town.

They are very different games. One is a role playing game predicated on making moral choices, while the other is a platform game hoping to redefine user-generated content.

They have a lot in common; they were developed at studios a few miles apart, both are flagship titles for their respective consoles, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, both are particularly British and yet universal in their appeal.

Fable II is a key title for the Xbox 360

The developers of the two titles used to work closely together: The founding talents at Media Molecule, Alex Evans, Mark Healey, Dave Smith, and Kareem Ettouney used to work for Peter Molyneux, the director at Lionhead.

Mr Molyneux, one of the games industry's most respected figures, said: "I feel so proud of what they have done, which is phenomenal.

"They have started a company from scratch with one of the most amazing and creative ideas that this industry has ever seen and come out with a huge success.

Lacking a platform-defining game, LittleBigPlanet has been tipped as the title to drive sales of the PS3 this Christmas.

From the moment it was first demoed at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in 2007 its ambition to turn ordinary players into game makers has captured the imagination of many.

Talented town

The offices of Media Molecule site above a bathroom showroom close to Guildford station.

It is an unlikely location for a company which carries much of the weight of the PlayStation 3 on its shoulders.

The game should already now be in the hands of players around the world. But in the reception of Media Molecule six bottles of champagne and a clutch of cigars wrapped in a red ribbon remain in a glass cabinet.

The discovery of a background song set to words from the Koran in the game led to a global recall of disks that were sitting in shops around the world waiting for launch day.

The delay is only short and when gamers do get their hands on LBP, Media Molecule hope it will spark a creative revolution.

Screenshot from Warhammer, EA
Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is based on a world developed in the UK

Alex Evans, technical director at the firm, said: "The game has been designed around three ideas: Play, Create and Share. You can play the Game as a platform game using the levels we have made.

"But you're tempted all the time to create. Every level that we create in play is actually inspiration for you to create."

LBP players "earn" decorations, stickers, costumes, toys and contraptions which can all be used to build new levels for the game, using tools that are both simple and deep.

"What the internet and PlayStation Network has brought to the equation is that you can then publish all of your creations. With a single click on the controller you can share your creations with thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of other gamers."

Every time LittleBigPlanet is fired up new levels built by the community will be ready to play.

Alex Evans said soon after releasing the LBP beta it was stumbling across the first user-created levels that were better than the ones designed by the professionals.

LittleBigPlanet has big potential. Right now it is just a game but the firm, with Sony, are in talks to turn it into a franchise that could mean spin offs including comics, cartoons, and action figures as well as a publishing platform itself for other brands' content.

Box art for GTA IV, Rock Star
UK game developer Rock Star is behind the hit GTA series

Evans says: "There's been a lot of being in the right place at the right time. When we went to Sony we were a tiny but very experienced team. Sony had to trust in us in terms of the quality of people.

"It was amazing how much they understood what was a new concept; it was quite blue sky."

Even before the game has hit the shops, the team are already at work on a sequel.

A short taxi ride across Guildford to the grander Research Park finds Lionhead studios.

Here, the champagne is being wheeled into the offices, ready for a celebration to mark the launch of the game, and for the early review scores which are very positive.

Despite this, Peter Molyneux says he is unsatisfied. "I am never happy," he says.

"When you are making a game, you have to be ambitious and push yourself into places which are slightly uncomfortable."

Fable II carries great expectations, in part because the original game failed to match its stated ambitions. It sold in the millions but Molyneux has always regretted over-promising and under-delivering.

Fable II is a bold attempt to tell an engrossing tale, and give the player a deep experience but in a way that creates as few obstacles as possible.

"Normally computer games give you an experience which is one quest after another. With Fable II we've tried to give you a world in which you can be whatever you like. And the world adapts to how you change; which is pretty unique."

British flair

Kind, cruel, good, evil, generous, parsimonious; the choice is up to the player. You can also fall in love, have children, get divorced, be the hero, be the villain.

And this open-ended nature is wrapped up in a story and experience that is distinctly British.

"It is quintessentially British. It's set in Britain, or in Albion as it is called. All the accents are English and it has an irreverent sense of humour.

"That's a breath of fresh air. A lot of our entertainment is centred around America and it's nice to poke a bit of British-ness into that."

Despite the high-profile launches of LBP and Fable II all is not well in the British games industry.

A recent report from the Creative Industries Observatory reported that the games industry in the UK was on a "downward trajectory".

It said: "The UK government needs to consider a tax relief scheme which will encourage the best of the UK's development talent to stay, and in turn reverse the downward trajectory of the industry today. "

That call for government help is being led by Tiga, which represents large parts of the industry.

Media Molecule and Lionhead are among the fortunate few. Media Molecule has the support of Sony, while Lionhead is owned by Microsoft.

Fortunes can change, of course, but for the time being the champagne is either flowing freely or being chilled for opening next month.

Wednesday 15 October 2008

The online battles for president

The online battles for president

Advertisement

John McCain's campaign adverts posted on YouTube include several excerpts of footage from TV broadcasts.

US presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain continue to pave new trails as they use online media in their campaigns.

Senator Obama has become the first presidential candidate to advertise in video games.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has complained to YouTube that it unfairly removed campaign videos that feature copyrighted content.

YouTube responded that the campaign can appeal the removals.

Game on

Tapping into an increasingly popular advertising medium, Senator Obama's campaign has paid for advertising in 18 video games, including Guitar Hero, Burnout Paradise and Madden 09.

Control of such ads is maintained by the games makers, who can modify ads when games consoles log on to the internet. The Obama ads were added early this month and will continue up until the election.

Burnout screenshot
The ads promote an early voting site set up by the Obama campaign

The ads will be seen only by players in 10 US states that allow voting before the November 4 deadline, and include a number of swing states such as Ohio and Florida.

They are designed to draw attention to a website the campaign has made to encourage early voting.

"It reaches an audience that is typically young males, roughly 18 to 34," said Holly Rockwood, a spokeswoman for Electronic Arts, which is featuring the ad in nine of its games.

"Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates. These ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams," she said.

YouTube controversy

A letter from the McCain campaign to YouTube outlines the "overreaching copyright claims" under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) that have led to the "unfortunate and unnecessary" removal of several campaign-related videos from the site.

The videos featured short segments of video from news broadcasts, which brings them under copyright. When takedown notices were presented by various news organisations to YouTube, the videos were removed.

The McCain campaign argues that the videos constitute "examples of fair use", protected by the DMCA, and that "nothing in the DMCA requires a host like YouTube to comply automatonically with takedown notices, while blinding itself to their legal merit."

YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine replied in a letter to the McCain campaign that YouTube is "merely an intermediary in this exchange" of user-uploaded content and "performing a substantive legal review of every DMCA notice we receive prior to processing a takedown...is not a viable solution."

Monday 13 October 2008

Virtual worlds carve out new path

Virtual worlds carve out new path

Francesco Dorazio designed Myrl, a site to store avatars for virtual worlds.

By Jane Wakefield
Technology reporter, BBC News

If you are walking with orcs in the World of Warcraft or setting up a business on planet Calypso, the real world is probably very far from your mind.

But for attendees at the Virtual Worlds Forum in London this week, the question of how to bridge the gap with the real world is a very pertinent one.

As well as gaining an audience beyond the core teenage male gamer, virtual worlds with real world connections offer a whole new way to make money.

There is a sharp divide between so-called Massively Multi-player Online games (MMOs) which aspire to draw from the real world, such as Second Life, and those, like World of Warcraft, which proudly inhabit a land of pure fantasy.

Twinity is a virtual world from Metaversum with avatars that walk around real cities. Metaversum chief executive Jochen Hummel says people can feel as though they have been to a city.

Cityscape

Hoping to change that is Twinity, one of a growing number of games determined to make a link between the virtual world and the real.

Capturing the twin trends of social networking and fascination with 3D worlds, the Berlin-based firm is creating a backdrop that allows users to hang out in some of the world's most famous cities.

So far it has launched virtual Berlin - a faithful replica of the real thing - to public trial.

Next year a virtual London will be available with online models of Singapore and New York joining at some point after that.

People can explore their city of choice, visit shops, art galleries and museums and build apartments.

"Fantasy worlds give you freedom and allow you to fly but the fantasy element limits them for the real world," said Jochen Hummel, the chief executive of Metaversum, the company behind Twinity.

"Teenage boys are the biggest users but for adults there is a need to improve their real lives rather than escape from them," he said.

Networking avatars

[Virtual worlds have] to become far more ubiquitous, more like a toaster than a DVR
Raph Koster, Areae

Jessica Mulligan is the chief operating officer of ImaginVenture, a Swedish business incubator interested in virtual worlds.

She can see how more direct links to the high street would offer new ways to monetise such worlds but she is ambivalent about how much actual gamers want to bring the two together.

"Virtual worlds are about experimenting and doing something different," she said.

Closer ties with social networking are inevitable though, she thinks.

"They are two separate markets but you can bring things from each. For example it would make perfect sense for games to have links to social networks so people can put up pictures of their avatars alongside their real identities," she said.

Going one step farther, Myrl has created a social network exclusively for avatars.

The web-based Myrl platform allows users to manage their virtual lives, seeing what is happening in a range of virtual worlds while keeping up to date with what their or friends' avatars are doing.

"In virtual worlds you can be an alien one day, partying in New York another and laying on a beach the next and we felt that there was a need for a platform that integrated virtual worlds so that you could access these worlds from the web or the mobile as well as from a specific machine," said founder Francesco D'Orazio.

Anonymity

It appeals particularly to gamers who have created avatars in a variety of worlds.

Some 30% of Myrl's users have multiple avatars, on average they have three each, but one busy user is managing an impressive 16.

Among the 19 virtual worlds that are so far signed up are Twinity, Second Life, Habbo Hotel and Entropia

The avatars are linked from the virtual world they inhabit to the Myrl website via a badge which transmits data about what they are doing.

But the system cannot, as yet, link real people with their avatars.

"That's not possible yet because too many people want to maintain anonymity and don't want their avatar to be linked to their real identity," said Mr D'Orazio.

Ordinary people

Screenshot from Second Life
Second Life is struggling to keep user's interest

Some virtual worlds have incredibly loyal fan bases, who visit regularly and for long amounts of time but others are struggling to keep users engaged.

Figures for Second Life show that while 18 million people have downloaded the software, only 500,000 are still active users.

There are still big barriers to overcome before virtual gaming goes mainstream, thinks Ms Mulligan.

One of the big stumbling blocks for her is the way games are distributed.

Rather than have specialist software that has to be downloaded - a process which can be time-consuming and complicated - the web itself could increasingly be used as a platform, she thinks.

One of the firms experimenting with simpler virtual worlds is Areae, which has launched a free tool called Metaplace that allows anyone to create a virtual world.

The web-based program is the brainchild of Raph Koster, a man very keen to open virtual worlds up to the mass market.

"The first step is to have virtual worlds as a common medium for ordinary people. It has to become far more ubiquitous, more like a toaster than a DVR," he told the BBC.

"Virtual worlds have a lot of strengths and the web has a lot of strengths but the two do not necessarily coincide," he said.

Purposeful chat

What virtual worlds do well is contextualise social encounters in a way that social networking cannot do, he thinks.

"Without places it is hard to have activities. The bowling alley or the alcohol does not matter as much as the people but if you do not have the bowling alley or the alcohol it's just an empty room and no-one comes,"

Michael Cassius is the managing director of Dubit, a marketing agency that creates virtual worlds.

It has been conducting research on what youngsters are doing in virtual worlds. Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel, both worlds with a big emphasis on social networking, are the most popular, according to its study.

With the younger generation growing up on social networks the connection between the two will have to get closer Mr Cassius thinks.

"Virtual worlds are social networks with a purpose. Games have always been a platform for engagement between people," he said.

Wednesday 8 October 2008

Virtual worlds carve out new path

Virtual worlds carve out new path

Advertisement

Francesco Dorazio designed Myrl, a site to store avatars for virtual worlds.

By Jane Wakefield
Technology reporter, BBC News

If you are walking with orcs in the World of Warcraft or setting up a business on planet Calypso, the real world is probably very far from your mind.

But for attendees at the Virtual Worlds Forum in London this week, the question of how to bridge the gap with the real world is a very pertinent one.

As well as gaining an audience beyond the core teenage male gamer, virtual worlds with real world connections offer a whole new way to make money.

There is a sharp divide between so-called Massively Multi-player Online games (MMOs) which aspire to draw from the real world, such as Second Life, and those, like World of Warcraft, which proudly inhabit a land of pure fantasy.
Advertisement

Twinity is a virtual world from Metaversum with avatars that walk around real cities. Metaversum chief executive Jochen Hummel says people can feel as though they have been to a city.

Cityscape

Hoping to change that is Twinity, one of a growing number of games determined to make a link between the virtual world and the real.

Capturing the twin trends of social networking and fascination with 3D worlds, the Berlin-based firm is creating a backdrop that allows users to hang out in some of the world's most famous cities.

So far it has launched virtual Berlin - a faithful replica of the real thing - to public trial.

Next year a virtual London will be available with online models of Singapore and New York joining at some point after that.

People can explore their city of choice, visit shops, art galleries and museums and build apartments.

"Fantasy worlds give you freedom and allow you to fly but the fantasy element limits them for the real world," said Jochen Hummel, the chief executive of Metaversum, the company behind Twinity.

"Teenage boys are the biggest users but for adults there is a need to improve their real lives rather than escape from them," he said.

Networking avatars


[Virtual worlds have] to become far more ubiquitous, more like a toaster than a DVR
Raph Koster, Areae

Jessica Mulligan is the chief operating officer of ImaginVenture, a Swedish business incubator interested in virtual worlds.

She can see how more direct links to the high street would offer new ways to monetise such worlds but she is ambivalent about how much actual gamers want to bring the two together.

"Virtual worlds are about experimenting and doing something different," she said.

Closer ties with social networking are inevitable though, she thinks.

"They are two separate markets but you can bring things from each. For example it would make perfect sense for games to have links to social networks so people can put up pictures of their avatars alongside their real identities," she said.

Going one step farther, Myrl has created a social network exclusively for avatars.

The web-based Myrl platform allows users to manage their virtual lives, seeing what is happening in a range of virtual worlds while keeping up to date with what their or friends' avatars are doing.

"In virtual worlds you can be an alien one day, partying in New York another and laying on a beach the next and we felt that there was a need for a platform that integrated virtual worlds so that you could access these worlds from the web or the mobile as well as from a specific machine," said founder Francesco D'Orazio.

Anonymity

It appeals particularly to gamers who have created avatars in a variety of worlds.

Some 30% of Myrl's users have multiple avatars, on average they have three each, but one busy user is managing an impressive 16.

Among the 19 virtual worlds that are so far signed up are Twinity, Second Life, Habbo Hotel and Entropia

The avatars are linked from the virtual world they inhabit to the Myrl website via a badge which transmits data about what they are doing.

But the system cannot, as yet, link real people with their avatars.

"That's not possible yet because too many people want to maintain anonymity and don't want their avatar to be linked to their real identity," said Mr D'Orazio.

Ordinary people

Screenshot from Second Life
Second Life is struggling to keep user's interest

Some virtual worlds have incredibly loyal fan bases, who visit regularly and for long amounts of time but others are struggling to keep users engaged.

Figures for Second Life show that while 18 million people have downloaded the software, only 500,000 are still active users.

There are still big barriers to overcome before virtual gaming goes mainstream, thinks Ms Mulligan.

One of the big stumbling blocks for her is the way games are distributed.

Rather than have specialist software that has to be downloaded - a process which can be time-consuming and complicated - the web itself could increasingly be used as a platform, she thinks.

One of the firms experimenting with simpler virtual worlds is Areae, which has launched a free tool called Metaplace that allows anyone to create a virtual world.

The web-based program is the brainchild of Raph Koster, a man very keen to open virtual worlds up to the mass market.

"The first step is to have virtual worlds as a common medium for ordinary people. It has to become far more ubiquitous, more like a toaster than a DVR," he told the BBC.

"Virtual worlds have a lot of strengths and the web has a lot of strengths but the two do not necessarily coincide," he said.

Purposeful chat

What virtual worlds do well is contextualise social encounters in a way that social networking cannot do, he thinks.

"Without places it is hard to have activities. The bowling alley or the alcohol does not matter as much as the people but if you do not have the bowling alley or the alcohol it's just an empty room and no-one comes,"

Michael Cassius is the managing director of Dubit, a marketing agency that creates virtual worlds.

It has been conducting research on what youngsters are doing in virtual worlds. Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel, both worlds with a big emphasis on social networking, are the most popular, according to its study.

With the younger generation growing up on social networks the connection between the two will have to get closer Mr Cassius thinks.

"Virtual worlds are social networks with a purpose. Games have always been a platform for engagement between people," he said.