Israeli firm Comverse grabbed headlines earlier this year when it demonstrated a client running Second Life on mobile handsets, including the iPhone. The company isn't alone in this aim - Vollee is working on a similar idea - but the latter company was first to actually get its technology into the hands of consumers, albeit via a beta test. Anyway, I was keen to catch up with Comverse to find out more about its platform, and whether there's really a demand for the mobilisation of virtual worlds like Second Life. Daphna Steinmetz, head of Comverse Innovation Labs, fielded my questions.
Virtual Worlds Forum Blog: What’s changed since the version of your technology that was on show at Mobile World Congress this February - how is the product evolving?
The solution is a generic platform which can accommodate other virtual worlds and games. At the moment Comverse provides the technology to iPhone, Symbian and Microsoft, which allows them to log in and play / interact in the virtual world from a mobile phone.
Improvements have been made since Mobile World Congress, with the most effort being invested in performance. These include improving interactivity - reducing the delay - and improved quality, with more frames per second to make the rendering smoother without noticeable buffering.
The new functional feature is the ability to communicate while playing the game from within the virtual world. You can now send text message to your virtual friends while in-world, without leaving the game and with no need to activate any messaging client on the phone.
VWFB: Do you see a big demand from Second Life users for mobile access? What are they looking for in terms of features?
We’re seeing a big demand from consumers for the ‘always on, always available’ lifestyle, in particular for a personal (and sometimes intimate) usage such as Second Life. While Second Life users and inhabitants do get very involved in the virtual world, it’s more about giving consumers access to information online via their mobile. This can be Second Life, which is a highly publicised phenomenon, but the technology also works with most of (if not all) MMOGs, We need to remember – there is only one web, and it should be accessible for every WAN.
VWFB: The technology is clearly impressive, but isn’t there a problem with the handset itself? Controlling an avatar in a 3D world using a mobile keypad or touchscreen is clunky, so how is Comverse tackling this problem in your application?
The new iPhones being sold these days are much better – they’re built for 3G already. The improvements (described above) provide an improved user experience. Regarding control without a full keyboard, the actions are mostly navigation - using 2 and 8 for up and down, 4 and 6 for left and right – and this becomes more natural the more you use them.
The new feature, messaging (SMS texting) while in-world is also quite natural, as people are used to typing SMS messages regularly. Comverse facilitated the solution for Intel’s future devices – the Mobile Internet Device, with its large screen and intense communication and media capabilities.
VWFB: How would you compare / contrast Comverse’s technology with what Vollee are doing?
Vollee provides a client based technology, which requires developing code for a client for each specific phone. It also requires a huge amount of memory and disk space. Only a minority of phones will support that. Comverse addresses the mass market for any type of phone that supports the browsers, thus the target audience is much larger, and the ability to support a vast range of phones and mobile devices is much higher
VWFB: What happens now from Comverse’s point of view? When and how will you get this into consumers’ hands?
The service is all sold and branded by the operator - we provide the technology, the platform and the inter-world link for the consumer. It’s up to the operator how it’s marketed and whether it is purely a Second Life link or if the consumer can choose the destination and connection they want. We have some trials in place which will be announced in the next coming of months.
VWFB: Finally, can you tell me more about your ambitions to use this technology for other virtual worlds and MMOs?
As we’ve already mentioned, the technology and platform are completely generic and general purpose, and will be able to accommodate other games, as MMOGs are a matter of geography in many cases. We will roll this out more widely once it’s been proven a success.
Ultimately, consumers use the web more than ever for their personal and professional lives and the mobile is another link to the web and their contacts and interests. The technology gives consumers to opportunity to live and control their lives how they want to. For some this means being constantly connected to a virtual world, for others it means having access to games while on the go, at any time, anywhere.
The consumer will decide how far-reaching this technology becomes. We just provide the technology to facilitate it
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