There are plenty of reasons for optimism and excitement about the growth of the virtual worlds market, but it's good every once in a while to listen to someone playing devil's advocate, or simply pointing out some of the potential pitfalls. An article by Bruce Damer over on Terra Nova falls into the latter category: he poses the question of whether the virtual worlds industry is heading for a downturn "as severe as the one in the period 2000-2003".
He has an interesting list of signs that it might be, including Second Life’s user base stalling, the potential fragmentation offered by the plethora of new virtual worlds platforms, the likely impact of web-based virtual world interfaces, and the risk of failing virtual worlds pulling the entire sector down if VCs lose confidence. It’s well worth reading his piece fully to get his thinking on these though.
It’s certainly thought-provoking. This week Strategy Analytics predicted that a billion people will have signed up to virtual worlds by 2017, with 27% of them going on to be active users. Yet if you believe this prediction, it’s easy to assume that this means rapid and steady growth between now and then. Damer’s point is that there could be a chasm coming up for unwary optimists - a phenomenon seen in other technology markets.
Blind optimism is undoubtedly fuelling many of the new virtual world startups, and although that’s not a guarantee of failure, a spot of qualified optimism is always welcome instead…
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