Virtual Worlds Forum

Linden Labs, creators of Second Life have announced they will work with IBM to produce avatars that can move from one virtual world to another. Currently, people who create a character, or avatar, in one virtual world cannot take that identity into another service. Linden argues that since designing a detailed avatar can take well over an hour, a closed system discourages customers from abandoning that investment. But it is also a barrier to growth since few people bother to start the process anew in multiple virtual worlds. Bobbie Johnson at the Guardian says this is wrong-headed and VWs should be more like the open web: "After all, I don't really want my avatar to move between a series of closed virtual environments: I want a single, linked virtual environment that I can move around freely.... On the web my identity can change as much as I want, but wherever I go the underlying platform and protocols are the same." With avatars that move between worlds, your identity will remain the same but the world will alter, meaning your avatar might wrong for that world. Whatever the end result a move towards a more open system - whether for world or avatar - for VWs is to be welcomed. For more discussion on this check out Read/WriteWeb.