Qwaq is one of the companies pitching virtual worlds as ideal for corporate collaboration - a notion that's picking up a head of steam among blue-chip companies, particularly in the technology sector. However, Web Worker Daily has reviewed the service, and is distinctly unimpressed. The debate around the review throws up some interesting points about the corporate use of virtual worlds.
First, the review, which basically says Qwaq offers few new features compared to existing virtual worlds like Second Life, apart from the way it makes it easy to integrate office documents. The poor quality of the avatars, and the low degree of customisation are what gets journalist Aliza Sherman’s ire:
“It is almost embarrassing how primitive the avatars in Qwaq look… I can’t help but think that Qwaq is a watered down version of the more elegant, graphically enhanced and feature rich environments of virtual worlds. Even a cartoonish world like There.com at least has avatars that appear to be people rather than cardboard boxes. And any meeting space in Second Life that is well-designed makes Qwaq’s virtual spaces look like…cardboard boxes. If I’m going to be doing collaborative work with my clients or team members in a virtual space, I would much prefer that space to have some degree of aesthetics in addition to functionality. Otherwise, I might as well just use 2-D collaborative Web-based tools because they simply…work.”
Some commenters on the article agree, but others take Sherman to task for treating Qwaq by the standards of consumer-focused virtual worlds, rather than as a separate and distinct entity, that should be judged by different criteria, as put forward by commenter ‘csven’:
“I know Second Life quite well. It’s fair to say I was the one who convinced Linden Lab to open it up to corporate use. But what Qwaq is doing is quite different and more like a virtual Product Lifecycle Management application than a videogame. You’re completely missing the point, in my opinion.”
It’s a fascinating debate: how much should corporate virtual worlds be guided by aesthetics? How realistic do business users want their avatars to be? Does a more creative virtual environment foster more creative thinking? Issues like this are sure to be chewed over as this sector of the virtual worlds market develops. What do you think?
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