Virtual Worlds Forum

The Sundance Film Festival is testing the opportunities in virtual worlds. But instead of building a festival there, it has its own avata, Vincent Tibbett, "as easily recognizable for his shaggy haircut and assertively casual attire as he is for the crowds of aspiring artists who follow him around", says the New York Times. It's part of a wider trend amongst TV and film companies to hook into the VW phenomenon:

In the last year broadcast networks, cable channels and television content providers have all set up camp in virtual communities, where they hope that viewers who have forsaken television for computer screens might rediscover their programming online. Some outlets, like Showtime and Sundance, are establishing themselves in existing worlds; others, like MTV, are creating their own. Either way, if the wildest dreams of some very excited technology developers come true, virtual reality might finally be the medium that unites the passive experience of watching television with the interactive potential of the Web. In Second Life, visitors to the Sundance Channel area can watch full-length feature films in a three-dimensional screening room or take part in an environmental forum; fans of Showtime’s drama “The L Word” can meet the avatars of the show’s stars and design their own floats for a virtual gay pride parade. In MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach inhabitants can shop at digital versions of Emporio Optic and Laguna Surf and Sport or, at the click of a mouse, arrive in a virtual version of “The Hills,” where they can then join the party at an electronic replica of the Los Angeles nightclub Area. Pre-teenage viewers have a virtual playground to call their own too: Nicktropolis. Nickelodeon’s two-dimensional community allows children (with parents’ permission) to play virtual basketball, watch Nickelodeon shows, douse themselves in digital green slime and chat with SpongeBob SquarePants. To a generation that has grown up with multiplayer online role-playing games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, the interfaces of environments like Second Life and Virtual Laguna Beach will seem familiar.

Another key finding is that virtual worlds can take people who watch 20 hours of television a week and turn them into people who spend 30 hours a week in the virtual world.