Happy Birthday to us! So we have successfully ( or something like that : ) ) navigated 730 days of our existence! Going by the 1000 days business rule we still have about 9 months to go !
So what have we been doing as company ( besides slacking on the blog)? We recently concluded the Tata Indicom in SL campaign which was a major success by virtual world standards. Detailed analysis will be presented soon here.
We have also been steadily working towards building our own virtual worlds platform and moving towards creating focused applications for virtual worlds. I had posted an imaginary conversation highlighting the need for a clearly defined utility for these 3D immersive environments we called ‘Virtual Worlds’. I think that utility or a part of the answer has emerged over the last year in the form of learning , training and collaboration. Indusgeeks is in the early stages of creating its own learning framework and platform using virtual worlds called ‘ Metamersive Learning Spaces‘.
As we forge new partnerships with companies like Servitium and LP + . We hope to add to the pedagogical utility of these virtual worlds and in creating and defining new standards for 3D/2D interactive , immersive learning.
Last year saw us becoming a Sun Advantage Partner and being the only company in India to work with Sun on their Project Wonderland platform. We also tied up with Intel as a part of the Intel Software Partner Program giving us access to Intel labs for testing our software on the latest and older Intel technologies – essential for benchmarking our solutions.
When we started 2 years back – as with most startups- it was with some ideas on what might pan out. As with most startups.. those ideas didn’t quite work out the way we thought they would . However, we are here in the middle of a full blown depression recession and working on a very exciting project that we can’t talk about yet.
Personally it has been a fascinating journey for me. To see the core team grow from college pass outs to able professionals capable of handling stressful deadlines and tough times. We have grown from 3 to 14 people and grown our revenue to very respectable levels.
2009 will be a year to grow and change as a company as the Geeks grow up! However, what will not change is our commitment to enjoy our work and not take ourselves too seriously!
A Brief Summary of a White Paper from Indusgeeks :
2007 was the year of the Virtual World specifically Second Life. Although 3D Virtual Worlds have been around for a while the tipping point was reached in early 2007 with the media frenzy and consequent public interest in them. In the ensuing period we have seen big name corporates like Coca Cola, Dell, Armani, Nike etc. jump onto the Second Life and Virtual World bandwagon for marketing and publicity purposes. However, Virtual Worlds acting as virtual office and event spaces for corporates and organizations are less well documented and understood. This article deals with the impact on the carbon footprint, energy savings and cost savings of using Virtual Worlds to conduct real life business.
Virtual World Figures : Virtual Worlds both 2D and 3D today have an estimated registered population of around 550 million users. A Gartner report quotes that the number will about 80% of all active internet users by 2011. Keeping this exponential growth trend in mind it would be a good idea to leverage this medium as a productivity enhancement and cost reduction tool while minimizing the environmental impact.
Virtual Offices : Remote working and telecommuting are already a phenomenon. In an increasing connected world the actual physical location of an employee becomes less and less relevant. However, with the increasing shift towards telecommuting there is a loss in the collaborative and social aspect of a physical office environment. Virtual Office spaces would merge the ease of telecommuting with the benefits of a physical office environment. The impact for an organization in terms of reducing overheads, increasing productivity of the remote work force and the reduction in carbon emission owing to smaller physical office spaces and the associated benefits as well lesser commuting to work. Sun Microsystem is a good example of a company using Virtual Worlds ( Sun’s own MPK20) to create Virtual Offices.
Virtual Events : Virtual events are a no brainer in some cases. E.g. 200 new recruits of an international consulting firm from around the world need to go to New York to attend an orientation event and get a ‘feel’ of the Head Office. This entails air travel, road travel getting to and fro to the airports, hotel expenses and hosting expenses for the event. If this can be reduced or eliminated by holding a virtual event reproducing the Head Office to the last detail and letting the recruits socialize and network through a virtual event the environmental and cost benefits are clearly demonstrated. Companies promoting such events like Unisfair have encouraging data on user engagement and lead generation.
Carbon Offsets/Credits for using VWs : Although figures are still fuzzy owing to lack of instituinalised research , back of the envelope calculations using both known server farm + client computer figures reveal than an average avatar consumes between 75 kWh to 500 kWh of energy per year (if left on 24/7) depending on the system used to create the virtual environment. At the lower end this is equal to driving a full size sedan for about 100 miles! As the efficiency of the servers hosting these virtual worlds improve and renewable energy sources are used to run the server farms governments in the future can consider allowing carbon credits or subsidies to be given to organizations using virtual offices etc. As such these measures will subsidize the implementation costs of Virtual Offices across the world and spur their increasing adoption.
Future Trends:
1. To increase the energy and network efficiency of these VWs as more and more people come online new and innovative methods will be devised. One such method is an on-demand virtual world. The biggest cost by in terms of carbon emissions, bandwidth usage and money is that of keeping the virtual space online or persistent ; even when nobody is using it. This forms the very basis of a Virtual ‘World’. It exists whether somebody inhabits it or not. However, unlike the physical world a virtual world can and should be made on demand. The technology to seamlessly switch on a virtual space when a visitor arrives once developed will substantially increase the benefits of going virtual.
2. Better tools for collaboration and immersion will create different ways of training and interaction.
3. Enterprise Virtual Worlds will emerge . Already IBM is working closely with Second Life to create a corporate friendly virtual world based on the Second Life engine for a more secure and better tooled virtual environment.
4. Better interface and input tools with your computer and avatar will be invented. Logitech and Mitch Kapor ( ex-chairman of Linden Lab) are independently creating infra red cameras which will be plugged into the normal webcam and scan the facial as well as body movements of the user. This will enable real time simulation ‘expressions’ and movements between the user and his avatar. Also headsets by companies like Emotiv which ‘read’ thoughts and move the character could immensely increase the productivity of a virtual space by virtually making the user indistinguishable from the avatar.
Problems :
1. Most of the virtual worlds created today have been built for the purpose of entertainment or social networking. Tools for collaboration and training are not adequate in today’s virtual worlds. There are some custom platforms like Forterra , Unisfair , Inexpo etc. which are focused towards simulation and training , however collaboration tools are woefully inadequate. This poses a problem for early adopters of virtual offices.
2. Connecting to virtual spaces requires a modern computer/laptop and decent bandwidth. Not everybody has access to such infrastructure. Wide adoption of them would result in substantial investments in hardware and bandwidth.
3. Security concerns of working in a virtual environment are similar to those of telecommuting. Better security and monitoring methods will need to be developed to keep checks on the virtual workforce.
Conclusion:
Virtual offices will increasingly become popular and ubiquitous as the tools for enabling collaboration and communication in these environments improve. This will result in reduced travel and more real time interaction across the organization. The impact will be 360 as a new way of ‘working’ emerges. More time to spend with families , bigger salaries ( owing to the reduction of costs) , new ways of intra-organizational communications and a significantly reduced carbon footprint. This is not just the next step in the evolution of the Internet but of the corporation and society in general.
Machinima = Machine + Cinema. It’s the art/science of making films or videos in real time virtual environments ( like games or virtual worlds like Second Life). So why exactly is this any different from taking screenshots of your mage jumping off a rock in the Outlands? Essentially, it’s not very different and very different at the same time. It’s like comparing the snapshots you took in those ugly trunks in Goa to …. I don’t know the ugly trunks of Saif in Dil Chahte hai??!! You get the point…. I would using the same capture technique but it’s what I do with it, how I do it and why I do it that makes for a professional Machinima video.
For a great FAQ on machinima please go to http://www.machinima.org/machinima-faq.html. HBO recently bought a series of machinima films shot in Second Life called the adventures of Molotov Alva for a six figure sum! Again.. why is this so revolutionary and worth blogging about? So here’s why. Surprisingly, in our endeavours to bring India into the virtual domain we find increasingly that although the average Indian internet user may not be broadband ready to access content on Virtual Worlds like Second Life , there is a good demand for dervative products/services coming out of these virtual worlds. The Machinima is the biggest and most sort after derivative. Why so?
Although Machinima.org does a good job of explaining the benefits. Let us briefly recount them here :
a) No rendering time required.
b) Significantly faster ( about 20 – 30 times at some places) than traditional CG animation.
c) About 40- 70 % cheaper than traditional CG animation – hence huge cost savings.
d) It fits in really well in the great gulf between essential 2D flash films and 3d animated films.
e) Great for Corporate communication videos and Out of Home Advertising ( both of which require faster delivery times, quick content refreshing times and cheaper costs)
A lot of our corporate clients like Satyam are using this medium for creating videos for internal training purposes and we believe that the market of corp comms is very big in India for this medium.
Here are a few reasons why companies should be interested in Machinimas for Training, Learning and Orientation purposes:
a) It provides a big step up over their existing multimedia training platforms like power point presentations and flash films.
b) The development and deployment costs are on par with a good Flash film.
c) The development time can actually be faster than a traditional Flash film.
d) In terms of quality of content .. good machinimas can reach levels of upto 80% of traditional animation or better at 1/10th of the cost. Watch the machinima created in the new Crysis engine to get a good idea of how far this technology has evolved!
e) It allows you to create a story/narrative around your training , learning , values programs that deliver abstract ( and let’s face it ..boring !!) content to new as well as old employees.
We have created many such machinimas for both training as well as product/solution demos which we can’t put up here for confidentiality purposes. The former being for internal stakeholders and the latter mostly for external clients.
As companies in India and elsewhere realise the cost , time and content flexibility of this medium more and more uses of this will proliferate in the industry.
In the next post we’ll explore the marketing oriented benefits of the Machinima for Out of Home, Web as well traditional broadcast media.
. However, we are here in the middle of a full blown depression recession and working on a very exciting project that we can’t talk about yet.