I had the good fortune to be invited by NMK to put together a half-day seminar on the phenomena of the new 3D worlds of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and Virtual Worlds (the main one being Second Life of course).
Had I not been chairing it I would have been able to take better notes, and I will try to put something up soon about it. However, as usual there were some great bloggers in the audience and among them Alan Patrick has done a very thorough write up. We also had PaidContent and almost legendary Adam Reuters there.
For myself I would say a standout development I picked out of the discussion – and there were many – was the eventual merging of Social Software networks like MySpace with Second Life.
The most notable example of this – (and possibly the first) – is the ability of users in Playahead to be able to flip their profile into a Second Life avatar with all their preferences and networks intact. That, to me, is potentially very revolutionary, and I don’t use that word lightly. Imagine if people flip their MyPSace profile or even their LinkedIn or Blog into Second Life? Since Linden Labs is about to make the whole thing an open source project – while retaining control of the crucial namespace facility – we may well be able to all do this in the not too distant future.