Avatars 97
Special Report
By Sue Wilcox
This October marked the second annual Avatars conference, which brought together the designers, programmers, and community creators behind the Web phenomena of avatars. This year the emphasis was on what avatars can do and whether anyone can make any money from them. Hosted by the San Francisco State University Multimedia Studies Program and organized by Bruce Damer of the Contact Consortium, the conference included seven sectors: Building the New Cyberspace, The Big Apps, No Business Like Snowcrash Business, Power to the Matrix, Culture Transforms, and Standards.
Big Apps
The Big Apps concentrated on realms that include popular or commercially viable uses for avatar technology: education, shared workspaces, corporate intranets, entertainment, kids' products, episodic performances (3D cartoons), promotional Web sites, and virtual pets. Three high-profile examples were
MTV, "Heaven and Hell," and movie/TV show promotions.
MTV. MTV VJs present TV shows from cyberspace as avatars via a world originally created by OnLive Technologies and now licensed to Cygaia. Cygaia's Kevin George stressed basic community-building principles: Provide entertainment and interactivity for your visitors, or they will make their own, and you may not like what they invent. Virtual worlds designed for multiple users must have behavioral guidelines; otherwise, things can get out of hand -- head-banging teens may gang up on newbies or push inattentive strangers into the teleport chute.
