Virtual World Enthusiasts Living in Fear of Imaginary Armageddon

Despite the Virtual World genre’s recent success, there is evidence to suspect that the VW “boom” may soon go bust. In a recent article about the future of VWs, Bruce Damer, a VW enthusiast and co-founder of the Virtual Worlds Timeline project, expounded upon a few of the reasons why gamers might reasonably expect to see the VW genre go into recession sometime soon. And no, it’s not because the real world is becoming more appealing.

As perhaps the most well known VW, Second Life serves as the case in point. Second Life has a total of 13 million registered accounts; however, SL is free to download, and the vast majority of registered accounts are inactive. Based on available statistics, there are reportedly only around 20-40 thousand members who are truly serious players. If the most popular VW game to date has reached its peak growth of dedicated players at somewhere near 30,000 (a relatively small number when compared with the stats of more mainstream online games, such as World of Warcraft with its 10,000,000+ active subscriptions), it’s quite possible that the VW genre has too limited a demographic to continue growing. Competition poses a problem for the genre, as well. Other VW games (There, Moove, Active Worlds) have gained popularity, and some fear that having more virtual worlds to choose from will result in the diffusion of an already limited community.

Another concern for VW players is whether or not VW gaming will ever be mainstream, or at least mainstream enough for the genre to grow. Statistically speaking, the most popular VW game (Second Life) is still pretty unpopular. But perhaps more important than statistics is public opinion: while the economic possibilities of virtual worlds has somewhat legitimated them to the public, VW gaming is admittedly a bit strange. All forms of entertainment entail some degree of escapism–video games especially–but the Virtual World genre pushes it to an eerie extreme. Mainstream news media has voiced some interesting complaints against games like Second Life: that it harbors physical isolation, is too difficult to learn how to use, is less popular than it claims to be, etc. The genre seems destined to stay just beyond the curve of mainstream acceptance, at least for the next few years.

So what does this mean for VW gaming? Are the Virtual Four Horsemen galloping ever closer? Is the digital end extremely f-ing nigh? I suppose that only time will tell. Then again, if you’d really care to know, you’re quite possibly too busy combating flying phalluses to ever read something like this.