World Building Video Games

World Building Video Games are not technically games although the lines are quite blurry in some cases. Spore, for example, is a world building environment in that you create your own creatures. But it is a game in that you try to have those creatures defeat other creatures and take over the universe. Second Life, on the other hand, is a world building environment which is not a game at all. You can create games in Second Life because it is a world building environment. But the platform itself is not a game. This is a source of endless confusion and frustration to those new to Second Life who come asking "how does this game work?" and "what do you do here?"

Second Life can be viewed as many things, but, in order to understand it, it is best to think of it as a platform for creating three dimensional worlds. These three dimensional worlds can serve any number of purposes. They can be for entertainment, social interaction, education, public relations, information dissemination and so on. My interest in Second Life lies in their potential for business applications.

What does the ability to create three dimensional worlds have to do with business applications? The answer is simple. Three dimensional worlds are likely to be the next major change in computer interfaces. If you are old enough, you may remember that we used to interact with computers through what was called a command line interface. In fact, in the late 1980's and early 1990's as graphical user interfaces began to gain some traction, there was considerable debate over which interface (command line or graphical user interface) was superior. Of course, graphical user interfaces won and today we look back on the command line interface as primative and barbaric.

Each year that passes adds more people to that generational pool who grew up playing video games and interacted with the computers through three dimensional virtual world interfaces. They look at the two dimensional point and click interface that we are all so used to and wonder how anyone can interact with a computer through an interface that is so primative and barbaric. And when it comes to change, there is nothing more powerful than a new generation.