1st Virtual World Shootout....Forterra's OLIVE Platform Smokes Second Life
The first Virtual World shootout was held 28 June at the Apply Serious Games Conference in London. Forterra Systems OLIVE (On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment) platform was compared to Second Life and won three of the four application categories (best for Education, Enterprise, Training / Simulation), with Second Life winning for Brands/Marketing in votes by the audience.
John Burwell, Forterra VP was on hand from the US to describe how OLIVE supports secure, reliable and private applications ** disclosure: Ambient Performance are Forterra Systems EMEA partners** and David Burden MD, Daden, Ltd. (who is doing some great work in Second Life) showcased how Second Life's open access enabled instant collaboration, prototyping and access to millions of consumers.
Claus Nehmzow of PA Consulting (press release describing pioneering work in SL here and a video of him discussing Second Life at our Seriously Mobile Summit is here) did a great job of chairing the event to keep it fair and interesting. Claus asked the expert panel (David Wortley, Director of the Serious Games Institute, Thomas Bidaux, NCSoft (they make popular MMOs Lineage, Guild Wars and others including a new free MMO I can't wait to try), and Christian Renaud, Chief Architect, Networked Virtual Environments @ Cisco (who blogs here) for their opinions who contrasted the strengths of each.
You can view and print the slides used in the Shootout including 3 comparison charts prepared by Claus, David and myself by clicking here (1 meg flash file, please cite all three of us if using publicly).
We'll be further exploring professional applications of Virtual Worlds at the Serious Virtual Worlds Conference we're producing with the Serious Games Institute in Coventry 13-14 September. Conference website.
A few pictures and videos of the shootout are below.
With the success of Nicktropolis and even more so WebKinz, Club Penguin, and things like GoPets and more (Animal Crossing, anyone?), virtual worlds for kids have become the hot ticket this summer. Two new ones are on their way: one an educational 3D theme park, the other a cool 2D “world” designed in part by Aardman Animations, the outfit behind the excellent Wallace & Gromit cartoons.