I feel like today is Virtual World Day. We started off the morning covering the public beta launch of Vivaty, then Second Life and IBM announced that they bridged two virtual worlds, and Google launched its own version of virtual worlds with Lively.
If it seems like everybody is starting their own virtual world, it is because they are. A report put out today by Virtual Worlds Management tracks $161 million put into 14 virtual-world investments during the second quarter of 2008. In the first quarter there was even more activity, with $184 million put into 23 virtual worlds and supporting technology companies. That brings the total this year alone to $345 million across 37 deals. Some notable deals (you can see the full lists by clicking on the last two links above):
Second Quarter 2008
Grockit——————-MMO Learning Game——-$8 million——-Integral Capital and Benchmark
Nurien Software——–3D social networking——-$15 million——-Northern Light, Globespan, NEA
PrimeSense————-Gestural Interface———-$20.4 million—–Led by Canaan Partners
Realtime Worlds———-MMOG Developer———$50 million——–Maverick Capital, NEA
Stanford Parallel —-Parallel Processing————–$6 million——-Sun Microsystems, AMD, Nvidia, IBM,
Processing Lab for Virtual Worlds HP, and Intel
Turbine———————-MMOG——————-$40 million————–Time Warner and GGV Capital
First Quarter 2008
9You———–Virtual World/Casual Games——$100 million——–Temasek Holdings
Dizzywood —————Youth World————— $1 million——-Shelby Bonnie, Charles River Ventures
EveryScape————— Mirror World————–$7 million——–Dace, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Fix8 ———————- Avatar Content————$2 million ——–SK Telecom
Gizmoz ——————- Avatar Creation ———- $6.5 million——-DoCoMo Capital, ngi group
iOpener ——————–Mixed Reality ————-$6 million———Triangle Venture Capital
Sparkplay Media——Casual MMO with Games—–$4.25 million—–Redpoint, Prism Ventureworks
Unisfair ——————–Virtual Events Platform—–$10 million——-Norwest, Sequoia Capital
So many virtual worlds for me to go to. What a shame. My spare time is mostly spent on gardening, baby sitting and BBQ. I am just too busy to be virtual.
but,i really don’t like the virtual worlds.i even never went to there anytimes.
Erick,
Do another post on how much money these virtual worlds are actually making..I would love to know that
House of cards. I was at the conference in San Jose built and got told to invest in one of the many companies doing this.
It got me thinking about demographics. The greatest percentage of the population is still the older age group and they have the most money. Selling this group on social sites is one thing but a virtual world is another completely. I am a net geek and I don’t want to spend my time in a fake world when the real world is so spectacular. I can’t get past this point. Your still on a computer, no matter how amazing the graphics, it can’t compare to the physical and emotional stimulus of real world interaction.
Can a virtual world ever match the feeling of having a pretty girl smiling at me and the answer is always no…. I can’t get past that…
That said gaming sites do well online so there must be a market but how big is that market. Also how long till 2nd and 3rd world countries have the net speed to handle virtual worlds.
I guess you can say I am undecided but I tell you this, I hope my kids have better things to do than live on a computer. Has life become so pathetic that virtual worlds are the answer?
Seriously. If I wake up one day and the internet is “The Sims” I will shut off my computer and never look back.
Do you mean the V-Worlds are so hot or the virtual women… The pic makes me wonder
this is really helpful research. it would be great if you covered other hot areas in web technology. product reviews for instance, many wouldn’t have guessed how much has/is being invested..powerreviews 22+ million, bazaarvoice just raised their 4th round, summize used to be product reviews focused.., wize, retrevo, etc.
Erick, you forgot Metaversum GmbH with twinity.com. Balderton Capital invested several millions in this company in april 08.
OVERATED…..clap.clap….clap.clap.clap
wow. reading some of these responses reminds me how email was a fad that would never catch on, at least according to my gramma. its an infant technology, and there is a lot of fluff that will eventually be seen as a cash sinkhole the same way so many dot coms were. but its a vibrant technology and in 15 years you will see it being ubiquitous. picture the internets in the early 90’s. its the future baby. adapt or become a fossil. btw, i earn a living as an independent developer for second life, so im a bit biased.
People seem to be liking reality less and less. It’s not that bad is it? I enjoy my video games but also enjoy the real world. An entire virtual “world” is just too much.
PS: Nice video comment Mike, heh
Don’t forget Vastpark, Blink3D(big big potential with lowest barrier to entry), Multiverse, Activeworlds, Twinity, and now Vivaty and Lively. There are 2D virtual worlds as well, like Metaplace.
This might go down as the most asinine, near-sighted comment in history, but I really do feel like these virtual worlds are a passing fad. I don’t see myself ever participating in one.
leweb!
Mike, Loic, & Steve Gillmor are Qik’ing while drinking Stella Artois
It’s not a fad, this is REALLY late in the game… http://www.dipity.com/user/xan.....ual_Worlds
Eric, nice… table?
DO YOU SEE THE RED THING?
Those investors might as well of lit all that money on fire. Pretty much none of these companies will prosper. The don’t provide a real solution to a real problem. Simple entertainment but that only goes so far.
But what about Hansel… isn’t he hot right now too?
Techcrunch doesn’t have Excel?
I prefer activeworlds.com
I seem it is more simple than others. But I like for this : it remains little more than a game.
There is a tonne of money to be made in this field, apparently World of Warcraft is raking in 120 million usd a month, that has to be more than any other sort of entertainment product out there…
Internet is something virtual originally , so I think it’s just some problem how we could combine the real and the virtual. After all, we’re not robot.
LeWeb is also hot right now.
And don’t forget Sony has Home coming out soon too…
Many of these are very similar. We’ve decided to go for a 2D mixed reality approach that we think is unique and also provides a more efficient interface for communication.
Crap the what?
I know the kids love ‘em, but has anyone shown a VW business model that works?
will we all finish to have sex virtually lol ??
Nath
http://www.themostpowerfulcompany.com
Are we all tired dealing with reality and decided to make a perfect virtual world?
I’m sure tons of “virtual”guys will be hooked to this. Agree?
You have to think that they are planning to get those $345 Million back, right? Virtual marketing is a growing trend, marketeers are trying to bring more and more ads into those worlds as users spend a lot more time there (and metrics are more measurable and accurate)
Sony @home is coming this year too.
Ahh, it’s so frustrating how few people actually get it. These “games” have technology 10X more advanced than 80% of what’s being used in the professional business environment. All the while, they’ve developed streamlined user interfaces, expansive, interactive virtual environments and the technology is continuing to catapult forward.
The demographic for these audiences is no where near the stereotypical 16 year old and the perpetuation of that delusion is one of the greatest business mistakes you can make. You harp about the benefits of globalization as a business and political tool, then turn around and neglect an expansive new technological frontier.
Just because the word “Game” is involved doesn’t mean it aught to be written off wholesale as trivial.
Agreeing with Alex (34) above. It’s far from figured out which worlds will succeed or wither out of the hundreds that have launched over the past 5 years, but it’s big. Kids are using the internet first through virtual worlds, where a relatively safe environment can be created.
Virtual world tie-ins are becoming part of the basic media platform mix for entertainment and the business market is just sitting there waiting for an easy solution.
There is already a Google Map displaying Google Lively Worlds by location. Pretty cool…you can even browse Lively Worlds from in Google Maps:
http://www.livelyworlds.com
Don’t forget Microsoft Virtual Earth. When I first saw their v2.0 model of Vegas I thought it wouldn’t be long before 3rd parties would be running video games inside it.
Right on, Alex, besides, games are important learning tools & the sort of cooperation and coordination that happens in something like WoW is pretty impressive.
there is another way without 3D
It’s sick - seeing people giving more value to the virtual world than their real one. I’ve been addicted to world of warcraft, but heh, second life is definetly the ultimate virtual world drug.
I’ve been waiting for this explosion for about a year now - i never was able to do 2nd life because either i didn’t have the right video card in my computer, or the right operating system, but it didn’t matter because it didn’t look that interesting. Something like Vivaty, which i’ve been fiddling with for a day now, seems to have what I have been looking for, which is simply a 3D virtual environment with social networking style web-based content - right now mainly youtube vids and flickr pics. It’s like facebook folded origami style into a little house. In fact, that should be the next step for something like Vivaty, to make it so users can say, build a bookcase that displays their goodreads books, or a coffee table that has their game of Scrabulous sitting out on it, or a noteboard where visitors can post pics, vids, and comments. 3D widget creation. Maybe all that is in the works, or is there and I haven’t discovered it yet.
Which doesn’t get away from the idea that virtual worlds are a big waste of time - they are - but so is the rest of the 2D internet, and that hasn’t stopped it from being really popular, and it hasn’t stopped people from using the Internet for really useful, valuable, interesting things that are not a waste of time. I’m thinking the fun and games aspect of 3D worlds now is simply a good way to engage users into learning how to do it, so that when more serious applications come down the pipe, like virtual work environments, the transition will be easier and make more sense.
There virtual world will deliver real dollars to investors.
They allow people to connect with each other and allow for self-expression in a way that is different from the 2-D web.
Those are two fundamental human needs.
Mobile ring tones are a good example. Some people here would say that they would have not have invested in that market because tones don’t fulfill a need.
Funny guys… More real world arguments between Mike & co. add plenty of value to the Seesmic Service…
Finally. This will put an end to the virutal-world-me-too insanity. Thank you google.
Of course they are hot right now! Why? Because it’s so fascinating and had really blown my mind. You know what, I spend about 6 six hours everyday in dealing with a number of online games. See? If you could just imagine how many people are doing the same way as mine…
It will really make the game developers rich and HOT!
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So we go from a physical realestate bubble to a virtualestate bubble?
God help us