GDC: Virtual worlds need better player contact, says Habbo Hotel designer

I have coordinated a music series within Second Life for more than two years. I felt the same way as the writer of this article and so I have tried various things such as posting concert notices on Eventful, having a concert series blog at: http://music-islan...t.com and a social networking/listing site at http://musicisland...g.com. I also twitter as kate_miranda. There is a small core group that follows, joins and visits these sites (20 or 30 individuals). By contrast 1500+ have joined the inworld group and another 700 have clicked on a sign up for inworld IM news. Why? Some don't want to risk crashing their viewer by opening a browser, when they are not in SL, it is because they are on another computer and they don't have the link handy, and lastly, they are resistent to breaking their immersive experience by leaving the virtual world to get web content.

In conclusion, I think Francisco point seems logical but it doesn't seem to work in practice. Virtual Worlds communicaton is best done within virtual worlds through IM, notecard, signage.

I think that the problem is focusing too much on 3d worlds or graphics in general. The best approach is always user interaction and communication (see tengaged) where communication can be don syncronously and async, without needing fancy graphs, etc.