Un article mentionne les recherches d’IBM autour d’une standardisation de son identité dans l’exploration de mondes virtuels multiples.
« With the number of online virtual world games increasing, IBM is trying to find new ways to keep players’ experiences consistent no matter what world they decide to join.
Games like Second life or Active worlds encourage players to customize their characters and buy accessories.
Up until now there have been no methods to transport a player’s avatar from one game to another, while still keeping the traits that make that character unique, from visual to social status.
Recently, the biggest virtual world on the internet, Second Life, opened up its source code to it’s users allowing them to change the way that they interact with the world. More changes may be coming soon.
According to IDG, IBM is researching methods to teleport player characters between worlds, while keeping all of their traits.
« A lot of people are looking at Second Life and saying, ‘Let’s do one of those,’» IBM vice president of standards and open source, Bob Sutor told IDG. « The last thing you want is a lot of different ways to do the same things. You need standards for how to teleport between different virtual worlds and to bring objects with you.» Besides an avatar’s clothes, those objects could include the money it was using in your home virtual world as well as a presentation you might want to share with your colleagues or potential customers.
There are many challenges facing developers trying to bring unity to these online communities. How do people communicate between worlds? How do we make a common currency? How do we make characters look the same from one game to another.
These are questions that IBM plans to investigate at its virtual worlds debate it’s hosting this Friday at MIT in Cambridge.
« Virtual worlds are fundamentally about communities coming together,» says Sutor, and that’s exactly what IBM is attempting to do.
