SiliconSurfer

Last night I was driving here in Los Angeles with David Simmonds of Mindark. David is English and has lived in Sweden (and Entropia) for years. As we were driving he  turned to me with a quizzical look on his face and said, “What is zing ped? I see it everywhere here.”

For a split second I was an confused as he was. A new way to quickly move PED in Entropia? Why would they be advertising in LA? And then I started to laugh. What he meant was Ped Xing; pedestrian crossing, written all over on the roads here in LA. Since it’s written to be read in the direction you’re traveling is looks like Xing Ped. We both had a great laugh at that.

Tomorrow, Sept. 28th, 2007, I will be on a panel about Entrepreneurs and Computer Gaming at the Business of Gaming on campus at USC. If you’re an Entropian and you’d like to share your entropia-neurial story with me, I’d love to hear it. This won’t be the last time it is relevant, believe me! I am excited to be on this particular panel as we at Entropia have something unique to share. Not only can I talk about being an entrepreneur in the computer games space. I can talk about partnering with Entropia Universe and creating your own planet with our platform, which includes CryEngine now, like CRD/China is doing. I can also talk about being an Entrepreneur inside Entropia Universe. From picking up dung, to buying a banking license. I think that’s fascinating and very cool. I’ll be posting from there as long as the Internet connection works!

Chi Tai Robert Lai, Chief Scientist with the Beijing China Recreation District will present details on this new infrastructure on October 11, 2007 at the upcoming Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo in San Jose, CA. “This is a new national approach,” Lai said regarding presentation. “We would like to invite all of companies interested in virtual worlds in China to join this infrastructure.” In the presentation, CRD will explain the policy, how they are building a national virtual infrastructure, how to integrate industries/enterprises by virtual+real world infrastructure, status of the project and existing plan and partners. I will be on a panel at this event, as well. I am excited to hear what Mr. Lai has to say. For more visit the Virtual Worlds blog.

Entropia is in the Guinness Book of World Records again! The virtual asteroid you’ve heard so much about finally gets its due! For the full release go here. And, I recommend reading the boilerplate about the Guinness Book of World Records. Started by Sir Hugh Beaver in 1951 when grousing about plover…

GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN–(Marketwire - September 18, 2007) - Entropia Universe, the leading virtual worlds platform for interactive entertainment, community building and e-commerce using a real cash economy, boasts the Most Valuable Virtual Items and Real Estate of all the virtual worlds. The new 2008 Guinness World Records book features Club NEVERDIE, an asteroid space resort bought for $100,000 USD by famous gamer Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs as “The Most Expensive Virtual Object.” The asteroid space resort which boasts a nightclub, shopping mall, 1000 apartment complexes, commercial space ship docking, mega sports stadium, and hunting and mining biodomes is the highest grossing privately owned virtual event venue online, estimated to be worth in excess of $1 Million USD if ever placed back on the market.

“The inclusion of the space resort and Entropia Universe in the Guinness World Records book confirms the viability of our real cash economy,” says Marco Behrmann, Chief Information Officer at MindArk PE AB, the development company behind Entropia Universe. “Participants realized early on the enormous potential in Entropia Universe for real commerce. In fact, the space resort had recouped its initial acquisition cost and was operating at a profit after only 8 months, and remains one of the primary event locations in the Entropia Universe.”

And, this soon after Goldstar Events sells our millionth ticket!  Good times! And, cryptically, it looks like Goodtimes is back on Facebook! If you have any idea what I am talking about find me on Facebook!

Here is the booth in Leipzig!

And Skalman! (That’s pronounced Skoalman, btw…)

And Marco and David!

I hear it was a great conference! I am looking forward to E for All, CES, and the upcoming Virtual Worlds Conference, where I will be on a panel.

Check out this TechCrunch piece about Entropia Universe using CryEngine. CryEngine is just amazing. Look closely at that jungle, and the light filtering through. As well, check out the ocean! I am waiting for the day I can surf in Entropia! The demos I have seen really blow my mind and the many features it brings will enhance Entropia Universe tremendously. Players are already getting excited. So am I.

CryEngine is made in Germany, so you can imagine that it’s precise and top-notch with that German engineering. You can see more photos in the press release on Market Wire. A video showing CryENGINE 2 in action is available here: ftp://ftp1.entropiauniverse.com/movies/cryengine2.wmv (150 mb). If you can’t get it to work that way, go to ftp://ftp1.entropiauniverse.com/movie and download it first, then view it… Things are moving quickly, and in the right direction, at Entropia Universe, to say the least.

The CryEngine editor is amazing, too. Imagine the impact this will have on development cycles. Here is a 2 part demonstration of the CryEngine2 Level Editor: Part 1 and Part 2. This will blow your mind, particularly if you’ve developed games and/or virtual worlds.

Today on MN1.com (click here for the podcast) we talked a bit about the auction and item values in Entropia Universe (click the link and scroll down to Auction). We talked about the company MindArk.com and the events that are transpiring in Entropia Universe at the moment, particularly the animal migration and the robot attack.

I also said I would be happy to send the first 10 people who email me a copy of the Entropia Universe DVD with the client and some cool movies, etc. Send your request to johnkbates *at* gmail.com

Also, check out The Truth About Entropia Universe! Awesome.

From the LA Times Article, an avatar looking into an empty Second Life store…

Well, this post on Slashdot regarding the LA Times article about marketers abandoning Second Life sure does have a lot of comments following it. Some are slag, but many are well thought out and reasoned. I think it’s very interesting how heated this topic gets people, and I love the passion people have; good, bad, but very little indifferent!

Something I have been preaching about for quite a while is that virtual worlds are places where people generally want to go to escape the bonds of their real lives. So, it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to marketed to in the same way there that they are in everyday life. I doubt people would want to pay good money to sit in a theater and watch what they had just done all day. We go to places like the movies, plays, and even virtual worlds, for entertainment and to experience something beyond our normal, first life.

Certainly advertising & marketing is going to play a large part in these worlds, but it’s not going to look like just slathering everything with logos and calling it done (not to say that’s the only thing that’s happening now…). Brands who want to make this work for themselves are going to have to bring value to the worlds in a non-intrusive and useful way. Brands will need to bring something to the table to gain their credibility in-world. Just because a brand is strong, and even cool, in the physical world doesn’t mean very much in the virtual world unless they create themselves as strong, and even cool, all over again within the society and context of the virtual worlds in which they’re participating. The goal of not breaking the experience of ‘being in another world‘ is an important one, as well.

Interestingly enough, within Entropia Universe most of the advertising and marketing is for in-world products, events, and services. I think that’s actually very exciting and I think it marks a way for real world brands to participate, as well. Another interesting aspect about Entropia Universe is that they’ve been profitable for the last 11 quarters. I think amidst this negative press about Virtual Worlds it’s very important to bring up the successful worlds, like Entropia Universe.

Here is the full PDF of the press release. And below are the winners of the auction.

• Avatar Janus JD D’Arcwire, representing a real life bank, (more information to follow) - paid $59,060
• Russian Internet Payment Provider MONETA.ru, by avatar Yuri iNTellect Efremov - paid $99,900
• Entropia celebrity and famed virtual night club owner Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs -paid $90,000
• Famous cross-world virtual celebrity and entrepreneur Anshe Chung - paid $60,000
• The avatar “Jolana Kitty Brice” (veteran Entropia Universe participant and entrepreneur who wishes to remain anonymous at this time) - paid $95,000

Janus represents a German Bank. More information to come.

And here is the press release regarding our recent announcement about entering China. And the short version, below.

Swedish MindArk and Chinese Cyber Recreational Development Corp. sign Agreement to Create the Largest Virtual World Ever
MindArk’s CEO Jan Welter and CRD’s CEO David Liu sign the landmark agreement to create a cash-based virtual economy for China. Goteborg’s Mayor Göran Johansson was also present at the ceremony, as were leading officials from MindArk and Business Region Goteborg.

The new project will permit up to 7 million concurrent users logged into the virtual universe with an overall aim to attract some 150 million users from all over the world. Entropia Universe, a three-dimensional universe on the Internet intended for entertainment, work, commerce, community building, culture, and much more, is expected to generate over $1 billion annually in commerce from this partnership.

It will be happening October 10-11, 2007 in San Jose. More as it happens. . .