We tend to imagine computer gaming as being about fantasy, but the really important thing that this new, commercially successful breed of games all have in common is the way they blur the boundaries between fantasy/online and meat-space. Farmville is about your real-life friends helping you out; Wii Fit is physical as well as virtual; Achievements is a meta-game about social status. Then we have Nectar points; Club Card points; Caffe Nero points; Petrol points; Alcohol Units (what? you’re not supposed to collect them?). Gaming is becoming ubiquitous.

The video’s URL is http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box-Presentation/ in case it doesn’t show. (Internet Explorer users. tssk).

From completely the opposite direction, the desire for authenticity in a world that is becoming increasingly more virtual is a theme Schell touches upon and has been a frequently mentioned topic on this blog.

My key piece of recent evidence: the renaissance of the ukelele. What’s that about if it isn’t a deep hunger for something (a) physical; (b) crafty and © nostalgic? More seriously, there’s so much stuff all over the place about hand-crafted this and authentic that. Crafting communities. Photowalks. Meetups. We’re mad for a spot of reality, an oasis of organic in the desert of digital.

Schell invokes this — and I really must get this book about it that he mentions — but then somehow segues between that and this approaching world order in which everything you do potentially scores you points. I’d agree that ‘gaming everywhere’ seems a likely future – one that’s already partially arrived, but I’m not sure that this will satisfy any of these other desires for a more real, visceral experience of life. So some sleight-of-hand there, I think. Brilliant presentation, nonetheless.

picture credit: Dreambagz

On with the doom and gloom, though, and one presentation that I really enjoyed came from Marco van Veen, a manager at the Innovation & Collaboration Center at Heineken on why they said ‘no’ to Second Life.

Heineken obviously does a lot of advertising and sponsorship and isn’t remotely afraid to try out new forms such as product placement in films like Casino Royale. They could very easily imagine a Heineken bar or vending machines in SL, as could all of us — heck, why not a Heineken lake? — and obviously developers and marketing agencies kept coming to them with metaverse ideas. Initially, they had a lot of enthusiasm for the possibilities.

As they started to think through the business value of the project, though, several adverse factors dawned on them…

• They wouldn’t be the first beer brand to enter the world. The press and publicity that was showered on companies like Toyota, IBM and Starwoods when they debuted in SL wouldn’t be likely to be repeated for the third or fourth beer brand to enter.
• They found research from Market Truths (March 07 — costs $100 or L$12,500) which said that if brands fail to position themselves correctly in SL, they can expect a backlash from residents. This led the company to conduct its own research among residents. It turned out that almost half thought that the Heineken brand would not be a good fit within Second Life. Only 19% said they thought it would. Don’t ask me why that was the case — as I understand it, there was something of a backlash against all commercial brands in the world earlier this year and it may just be part of that.
• It didn’t sit very easily with the company’s CSR policy. Heineken wants to be seen as promoting the socially responsible use of alcohol. Clearly, if they made Heineken bottles and kegs available in SL, it would be reasonably likely that residents would play-act drinking to excess. What else is there to do with a keg of virtual beer? (or errm… real beer).
• Hand-in-hand with this came worries about the age of SL residents. It’s company policy at Heineken not to sponsor events where the proportion of adults is lower than 70%. Linden Labs’ own figures suggest that this is comfortably so, but the company had an alternative report created by ComScore that suggested that only 68% of SL residents are 21 or over. This made them fear that Linden’s figures were unreliable. Again, this wouldn’t sit well with their responsible drinking policy.
• Joined with this was some anxiety about litigation. It seemed a reasonable supposition that there are ambulance-chasing US lawyers sitting in SL and waiting for a beer brand to give some of their product to a minor. Such a suit could well seem newsworthy to a technophobe press keen to sniff out any suggestion of child abuse online.

Yes, I am an SL naysayer, but that’s not the only reason I found this a refreshing presentation. There’s such wide-eyed bollocks talked about virtual worlds that Heineken seem like geniuses for sensibly and thoroughly assessing the opportunity and turning it down on this occasion. As van Veen said, however, this is a very new medium, and the company has far from closed the door on a virtual existence.

Update: I’ve written two posts so far on VWF at our NMK site. One on the basics you ought to know and one on business models and possibilities. Also, this post is being discussed by listeners to the FIR podcast here.