Pursuing virtual world interoperability
A group of tech company giants thinks that there's benefit in linking together content from multiple virtual worlds.
I spent the last couple of days at the Virtual Worlds conference in San Jose, Calif., and one of the more interesting things I came across was the fact that on Tuesday about two dozen tech companies and other institutions gathered to discuss the idea of interoperability between all the various virtual worlds.
It's a very interesting idea. Whether it can work is very much up for debate. But you can read my story on the subject, which ran this morning on CNET News.com.
The question is: Can these worlds work together? Will the publishers agree to let their users teleport into their competition? Either way, it appears that these companies are determined to take leadership on the issue, whether users think it's a good idea or not.
But as online games guru Raph Koster asks, is there really a market demand for this? Only time will tell.