Venerable video game developer and There founder Will Harvey is now at the helm of IMVU, an avatar-based 3D chatspace. IMVU features customizable à la carte content sold not only by the company itself, but developed and marketed by IMVU users. Dressed in a lime baby-T and charcoal mini-skirt, Harvey met me at one of IMVU's many Buckstar coffee shops, where we chatted over steaming soy lattes about IMVU's place in the greater Metaverse.
Hey Will, nice skirt.
You mean you assumed in RL I was a guy?
Presumptuous, I know. Ok, I was wondering about your transition from There to IMVU in terms of the concepts behind each project…
btw, did you try dragging the bubbles around? It looks cool. :-)
[Drags bubbles around.] Yes it is very cool. Did There morph into IMVU or does IMVU exist as a stand alone project?
IMVU is related to There only insofar as I founded There.com and I also founded IMVU. IMVU is a new thing, with a different vision. When I started There, I thought that one company could become the Microsoft in a sense, or the predominant OS, for the whole metaverse and virtual world.
[Nods]
I created There.com to be that company, so we built extraordinary technology to support a massively scalable world with 100's of thousands of users in a physically simulated virtual world -- a platform or OS for virtual reality. IMVU is a different vision.
[Nods]
I no longer believe that a single company will own the metaverse or the OS on which the metaverse is built. The internet is just fundamentally different from an OS for desktop applications. The internet advances through the combined efforts of a plurality of companies, each of which provides one part of the overall picture.
What part would you say that IMVU provides, that, for example, There or Second Life might not?
IMVU fits in by providing the world's best avatars. That's our vision.
Ah, thanks.
There.com and Linden lab both have massively multiuser physically simulated worlds. They both have fantastic technology in those areas.
There are very few companies founded on the principles of cooperation, at least in terms of commercial virtual worlds
Yes, you are right.
Will you be open to playing a role in the greater "metaverse"?
It is not inconceivable that down the line IMVU avatars could be used in There or SL, or other video games. Few companies are founded on the principle of cooperation. Nevertheless, it is also true that few companies succeed in complete isolation. So as you can see, cooperation happens, even if it isn't premeditated or planned. Companies need to be open to that philosophy to succeed.
I'm not really aware of many strategic partnerships in this space, can you give me an example? Or, if you prefer, are there any IMVU partnerships you care to discuss?
LOL, I can't think of a non-example. Where would Intel be without Microsoft or vice versa? Where would yahoo be without Netstape or IE?
Oh, sure -- I mean in terms of virtual world "owners." I'm talking about something like There and Second Life teaming up for something. I can't see that happening.
Ah, the virtual world is not as mature as other areas. Companies need to carve out some success on their own first. There, SL, IMVU are all doing that now. But in the long run the success of all these companies will be related to how they fit into the ecosystem of applications and services that the users use, everything from IM to social networking, email, web browsing, etc. In the fullness of time, 3D avatars and 3D worlds will touch upon a lot of things that people do online.
Do you see IMVU moving more or less towards competition with other virtual worlds?
IMVU doesn't have any plans to make a virtual world.
Right, I should have backed up and asked about whether or not you consider IMVU a world. It seems world-like...
I love virtual worlds, and I think they are extraordinarily interesting from almost every angle of engineering and computer science, not to mention other areas of academics. But no, I wouldn't want to try to reproduce what There and SL have built. Of course, you could define "virtual world" to encompass the kind of things that IMVU does, but I don't think such a definition captures what most people mean and think of.
I would say one of IMVU's chief strengths is its compactness as opposed to what SL and There are up to.
Yes, the compactness of IMVU is definitely one of its strengths. Sometimes less is more. In some ways, that is the case here. People can use IMVU without having to commit to a video game like experience in time, focus, and screen area.
Could we talk a bit more about the potential for interoperability with other software applications? I notice, for example, that IMVU is built on some Open Source software... Can you talk a bit about the rationale for the Open Source tools?
Yes, IMVU uses many open source applications and libraries, and we have contributed to the efforts. Interesting you should mention this, kind of comes back to the point about collaboration. ;-)
Yes that's what I'm getting at. Would the use of Open Source software give you a long-term competitive advantage?
When running a company, you have to decide what you do better than anyone else, and then your highest leverage is applying all your efforts to that exact thing. Of course, you usually have to a variety of other things also to provide a complete package or product or solution, but the more you can focus on what you do best, the better you'll do.
Is it fair to say that what IMVU does better is avatars?
Yes, IMVU's thing is avatars and all the trappings that make avatars interesting and useful.
In my next conversation with Will Harvey, I hope to discuss IMVU's avatar trappings, user-driven economy, and business aspects further. If you've got a burning question you'd like me to relay, please post it as a comment to this entry and I'll see what I can do. In the mean time, I encourage you to explore IMVU.com--it might not be a virtual world, but it's one of the most compelling 3D chatspaces I've come across. For additional reading about Will Harvey, I recommend this recent interview at Gamasutra.
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