Raph has a great post about the way in which virtual worlds are likely to continue to enter the mainstream. In short, he points out that chat is not enough. Purely social virtual worlds are destined to stay out of the mainstream as socializing-only will not keep people around. What does? Unsurprisingly, gamey virtual worlds, which account for probably 99% of virtual world users (something the media seems to forget quite often). Why unsurprisingly? Well, as with so many things in this space, one just has to look at the venerable text MUD market. The social worlds (MOOs, MUCKs, etc) are dwarfed in popularity and number by the gamey worlds. There’s no reason to expect that’s going to change just because you write a 3d client for a world.

What it comes down to is that games are one of the best way we know to engage users. Games are often some of the most engaging experiences available. For instance, Runescape is the most engaging website for UK users - they spend more time on it per user than any other site. AdventureQuest is also in the top 7 in the UK, though neither of these are in the top 50 sites in terms of page views.

If we look at the platform du jour - Facebook - we find that of the top 25 apps in terms of daily active users, games account for about 15 of them. The most popular tv broadcasts? Games (Superbowl, World Cup, etc).

Games are mainstream. Virtual worlds are not yet but the gamey ones are the only ones that come close to it. Second Life might get namechecked frequently in the media but the frequency of that is completely unrelated to how many people actually use it. I feel like saying this is stating the obvious but there’s such a bubble around social virtual worlds that I’m unsure how distorted ‘obvious’ has become to those in the bubble.