In Silicon Valley and the wider tech industry, the economic downtown has created a palpable air of simmering panic; if you believe Sibley Verbeck, CEO of leading virtual world developer The Electric Sheep Company, over 80% of budgets for MMO-based marketing and advertising will be slashed in coming months. That may be overstating, but however things shake out, it's fairly certain that it'll be rough going for a lot of metaverse developers over the next few quarters.
I thought of this when recalling a recent news item that came across my Google Alerts transom. Anantara Solutions, a well-regarded outsourcing firm in India (here's a BusinessWeek profile of the company) is setting up a Second Life development and consultancy arm.
Outsourcing became a big tech sector concern during the last economic downturn of 2002, 2003, as white collar knowledge workers in the US and the EU saw their jobs sent overseas. With the latest financial crisis, my guess is we're likely to see a similar pattern in the virtual world business, as metaverse developers based in developing nations like India, Vietnam, and the Philipines compete with Western studios to provide quality content at greatly reduced rates. Now that they've jumped into the enterprise solution provider business, this will probably impact Linden Lab itself-- with the economy so bad, can companies based in two of the most expensive cities in the US and the UK hope to offer competitive quotes against a corporation based in Chennai, India?
i can't help but laugh if anyone thinks they can undercut the Chinese L$10 group that has the capacity to wipe out any business sector they wish to conduct illegal predatory pricing activities in.
Oh wait... Not illegal over there. Ahh the wonderful world of no law really applies.
I have news for those folks. There are plenty of people in SL already working for less than they pay their people. And the value of Sl content is dropping like a rock.
In the meantime we have to compete with LL now too.
Isn't this metaverse thing amazing? :)
Posted by: Ann Otoole | Monday, October 20, 2008 at 04:24 PM
I briefly had dealings with Anantara in March and unfortunately they failed to show to two meetings. Didn't even bother to respond after missing the second one.
Just sayin'
skribe
Posted by: skribe | Monday, October 20, 2008 at 06:19 PM
What the heck is a "transom" and is there any way that it could possibly have a MORE retarded buzzword?
Posted by: Two Worlds | Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 04:35 PM
Anantara's Second life 'practice' is a JOKE!
NO. Actually it isn't.
They actually do 'practice' their skills on live client projects!
One swallow (and good PR) doesn't make a summer (or a second life consulting company).
Ask them how many projects they have done.. or better still.. you should interact with their second life 'guru' to be shocked by their incredulous claims for yourself!!!
Posted by: SLWatcher | Friday, October 24, 2008 at 08:39 PM
Oh and I forgot to add.. my comment above is biased.. from an Anantara Second-Life client's point of view!!
Posted by: SLWatcher | Friday, October 24, 2008 at 09:46 PM