A Second Second Life?

Some people are calling GoJiyo the Indian Second Life. Which is I guess a pretty huge compliment given that Second Life is the standard for virtual worlds and has been around for 7 years!

Though Second Life was obviously something we looked at closely and learnt from, we didn’t feel its features would really fit what Godrej needed. This was after all a brand communication platform we were building. I looked at all existing worlds from the hugely successful World of Warcraft, IMVU, Vivaty , Twinity, China’s Hipihi, to Google's experiment with Lively, to Farmville and Habbo Hotel. We looked at branded environments such as Coke World and Lynx World. In our creative sessions we decided to bring together gaming, social networks, branded and 3D environments. In a way what we wanted to do was closer to Sony Playstation's Home in the concept (though accessible through a browser and much smaller in scale) than to Second Life. But without the customized spaces aspect PS Home has. At least for now.

Here are, to my mind the main differences between the GoJiyo and Second LIfe:

a. Access

1. Second Life needs to be downloaded once (approx 50 MB) and then you run that 'viewer' software to enter the world each time. It is not accessible through your browser.

GoJiyo is accessible directly through a browser, where it loads. Most other virtual worlds involve a software download. GoJiyo is designed for an Indian broadband bandwidth- to work on an actual download rate of 60 kbps.
This means each time you go to Gojiyo.com the world downloads, but it has cached the first time, so subsequent downloads are quicker. Our research tells us that
Indians wouldn't want to download a large piece of software. Which is perhaps why Second Life and other virtual worlds haven't really taken off in
India.

GoJiyo works on Unity. This gaming engine has been adapted by our Dev team to a multiplayer
virtual world environment (it’s usually used for uniplayer gaming environments like EA’s Tiger Woods game). It means the graphics can be great, there is some level of physics, and also it’s quite small to download! The Unity plugin is also slim at only 3MB.

2. The graphical user interface of the Second Life Viewer has, up to now, been pretty difficult to use, to quote one of the team, “we are Linden Lab after all” and most Second Life users have had to be quite tech savvy to be able to use it to its full potential. (We’ll see how the new Viewer changes their user demographic).

GoJiyo was designed to be very easy to use in its interface and with simple and fun functionality for less tech savvy users. Aimed at those new to virtual worlds (a step up from Farmville in immersive environments).

b. Features

1. Second Life is much bigger than GoJiyo- it's absolutely huge with loads of regions built by users, there's sophisticated location-based sound and lipsynching of avatars to their voice etc. Avatar customization is much more developed than GoJiyo's too, because it’s user generated, so the team of developers is much larger. You can be a non-human character for instance!

Gojiyo has 6 Regions only, which will refresh continually- Solaria- a beach city; Mauryaavaas - a recreation of the ancient Mauryan Empire, Noom- moon colony; Rejanm - where you can be reborn; an underwater world and an arcticland. Some are very Indian concepts. There is voice chat but GoJiyo is 25 days old compared to 7 years old ad so its features are continually developing. Like with any good software product, features will keep being added continually.

2. One of Second Life’s core tenets is giving creativity to the user though allowing them to create their own content (UGC). Users can create their own regions by buying land and building on it. The tools to build are out there to create everything from avatar clothes to gestures and more.
There are no gaming elements to Second Life really.

GoJiyo on the other hand, has many mini-games, to name a few: you can go bunjee jumping, surfing, skydiving, fight asteroids falling on the Moon and soon speed date in 3^rd Century BCE Mauryavaas. Users can also engage in longer quests like finding who’s stolen all the artworks from the city and restoring them; planting algae to save the moon from running out of oxygen. GoJiyo has a points and currency system- Mios and Jios which earns the user rewards online and in the real world and there’ll be more links with Godrej and other products. For instance you can win a real trip to climb Kilimanjaro with some of your GoJiyo friends.

3. In GoJiyo there’s a friendship engine that tracks your behaviour in GoJiyo, say you like doing adrenalin type activities, it will suggest similar new friends for you to meet, from the GoJiyo Tribe. Second Life doesn't have a feature like that. In fact you can't import friends from other networks, it is your world apart from the rest of your online life.

Yes in both worlds you can party at clubs. And in both your avatar can fly and teleport.

c. Audience

Second Life’s audience is more Western-centric- the majority of Residents are Americans and Europeans, with 7% from Japan and Brazil. Indian user figures are negligable. But 12.1m Residents over the 7 years of operations. A virtual world is, after all, simply an architecture until filled with people. GoJiyo is aimed at young Indians, who are populating it (at time of writing 72,000 avatars in India had been created in 25 days).

d. Business Model & Reason For Doing It

Second Life’s mission is “To connect everyone to an online world that advances the human condition.” It seems Linden Lab are focusing much more towards UGC and customization of the world- you make what kind of fantasy world you want to inhabit. Virtual meetings between people, including companies, through their Enterprise Grid is another growing area. The exchange rate, Linden dollar to USD also mean Linden have a strong business model for this product.

GoJiyo is a branded environment- Godrej and other brands will be present; but it is not a business Godrej is entering, simply a communication platform for the brand. The aim is to build a conversation with a younger target group than it currently has. And give to them some new, hopefully unique, experiences online.