LONDON - At the Virtual Worlds London conference this week the overall tone was squarely focused on the development of virtual world solutions for the enterprise and other collaborative environments like education. As in any recent discussion of business matters, the state of the economy also featured strongly. Indeed, many of the virtual world enterprise solutions are marketing themselves as a way to cut down on travel costs and carbon offsetting.  

These solutions, ( including Linden Lab / Rivers Run Reds strategic partnership to create Immersive Workspaces ) present a different / additional revenue models for the monetization of virtual worlds for platform developers, which will hopefully help them weather the current economic storms.

Considering the (hotly debated ) figures on the actual resident expansion of Second Life and the plateau state it seems to currently be in, this may be a critical move for Linden Lab. 

However, one panel at the conference focused on an area which continues to boom despite the RL recession, and may even benefit from it.

Dubbed "Virtual Goods : the next big business model" this panel featured Rohan Freeman, CEO of Sine Wave Company, a prominent animation supplier in Second Life and other virtual worlds like IMVU, Martin Herdina CEO of Fatfoogoo AG, Andrew Schneider, Founder & President of Live Gamer and Karl Mehta, Co-Founder and CEO of Playspan.  

The panel kicked off with a discussion of what virtual goods are and why they are a growth market.  

"You have to ask yourself what is virtual, "Rohan said."Is music virtual ? Is makeup virtual? Ultimately it’s about selling IP and the quality of the IP is all that matters. Our products just happen to be in a 3d virtual platform.  People's experiences and memories in a virtual world are as real as any other, as real as a telephone conversation. Their desire for goods which enhance those experiences and capture those memories is a huge market."  

With stories that Habbo Hotel has sold more items of virtual furniture in the last year than IKEA, it’s not difficult to see how attractive this market continues to be. 

Martin Herdina and Karl Mehta, who both run companies that deal directly with real world currency transactions of virtual goods ( across many virtual world and MMO platforms ) had a lively discussion which involved some fascinating figures about the growth of this market.