Virtual Worlds Forum Europe 2008: “Show Us the Money�

(Monetization options for Virtual Worlds) VWFE 2008 (Virtual Worlds Forum Europe) got cancelled because the venue was taken away by the Police, so the organizers arranged an emergency Unconference for today instead. I decided - with only five minutes of prep (this is an Unconference…) - to do a session on “ways to monetize virtual worlds”. I ran this session, so I took very few notes, sorry. So … if you weren’t at the session, you probably missed most of the good bits :P. Background I’ve been in MMOs in some form or other for ten years, and I’ve seen VWs arise as a viable product, but the companies I meet seem to often have serious lack of understanding / plans of how they are going to make anything more than trivial revenues. Each year, the average technology of new companies (both presentation/graphics, and back-end/servers) seems to improve, but each year the monetization plans of new companies seem...