This past summer I’d mentioned a summit on virtual goods and linked to a TechCrunch article related to the panel, “Are Virtual Goods the Next Big Business Model?” (reLink). A video of that discussion, chaired by Susan Wu of Charles River Ventures, was posted shortly after the panel, and while I managed to watch the first few introductory minutes of it, I neither finished watching it nor returned to it. Until now, that is, after a reminder from a post on The Meshverse Journal (Link).

Consider the above highly-recommended viewing.
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Okay, so I decided to take some time and respond to a LinkedIn question and whadaya know but there’s a 4000 word limit. I blew through that like hurricane Andrew. But rather than chop it apart or delete it (which I sometimes do when I go over such limits), I decided to post my full answer here. So here’s the question:

I have an idea about a new consumer product… basic design (size, color, material, etc).

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Generally, I don’t follow the news of every company entering the virtual space. I just don’t care if Levi’s creates their own branded virtual world and, other than the advertising and marketing community, I don’t know who does (though I don’t doubt there are consumers out there who do care). Instead, I pay attention to those companies which might do something interesting on the product development side of things. That’s why Coca-Cola’s VirtualThirst competition was of interest, and it didn’t disappoint (reLink). It’s why Pontiac’s effort is more interesting to me than Mercedes’; one embraces the DIY/customization mindset while the other seemingly just wanted to push product. And even though it was very much a sales pitch, I couldn’t help but appreciate Dell’s fab-factory solution (reLink)
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Usually when I surf through the CGTalk forum I see plenty of creativity when it comes to character design, but when it comes to products/objects what I find are mostly attempts to model real world designs. There are plenty of Mercedes this and Ferrari that, but relatively speaking very few original product designs. Thus it’s difficult to not appreciate Kadeg Boucher’s “stupid object #1 : Lawn Mower schumacher” (shown above). What a great piece. For more images, check out the thread on CGTalk (Link).
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{Temporary Note, 6 October 2009: Core77 visitors might want to read “Update 2” at the bottom of this post. And by the way, “the (uncredited) writer” is me.}

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my primary interest in tracking the intellectual property issues currently plaguing the music and movie industries, waiting in the ebook wings for book publishers, and even frustrating hordes of bloggers whose content is appropriated and used to create spamblogs, is that at some point their problems become my problems; becomes the problem of anyone who designs and fabricates real products for a living.
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