The Semper International Blog

This is a pretty cool option from a 2D social network meetings a 3D social network sort of way. Google Lively gives you the code to add your room(s) to your website. I tested it out on one of my Ning sites and not only could you have one running but multible Lively rooms running at the same time.

I can see this option as a nice customer service tool for many companies websites. It works very well from the social network stand point and with more than one room option it can be a blast for those multitaskers like me.

Hmmm… Interview rooms and client/applicant interaction areas.

Check it out here - CLICK ME

After feeling left out for the last few days as I was on vacation and Google decided to launch Lively… I have been catching up this weekend.

There are some cool features to Lively and I see a lot of potential in this platform. Would like to be able to have more than one video playing in a room and be able to control when they play and stop, but I am sure those are going to be fixed soon enough. 

This VW is nothing like Second Life, not really in the same ball park. I would say at this point it is a great way to introduce a larger audience to virtual worlds and then they can graduate into the amazing world of Second Life or some of the other more powerful VW’s out there.

Really like how the avatar movement is done, very intuitive. In fact as I was bouncing between SL and Lively I kept wishing SL movement was the same as Lively’s.

Was driving home this morning and thought, why not have one of the projects I am working in SL connect to Lively?? Went home and tested out the concept, hoping the in SL browser would open lively (Would have also solved the Mac issue of no Lively option). 

So I made a prim, added the web link script and the URL to the room in Lively I wanted and……  NOPE, platform not supported. Only way to do it was have a separate browser open up which defeats the purpose a bit. 

Would be interesting if this concept did actually work at some point.

Click on image to see larger.

Not 100% sure how to leverage the two platforms together in one immersive experience, but have some ideas…….

Many of you that know me and have heard me rant about Second Life, Video Games and in general Virtual Worlds and how they could become the way the internet looks in the 5 - 10 year range. Another factor in what was running through my mind was the concept of combining Google Earth and Second Life into a real life version of the real world. While there has been a lot of talk on blogs and in the media about these concepts, we all have our own takes and visions of how it will play out.

Replied to an interesting LinkedIn question with the below, I added it here as it captured some of the positives we have found in our exploration of Second Life. 

Second Life is a very interesting space. My firm was the first staffing firm in and we have enjoyed some interesting results. Our island HumanResource Island is a professional build, meaning we use it for business purposes. Anywhere from internal Semper training and recruitment to sharing our understanding of interviewing in real life and Second Life with other SL residents for free in the for of free seminars in our virtual conference center. 

The fact is, that SL is not something that you drop money into and sit back and say, ok, let the success start rolling in. Its a lot more dynamic than that. Building is just the start developing and maintaining a community even an internal one is key. In other words, it takes constant effort, but effort that is reward with results.

Our results have come from successful recruitment of candidates from SL and placing them into real life positions. We have hired some internally or use them as contractors. Some of our training is gaining new levels of success as we understand and adapt to how powerful the immersion effect is on people and how it increases they attention span. We have even gained new areas of income generating business as we start to develop other companies locations in SL, even to the point where we may bridge this new off into a new company.

I clearly see a day where I have my 10 geographically dispersed offices working in one virtual office. Where managers can allocate teams based on needs of a geographic region. An office that people thousands of miles apart work shoulder to shoulder. Where their virtual desktops control the real applications they work in daily. A place where a growing number of people for various reasons work from their homes, yet still work in the same room as their teammates.

Very exciting times ahead.

Brian Regan

President

Semper International 

Great insights on the future of video games and virtual worlds at Cyberposium 13 at the Harvard Business School. The panel consisting of the following people:   

Cory Bridges - Executive VP at Multiverse 

Mark Kern - CEO of Red 5 Studios

Chris Carella  - Chief Creative Officer of the Electric Sheep company 

Curt Schilling - Pitcher of the Boston Red Sox and owner of 38 Studio’s a video game development firm working on a self funded MMO.

Philip Rosedale - CEO of Linden Labs, makers of Second Life 

Mike Hirshland - A VC that invests in entertainment, web and gaming. 

The topic for this great panel are Online games and Virtual Worlds more than just entertainment.  Which anyone paying attention to this space right now understands they are. Serious games and virtual worlds are making significant increases in awareness and applications from education to B2B applications. 

Picture of panel: 

Semper International™ Opens Video Game Staffing Division

Semper International™ Opens Video Game Staffing Division Most Trusted Name in Graphic and Print Staffing Placement Expands to New Market

Boston, MA – September 7, 2007 - Semper International, a company which has dedicated itself to offering flexible staffing solutions to the graphic arts and print community for more than 12 years, today announced it will be establishing a new division to service the video game software development community in the continually growing video game market.

The new division – built upon the highly successful equation which made Semper International the top solution in its target markets – will offer a wide array of skilled programmers, artists and animators to software development houses, whether large or small, across the United States.

“We are extremely excited to be opening our new video game staffing division because with the feverish pace at which the gaming industry is growing the need for specialized software development talent is likewise increasing,” said Brian Regan, President, Semper International. “By using our proven methods of talent acquisition and placement we are poised to revolutionize the way video game development companies acquire personnel.”

Semper International has studied and tracked the phenomenal growth of the video game industry and realizes the value of offering an adaptable, flexible staffing solution to those organizations in need of qualified talent, especially with the increasingly difficult demands each “next generation” gaming system requires. Semper International will be able to provide clients with talented contractors to handle a wide variety of projects – from basic game testing to complex programming and project management. The company will work hand-in-hand with both contractor and client to assure quality and timeliness in all situations.

Through its offices in Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orange County (CA), San Francisco, Wayne (NJ), and Washington, D.C., and its online office located in the metaverse Second Life , Semper International plans to partner with both video game software development companies as well as the talent already existing in these markets. By utilizing its flex, flex-to-hire and direct hire solutions, Semper International will be able to easily and conveniently assist these companies with the rapid expansion needed in today’s competitive marketplace.

For more information, visit us here - Click

About Semper International: Semper International, LLC was founded and staffed by professionals who were raised and trained in the graphic arts and staffing industries. Since 1995, Semper has provided staffing solutions – flex, flex-to-hire and direct hire – for the design, pre-press and finishing fields. Its efficient and reliable business model has helped transform how a wide range of graphic arts and print companies, both large and small, fill important roles or stretch production capacity. Semper International now applies this model to the video game and metaverse (fully immersive 3D virtual space) markets. Headquartered in Boston, Semper International, can be reached at 1-800-954-4993 or on the web at http://www.semperllc.com.

August 22, 2007 01:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Semper International Opens New Island, HumanResource Island in the Virtual World, Second Life

New location coincides with company’s new venture into virtual world consulting

BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Semper International, the leading placement firm for skilled help in the graphic arts and printing industry, and a growing provider of trained, technical staffing in other high-tech areas, particularly video games, announces it has opened a new island location, HumanResource Island, in the Second Life® virtual world.

Second Life®, developed by Linden Labs®, is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Opening to the public in 2003, it is currently inhabited by over 4 million residents from around the globe. Second Life is an exciting new venue for collaboration, training, distance learning, new media studies and business.

HumanResource Island has been developed to allow Semper to augment its current capabilities in Second Life. With the additional land they will have a much larger location to handle their growing uses for Second Life. The collaborative nature of the virtual 3-D Second Life world makes it an exceptional resource for a recruiting company to interact with clients and talent.. They are already using it as a forum for seminars for clients. The company is also successfully inviting candidates to Second Life to listen to presentations offering job search advice while, concurrently, prescreening them for possible jobs.

With its knowledge and experience in virtual worlds, and its extensive list of programming resources, Semper International has also built a business around Second Life consulting. The company provides expert analysis of whether a client is prepared to build a Second Life location, rules of how to culturally engage with other ‘residents’, and programming resources to build an appropriate site. Companies interested in exploring more can visit http://www.semperllc.com/metaverse/.

“I think it is important to note that our continued use of Second Life is not specifically as a marketing platform. We’re not lining the streets with banners,” explains Brian Regan, Semper International president. “We continue to be impressed with the non-marketing utility of Second Life. For example, the introduction of voice in Second Life has allowed us to use the virtual world as a collaboration tool between Semper employees from different, real-world offices. They are able to meet in our Second Life office for conference meetings. New ideas of how to use it are generated almost on a weekly basis, which is why we were willing to invest in a complete island.”

Semper International’s HumanResource Island can be found at http://slurl.com/secondlife/HumanResource%20Island/196/112/27. A Semper International blog that further delves into their Second Life experiences can be found at http://semperllc.wordpress.com/

“Second Life” and “Linden Labs” are registered trademarks of Linden Research.

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About Semper International

Headquartered in Boston with branch offices nationwide, Semper International is a temporary help placement firm founded and staffed by professionals who understand the positions, equipment, and software essential to their core business areas, assuring a perfect employee-employer match.

To provide career growth, Semper University is an online training program to help employees prepare for upcoming changes in the industry. Realizing how the Internet is revolutionizing the industry, Semper also works with the most talented web designers, graphic designers, desktop publishers and production managers.

For more information, visit Semper International at www.semperllc.com. Semper International’s Second Life office can be found at http://slurl.com/secondlife/HumanResource%20Island/196/112/27.

Common myths about the video game industry.
By Tuan Pham (Contributing writer)

Whenever we chat with our friends in the game industry, there are a few common gripes that always appear. No matter if a development group is large or small, major issues always crop up. This isn’t just talking about lack of pizza or Chinese during Crunch Time; these are pretty serious.

1) Only young male teenagers or college students are into video gaming.

According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the average gamer is 33 years old and has been playing games for nearly 12 years. In fact, 38 percent of all gamers are female.

In fact, serious gaming, a genre in the whole video game industry, is dedicated to using video games as a solution in the fields of health care, education, training and public policy. This wildly deviates from the myth of all gamers are single males who hang out at the local GameStop or Best Buy.

2) Being in the video game industry is just like printing money. There’s a lot of it out there and everyone involved gets rich.

While video game sales are reaching record highs ($7.4 billion in 2006), not everyone is successful. With the release of every blockbuster, such as World of Warcraft, Halo and Grand Theft Auto, there are at least hundreds of titles that end up collecting dust on the store shelves.

3) Only games that are successful are violent bloodbaths.

In 2005, only 15 percent of all game sales were rated M for Mature by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, or ESRB. While action games do dominate the market to a degree, there are legions of puzzle, childrens’, sports and casual games that are stocked on today’s shelves.

4) Only established franchises or massively multiplayer online role playing games are successful in today’s market.

While franchises such as Madden, Halo and Grand Theft Auto and MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online dominate the headlines, there are other titles who have done well in the market. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games for a list of titles which sold more than 1 million copies. There’s a few that might be very suprising.

Last year, the eighth best selling game in the U.S. was Brain Age, a brain training game for the Nintendo DS. It sold even more copies in Japan. This brain-teasing serious game forces a person to take three educational tests each day to lessen mind fatigue over time. The follow-up, which has already shipped in Japan, will be released shortly in the U.S.

5) Staffing video game companies is cakewalk.

The pool of applicants for video game companies is extremely high right now. Schools are starting to tailor create game design degrees and people in the current generation have grown up with video gaming. However, there is a massive need for established project managers who have worked in high-stress, deadline-based environments as well as raw talent to think of the new games of tomorrow.

While degrees in game design or graphic design are valuable, one of the most important things to have is a solid portfolio of work when applying to game developer. Also, a major plus is experience in the software field in general.

As we chat with our contacts in the field, most of them do not have a game design degree. Some hold a degree in Computer Science, some in Liberal Arts, some that don’t even have college training. But, they are successful in their career.

Breaking into the industry has its challenges. Most, if not all, are surmountable.