// Pocket Picks //

In many people’s minds, virtual worlds mean one thing, and one thing only: Second Life. Such was the hype surrounding that virtual world last year, that it’s easy to forget that there are actually dozens - if not hundreds - of rivals, a number of which actually have more users. If you’re a parent, you might already know this, from seeing your kids use Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin or Webkinz.

However, all these virtual worlds are accessed on a PC - either through a dedicated application like Second Life, or through a Web browser. Mobile handsets haven’t had much of a look in, for obvious reasons such as their small screens and the cost of streaming lots of data to the phone as you move around a world.

This, however, is changing…

Earlier today, I wrote a story for our sister site Pocket Gamer about i-Citizen 3D, a new mobile virtual world from British firm Micazook, which has just launched (pictured above). It’s a Habbo Hotel style isometric virtual world, which lets you wander around a series of locations based on real-world cities, including London, Barcelona and New York. It looks pretty interesting.

But there’s more where that came from. A number of companies are looking at mobile as the next platform for virtual worlds, thanks to the ubiquity of mobile phones, and the way handsets are getting faster and more powerful, and so able to cope with this kind of content.

What a mobile (still) lacks in processing oomph, it makes up for in other ways. Many are cliches already - your phone’s always with you, you use it to kill time on the train or bus, it’s always connected, yada yada yada. But that doesn’t stop them being true. Mobile users of virtual worlds might not clock up lengthy sessions like Second Life addicts, but there’s a clear opportunity for worlds to be built around the strengths and weaknesses of mobile, and pick up an audience.

However, I reckon they’ll be made-for-mobile virtual worlds, not mobile clients for the existing PC/online ones. Several companies have recently announced plans to bring Second Life to mobile, for example - I wrote about Samsung last week, while Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo is also trying, along with technology firms Comverse and Vollee. But do most (or indeed any) Second Life users want to access the world on their phones?

The jury’s still out on that one, not least because these services are trying to squeeze an experience made for PC monitors into a mobile phone. Far better, surely, to take Micazook’s approach, and create something entirely new, then pick up an audience for it attracted by the way it’s been made exclusively for phones. Of course, the problems can work the other way: Micazook says it’s planning to launch a PC version of i-Citizen 3D soon, which will have to compete against the big boys.

Still, it’s interesting to see increasing activity around the area of mobile virtual worlds. Expect more to follow in the rest of 2008, which should help us to figure out if they have a future.