As reported earlier by Dave, Linden Labs and IBM believe the future of virtual worlds involves portable avatars: make one online representation of you, and have it work in multiple games. This is, without a doubt, the stupidest game idea of the decade.

Just about every force in game development would be arrayed against this idea, and it doesn't even make sense for players.

1. Companies do not want easy portability. A company wants people to stick with the game that funds the company, not play games by other companies. No game is going to make a design decision that will work to that game's certain detriment. Second Life can advocate this because Second Life isn't a game, and it requires publicity like this for the world to even know it exists.

2. Games have different purposes, and thus different requirements of the art. Games where a lot of characters need to be on screen at once require polygon and texture efficiencies that other games may not require. Games involving combat require avatars that can animate a certain way, as compared to games that place more emphasis on other kinds of animation, like facial animation. Creating an avatar that can do everything means creating very heavy avatars, avatars that tax most systems and reduce the potential audience of people with computers who can play your game.

3. Games have different themes. I'm Art Director for Lord of the Rings Online, and Middle-earth has a distinct visual theme. If we did not take the visuals of the game seriously, the players wouldn't believe in our conception of Middle-earth at all. If we added random avatars from other random games, our ability to maintain any notion of Middle-earth at all would be nil. So all games are supposed to abandon all control over their own art direction to permit all avatars? This helps who, exactly?

Themeless flying-penis 3D chatrooms like Second Life may not mind elves and cyborgs and waitresses and talking squirrels all standing around talking with one another, but other games take their theme a little more seriously. The Floating Vagabond is cool and all, and has its place, but that place is not "everywhere".

4. Not everyone wants to be the same person online, always. I have a Man in LotRO; a Dwarf in WoW; a blue-skinned alien with a mohawk in City of Heroes; an old, bald, mad-scientist master of a zombie hoarde in City of Villians, and on and on. I don't want to be the same character across games. I want to try new things, be new characters.

The simple fact that Linden Labs thinks that this is a feature that people will want is another clue that points to the fact that they don't seem to have an actual idea: the content is an uncontrolled hodge-podge, which is fine if that's what you want. But some games do have an idea, and do have a goal, and want to work towards it.