A new and genuinely innovative avatar-centric world emerges from the ether in the Fall: There.com. This well-funded ($33 million) startup has a boatload of star power (former EA executives) running it and a very impressive 3D engine that could make the online community look and feel like a standalone video game. There.com promises a polished program that gives users interesting vacation worlds - "virtual getaways" -- with lots of activities like hover board tours, buggy races, paintball fights, and, yes, shopping.

"One reason 3D multi-user chat environments haven't succeeded is that they haven't been very good consumer experiences," says founder Will Harvey, who created Zany Golf and Music Construction Set for EA back in the day. We're hoping that for all of its insight, technical prowess, and marketing savvy, There.com doesn't fall victim to an even bigger bogey -- high-tech social idealism.

Harvey has it right when he recognizes that well-hyped online communities/games like The Sims Online suffer only tepid acceptance because a lot of people end up standing and saying "Whassup?" to one another until they all get bored and log off. "Core to our thinking, is that doing things is a catalyst for conversation and getting to know people," says Harvey.

Much of the business press covering There.com when it went into limited beta testing in January focused on how the company ultimately intends to license this engine out for use in virtual e-commerce, e-training, online conferences and the like. Harvey admits this is premature. "Many of the companies that have begun with a vision like ours failed in part because they weren't able to focus on their immediate and early steps to run a successful business," he says. "We're extremely disciplined as a company, so all effort is aimed at the core product, which is socializing and meeting friends." Admirable sentiments, but the real question is whether non-techie audiences, the women and casual onliners There.com is targeting, want to engage in virtual conversations online at all in significant enough numbers to support a business. At a modest 100,000 subscribers after unprecedented media hype, The Sims Online does not make a convincing case for the virtual community business.

Marketing Meets Design

There.com needs to combine its substantial marketing savvy with its world-building theory to bring us to the next level, and this is where some other game firms might come in. Wisely, the company has partnered already with product brands like Levis and Nike, which are "selling" virtual versions of their fashions in the There.com world for avatars to wear.

Likewise, these brands will be excellent, efficient marketing vehicles for There.com when it launches. They will put discs and promotions into the shopping malls and penetrate non-techie, non-gaming market segments that still run in terror at the sight of an EB store. This is the sort of piggyback marketing that game companies generally are only starting to get right. Sports game discs are beginning to show up in cereal boxes, for instance. But it is beyond us why EA didn't launch The Sims Online with major marketing partnerships and sponsorships, product tie-ins and in-game placements in the same way most summer film blockbusters now are marketed.

The point is not just that game companies need to leverage their popularity better and harvest co-marketing deals, although that is an important point. As Hollywood already knows, product manufacturers want to ally themselves with entertainment vehicles, especially now that audiences are fragmented across many media and tend to come together around major entertainment events.

The bigger point is that online communities like Sims Online and There.com need to be populated by familiar, real-world brands and media experiences. In an honest effort to expand the market into untapped segments like casual Web users and women, these projects shouldn't make the same fatal error many Web companies did by idealistically banking on the innate creativity of ambitious, creative members to expand these worlds in interesting ways. That is how DIY homepage farms like Tripod and TheGlobe.com failed and became bizarroburgs of disparate, amateurish sites.

No, what we and users need in these worlds, perhaps in other types of game worlds, are pre-fabricated experiences made by professionals and underwritten by sponsors who need these audiences. EA or THQ should build a theme park in There.com, polished, extraordinary experiences that avatars can discuss but also enjoy for their own sake. But they shouldn't code a single line without corporate underwriting. Wouldn't Hershey or Anheuser Busch be interested in sponsoring an online park that resembles their own? Wouldn't Mazda want to feature its own cars in online stock car races among these avatars?

If the next level of game design and marketing recognizes gaming as a medium like film and TV, then it too must create spaces in and around the content for sponsors to underwrite and co-market. If it extends its own good design and marketing principles in the right directions, There.com could point the way. Why shouldn't major game releases enjoy big brand corporate sponsorship? Why shouldn't The Sims 2 be brought to us by Home Depot?