3D Virtual Worlds vs. MMORPGs

I have spent 9 years exploring 3D Virtual Worlds, and 8 years playing MMORPGs.  For the longest time they felt like two different experiences.  3D Virtual Worlds are a creative outlet, while MMORPGs are a mostly cooperative gaming experience.  It seems that recently they have been merging.

I have not been adding many new virtual worlds to my master list lately.  While I am probably missing some, the main reason I have not been adding new ones is because there haven’t been any.  This is probably due to good old capitalism.  The potential market just isn’t as big as people thought, and the market that is there is covered really well by Second Life, IMVU, and OpenSim.

In the last couple of years, the growth in 3D gaming has been in free to play MMORPGs.  Not only do they attract a crowd with new gaming experiences, they have co-opted the social model of the 3D Virtual Worlds, creating central meeting places, and free “bases” you can decorate and host private gatherings.  They also have special interest groups you can join in game to meet like minded people.

Basically, everything that makes 3D Virtual Worlds popular, can now be found in MMORPGs too, except user created content.

This is why I now believe that if a complex “Metaverse” like OASIS in Ready Player One is  ever built, it is more likely to be in the form of an MMORPG rather than a 3D Virtual World.

We then must ask the question: How important is “user created content”?  Well, I learned early on during my 9 years of exploring that “content” is vitally important, in fact it is THE most important factor in the success of a 3D Virtual World, and in truth it is also one of the most important factor in MMORPGs, too (“playability” slightly trumps it however).  Allowing user created content is the fastest way to get content, but it is a two edged sword, because the vast majority of user created content is junk.  That user created content has to be loaded on the fly via asset servers which slows down and weakens the user experience.  So if a 3DVW or MMORPG can provide enough “content” without resorting to the user created variety, it is a better experience for the player.

On the other hand, creating the “user created content” is in and of itself the thing that attracts many to 3D Virtual Worlds in the first place.  It is one of the things I have enjoyed most about Second Life and There.com.

The truth is that content creators are seriously outnumbered by both socializers (especially since most content creators are also socializers), and gamers.  Now that MMORPGs are working to appeal to both of the latter groups, it is only the content creators who feel that 3DVWs are the better way to go.  For everyone else, there is simply more things to do in an MMORPG.

As far as “content” goes, competition between MMORPGs is fierce enough that the newest ones are constantly raising the bar on the amount (and quality) of the content they offer.  The thing that triggered this post is my exploration of “Lions Arch” in Guild Wars 2.  I have posted a lot of reviews of 3D builds, but I would say without question that the new “Lions Arch” is the most beautiful 3D build I have ever seen in any game I have ever played, regardless of genre.  It is a true masterpiece of the art form.

As I stated in a previous post, 3D Virtual Worlds are in a slow decline.  It is the competition with free to play MMORPGs that is doing it.  The MMOs are incorporating the stuff that makes 3DVWs popular.  If they are to survive, the 3DVWs need to start incorporating what makes MMOs popular.  They are just starting to do that.  The merging of the two genres seems inevitable.  I for one am looking forward to that, because it is only going to get more awesome.

Book Review: “Ready Player One”

So far I have only done one book review on this blog.  I read more than that of course, I just stick to talking about books that echo the themes of this blog.  The novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline does just that.

Ready Player One is one of the latest young adult dystopian books, though not as sick and twisted as the highly overrated Hunger Games.  It is set in the 2040′s when gas is so scarce that everyone abandons the suburbs for the big cities, but the cities don’t have room.  Oklahoma City comes up with the idea to build highrise trailer parks.  The books protagonist 17 year old Wade lives in the laundry room of a double wide, occupied by his aunt, her latest boyfriend, and two other families.

But Wade spends most of his time hiding in an abandoned van in a junk yard which he powers with a bicycle powered generator.  He jacks into a 3D Virtual World called OASIS, which thanks to technology allowing thousands of players to play in an area lag free, OASIS has become the 3D internet.  Wade attends a virtual high school, getting a better education than he would in an overcrowded school he lives in.

You can probably understand why I like this book so much.  The world is very similar to Snow Crash in that there are two worlds, a dystopian stink hole called the real world, and a utopian paradise everyone prefers to live in.  Ready Player One has a distinct advantage over Snow Crash, however, 20 years of hindsight.  Many of the conceptual ideas of the “Metaverse” in Snow Crash seem rather dumb with today’s technology.  OASIS, on the other hand, seems plausible if you take today’s technology and project it forward three decades.

A major theme of the book is the difference between the online world and the real world.  Our avatar personification vs. who we really are; Living in a fantasy world vs. dealing with the real world.  I have delved deeper than the novel has on these topics, but the novel does a good job dealing with them.

The central plot involves the creator of OASIS, a game designer turned multibillionaire  who upon his death wills nearly the entirety of his estate, including control of OASIS to whoever can solve the hidden puzzle he left behind hidden somewhere in the OASIS world.

With such a huge prize everyone goes out looking for it, but the puzzle is so well hidden, that 5 years go by before anyone manages to discover the beginning of the puzzle (which has 6 parts, 3 keys and 3 gates).  The person who discovers it is Wade.

I have mentioned a couple of times how different the world will get once energy starts to get scarce, and how gaming will become a welcome escape from that reality.  Here is a book that echoes that theme in a very entertaining way.

There is another interesting part I have yet to mention.  It seems that the mad gaming designer grew up during the 1980′s, and is obsessed with the books, games, comics, music and movies of that decade.  Solving the central puzzle requires expert knowledge of this material, and the players dedicated to solving the puzzle have to become experts on the 1980′s pop culture.  Lots of this novel is filled with references to  the ’80s.  Being someone who grew up in the 80′s as well, I got all the references and knew all the songs referenced in the novel.

This unfortunately may be the biggest negative of the book, there is too much 80′s references which are likely to get lost on kids who grew up in later decades.  Since this is a “young adult” novel aimed at teen audiences, I’m not sure how well it will go over with the target audience.  But it did go over well with me.  Ernest Cline created an “official soundtrack” here if you want to hear many of the songs referenced in the novel.  You might also want to familiarize yourself with the movies WarGames, Ladyhawke, Blade Runner, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail if you don’t already know them (If you don’t then shame on you, they are classics).  There are major references to the games Pac Man, Tempest, Joust, Adventure, Black Tiger, Dungeons of Daggorath and Zork, too.

Since this book seems like it was written specifically for me, I ran through it in a few days time.  General audiences may not be as well versed in these subjects as I am, though the author does spend a lot of time explaining things for the general reader’s benefit (mostly unnecessary in my case).

The book is currently available hard copy and e-book via links at the Official Site, paperback and cheaper e-books coming in June.

There is no pattern here

I haven’t written in a while, not because there is nothing to say, but because I have been busy with other stuff. So here is a post of random thoughts.

Gaming thoughts

So last month L.A. Noire, advertised as the most expensive game ever, was released for XBOX360 and PS3, but not for PC. People keep talking about a “next generation” in consoles, but that next gen already exists among us PC enthusiasts. Now I do not want to start a war between consoles and PCs, but this is something I have learned and have numerous examples to its veracity: Complex games are far better on PCs than they are on consoles. Console controllers are fine for simple games like arcade ports, 2D scrollers, racing games, simple sports sims, etc., but for FPS, or third person 3D, or RTS games, PC controls are far superior. Keyboard in one hand and mouse in the other just feels more natural than two thumb controls and a dozen awkwardly placed buttons on controllers designed for 12 year old hands.

So why do gaming companies not support PC gaming anymore? Most likely it is sales, and also copy protection, and not having to try and support 3 dozen different graphics cards, all good reasons. But games are hitting an upper limit in how complex they can be by pandering to consoles. A complex game like L.A. Noire could be a lot better on a PC, but there are no plans to port it.  Even though I own both an XBOX360 and a PS3, I will not be getting it anytime soon.  I already got Red Dead Redemption collecting dust, having never gotten past the tutorial because I hated the controls so much.  (I don’t really play game with controllers, I use my PS3 for watching videos, and my XBOX360 for playing Kinect Sports and occasionally Windows Media Center).

I tried the demo for Dragon Age 2 on my PS3, the PC version is better.  I tried console and PC versions of DC Universe Online, and the PC version is better.  They ran into a problem on DCUO in that there is a power combo that is uber powerful when played on the PC version (specifically the Transmutation power in the Sorcery line and Shuriken Storm on the Martial Arts line would, when executed in sync, do massive amounts of AoE damage).  This combo was easy to execute on the keyboard/mouse, but damn near impossible to do on the console controls for the PS3 version.  The problem was that there was no fix for the PC version that did not create a massive nerf of the PS3 version.  I do not know if they ever fixed it, I stopped playing DCUO back in February, and haven’t gone back.

WTF is going on here?

Another blogger name Cyber Trekker over at http://thegreatslexpedition.blogspot.com/ has been posting a lot that Cyberspace (aka the Metaverse, aka the 3D web) is already dead, thanks to mobile communications which are moving people back to “reality”.  (He’s not the only one, I have been seeing a lot of 3D web is dying articles lately, this was just one).  Simultaneously I see this video demonstrating Windows 8′s new interface model, which looks like Microsoft has plans to turn the PC into a big Windows phone.  Simultaneously EA announces that SimCity 5 will be a Facebook App. Meanwhile, famous game designer Richard Garriott wants to create a new “semi-3D” Virtual world portal that will tie social networks like Facebook, with mobile apps, with new virtual worlds into one big happy family.

I’m sorry but, this is insane.

Let me be clear: There is enough room on the Internet for everything and everybody.  Some may get the impression that the 3D virtual worlds are dying because their “share” of the internet is getting smaller.  In fact, the 3D Web continues to grow and it is only a matter of time before it too expands into the realm of mobile computing.  Its already making minor dents. But I have always said that the 3D web will never take over the 2D web, instead they will enhance each other.

Second: Memo to Microsoft: If I wanted to have my PC work like a tablet, I would just get a freaking tablet.  The Windows 7 interface is the greatest PC interface ever, and I already have gadgets on my desktop that show me news and weather and other stuff, and it is a lot prettier than the ugly orange-green-blue-purple mobile phone interface you are pushing for Windows 8.  Why not multiple interface models? One for traditional keyboard and mouse, one for “touch screen”, and one for Kinect?  You did not think of Kinect did you?  The bottom line is this: If you focus on merging the PC experience with the mobile experience, you are going to lose on both fronts.  Android, based off Linux, is already available for PCs that want to behave like mobile phones. There is no need to have common interfaces between devices.

Thirdly, Facebook sucks for gaming!  I know how the 300 million facebook users seems like a huge audience for gaming, especially social gaming, but every game on Facebook is a novelty at best.  SimCity might do well, as long as it is simplified to the casual user (wasn’t that what the godawful SimCity Societies try to be?)  As far as trying to interface a virtual world with Facebook, its been tried multiple times, always ending up in failure.  Facebook is a place designed for real people and real identities, virtual worlds are place for fantasy and role play make believe.  Are you really interested in letting your family, friends, and workplace know about your cosplay activities? Virtual Worlds and real life Social Networks do not belong together, ever!

Is there a pattern here? We have console game designers trying to turn console gaming into something it is not. We have advocates of mobile computing saying that mobile computing will take over everything, which is clearly not true. We have game designers tinkering with gaming on social networks, something it is clearly not designed for.  We continue to have people wanting to merge social networking and virtual worlding, which are incompatible.

The only pattern I can see is that there seems to be an ongoing battle between those that want to merge everything together, and those like me that think we are better off using the right tools for the right uses.  But this battle has been going on for a couple of decades.  In the 90′s “portal” websites like AOL and Yahoo wanted to be everything for everybody.  They wanted to make their websites so complete, there would never be any reason to go anywhere else.  They failed of course, but a lot of good came out of those attempts.  Now Facebook wants to play the “portal” role, and mobile phones and gaming consoles want to eliminate the need for PCs, and none of these objectives will succeed, but maybe some good will come out of the attempts.

Or, maybe there is no pattern here.

Reality Is Broken: A Book Review

I have never actually done a book review before on this blog, but my previous two blogs I did them all the time.  After reading Reality is Broken, I felt compelled to write a full formal review, as its contents are perfect fodder for this blog.  In fact there is enough here to fill a good half a dozen blog posts, but then why would you need to read the book?  So for now here is a brief introduction to the themes and ideas contained.

Reality is Broken is a new book by first time author Jane McGonigal, a professional game designer.   She starts off quoting economist Edward Castronova, who said “We’re witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments.”, then goes on to quote some amazing stats like, the total amount time spent in World of Warcraft by all players adds up to 5.8 million years, and 500 million people spend at least an hour a day in online games for a total of 3 billion hours a week, and the average child will spend over 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21, the same amount of time they spend in school from 5th grade to 12th grade.

While many people react negatively to such huge numbers, considering it a waste of time.  McGonigal insists that it is not enough, that we should have more people playing online gaming.  She believes the world is better off with more gamers.  Being a fan of ideas that defy conventional wisdom (as my last two essays demonstrate), I had to find out more.  I have a hard time figuring out if Reality is Broken is a book about games disguised as a book about social issues, or a book about social issues disguised as a book about games.  I guess if you are librarian trying to figure out where to put the book, this would matter, but for us average readers it does not.

There are basically three themes to this book.  The first is the one that resonates the most for me:  Games make us happy.

The emotional impact of games is something game designers are very interested in, and spend a lot of money researching, so it is no surprise that many modern video games are designed with making players happy.  Consider what I wrote about last week in regards to “finding a purpose” to our lives. The four types of purposes that bring us meaning and lasting happiness:

• We crave “satisfying work” or being immersed in clearly defined, demanding activities that allow us to see the direct impact of our efforts.
• We crave the “hope of success”, which is more powerful than the actual success.  We want to be optimistic about our chances for success in our endeavors, and even if we fail, we at least want to improve over time.
• We crave social connections, share experiences and build bonds with others.  We most often accomplish this by doing things that matter together.
• We crave meaning, or the chance to be part of something larger than ourselves.  We want to feel curious, awe, and wonder about things that unfold on epic scales.

Now consider these four categories of “purpose” in the context of playing video games.  Almost all games can hit 2 or 3 of those, and the MMORPG can hit all four categories.  From a positive psychologists stand point, gamers are some of the happiest people on the planet.

I know what some of you are thinking.  Is the happiness you get playing in virtual worlds just virtual happiness? frivolous, fleeting and temporary?  No, not according positive psychologists.  Dan Gilbert himself says there is no discernible difference between synthesized happiness and real happiness.

Which leads to the second theme of the book: Gamers are escaping from a broken reality.  McGonigal list 14 ways that gaming worlds are superior to real worlds.  She is not talking specifically about online video games at this point, but many different kinds of games that help us deal with reality.  The majority of the book is about these 14 “Reality Fixes”, and as she goes through each one she discusses two or three different games or gaming systems that encourage these reality fixes.  She discusses dozens of different games, some I am familiar with, some I’d love to play, and some I do not.

Anyone looking into game design should read the book if nothing else than for the various ideas that are likely to come to mind while reading.  I came up with an idea myself while reading, and have gone as far as researching some special programming I would need to do to get it to work.  More on that later, maybe.

And finally the third theme: Games can save the world, and gamers are our best resource to do just that.

Games can, and have been designed to help us focus on real world issues.  McGonigal is a game designer who works primarily on a category of games know as Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs, which are designed to form communities and tackle problems, primarily problems created by the game authors, but they can also tackle real world problems like “peak oil” which I discussed 2 posts ago.   In 2007, McGonigal was part of a design team for an experimental ARG called World Without Oil.  The original 1,900 players from all walks of life did not find any solutions, but came away mostly optimistic that people can come together in a crisis and adjust their lifestyles to fit new realities.  Since then McGonigal has been part of other socially conscious ARGs, and is confident that games like this can one day change the world.  But in order to make these world changing games to work, we need gifted people to play them.  Enter the “gamers”.

She discusses the fact that more than half of the students today spend 10,000 hours playing games before they turn 21.  That by definition, that makes them “virtuosos” at gaming.  The biggest question is what are all these “virtuosos” capable of?  She breaks down 4 qualities that long time gamers possess: 1. Blissful productivity — the understanding that happiness comes from hard work and not from passive activities like watching TV.  2. Urgent optimism — the desire to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that there is a reasonable hope of success, or desiring the “epic win”.  3. Social fabric — the ability to form tight communities built on trust, like guilds.   4. Epic meaning — the desire to be part of something bigger than themselves, even if that bigger thing may just be fictional.  Notice that these four qualities correspond to the four “categories of purpose” listed above.

McGongal’s goal is to find a way to focus the talents inherent in gamers to tackle the problems the world face today and “fix reality”.

If you are interested in these ideas, but not up to spending $14 on the e-book, you can get a 20 minute summary from her speech at ted.com, or there is also a website realityisbroken.org you can read, or sign up to find out about the latest world changing ARG games.

Is it true?

I have not decided how true the thesis is.   Being a gamer, an amateur game designer, and a participant in ARGs, I at least understand the thesis.  I want to believe the thesis is true, but understanding the worlds problems and finding solutions is unfortunately a fraction of the problem.  Experience is that all new ideas that diverge from the “business as usual” tends to face overwhelming political opposition no matter how good or true they are.  The corporate powers that be seem to think that video games are a form of soma to pacify the masses into complacency, and I am not sure that they are wrong.

At the very least I accept the first theme: Games do make us happy, and I mostly accept the second theme: Games are an escape from reality.  I constantly hear complaints from politicians that video games are too violent and inspire more violence.  The evidence is not there to back that up.  As games have gotten more popular, violent crime has gone down, not up.  Places where sex games are common, like Japan, have actually seen a reduction of sex related crimes.  Maybe sex games should be more popular everywhere.  In these respects games have already changed the world for the better.

But there is another way that games can change the world and it is outlined in my last three blog posts.  From The Energy Situation, I pointed out that we are quickly running out of resources needed to grow the economy.  From Happiness 102 I pointed out that materialism, the driving force behind the running out of resources, does not really bring us happiness anyways.  And finally with Reality is Broken we learn one activity, gaming, can be a real source of happiness.  While gaming is not always a carbon neutral activity, it can be.  Thus gaming is a way to reduce our need for diminishing resources while still making life livable. Oddly, I previously posted this idea before.

But it is important to keep all of this in balance.  McGonigal concludes her book:

Reality is too easy. Reality is depressing. It is unproductive, and hopeless. It is disconnected, and trivial. It’s hard to get into. It’s pointless, unrewarding, lonely, and isolating. It’s hard to swallow. It’s unsustainable. it’s disorganized and divided. It’s stuck in the present.

Reality is all of these things. But in  at least one crucially important way, reality is also better. Reality is our destiny. This is why our single most urgent mission in life is to engage with reality, as fully and as deeply as we can.

That does not mean we can’t play games. It simply means that we have to stop thinking of games as only escapist entertainment.

Good games can play an important role in improving our real quality of life. They support social cooperation and civic participation at very big scales. And they help us lead more sustainable lives and become a more resilient species.

Games don’t distract us from our real lives. they fill our real lives: with positive emotions, positive activity, positive experiences, and positive strengths.

Games aren’t leading us to the downfall of human civilization. They are leading us to its reinvention.

Second Life Dumping Teen Grid

In a stealthy announcement as part of the SLCC keynote.  Philip Rosedale broke the news that Second Life was dropping the Teen Grid.  This is bad news for schools that use Second Life Teen Grid as a learning platform for students.  (For those schools affected, I’d recommend Reaction Grid as a PG alternative.)

Those of us who observe what is going on knew this was coming a long time ago.  With Zindra and the added A rating, the adult parts of Second Life are cordoned off from eyes that should not be seeing them.  This made the Teen Grid obsolete.  And, lets face it; most of the under aged SL players were signing up for the main grid anyways.

Schools interested in using SL as a platform for giving students an opportunity to learn 3D art and graphics, should consider Open Sim in my opinion.  Stuff built in Open Sim can be moved easily enough to Second Life, and you can build a secure grid just for your school, or if you want to open things up to other schools, or allow students to create from home, you can join Reaction Grid, or Science Grid.  Many schools and colleges have done so already.  It also saves money.

It shall be interesting to see what happens when they merge the two worlds.  I’m kind of curious to see if there is anything in Teen Grid worth seeing that cant be found in the main grid.

A Quick Peek at Onverse

With the collapse of There.com, a lot of former Thereans are now virtual homeless.  Many members of There avoid Second Life for various reasons, so they have been visiting many other worlds.  One that is getting a lot of buzz among the ex-There people is a little known virtual world called Onverse.  And for good reason, Onverse is probably the 3D virtual world most like There.  You won’t find vehicles, but you find cartoon avatars, houses to decorate, There like environments to explore, and social events with decent sized crowds to hang out in.  So I decided to take a closer look at Onverse.

There are basically two strategies in business. Go big, and try to be everything to everyone, or go small and cater to a small audience. Part of the go small strategy is to get by with as little overhead as possible, and rely on word of mouth advertising.

Onverse is definitely in that small category. The company consists of five guys working out of a garage in Tempe Arizona, a town I am very familiar with (Google Lively was also based out of Tempe before it closed down).  It also seems to have only a small advertising budget relying on word of mouth advertising.

They have been around almost a year and they have seen quite a bit of growth.  When I first logged in last June, there were very few people, a typical result with most new worlds I visit.  Since then the number of people I see keeps getting bigger, the environments have more and more instances, it has become a small and busy place.

Onverse is not limited to PC, it runs on Mac and even Linux.  The graphics are simple and cartoon like, designed to work on any computer.  Possibly even a phone app in the future.  Basically it can run on anything, and probably works just fine on a dialup modem, assuming you want to wait for the large download.  All the graphics in the game are pre-loaded in the client, meaning there is no graphics lag, but you will have to occasionally update your client whenever new items are added to the game.

The disadvantage is that there is no user created content.  You can customize your avatar and you can get a free apartment to customize too, but you can’t create your own clothes or items due to restrictions of the Torque engine.  This will no doubt limit the appeal of the virtual world to many.  Another limiting appeal might be the strange looking avatars.  They are definitely of the cartoon variety and the customization is a little limited.

On the upside, the virtual world is family friendly, and very easy to use.  Onverse has one of the best tutorial areas I have seen in a 3D virtual world.  By the end of the tutorial section you will know all that you need to know. The interface is simple and uses the normal keyboard and mouse controls you probably used in other programs.

Bottom line, Onverse is a small virtual world that won’t appeal to everybody, but it should find an audience that likes the cartoon look and feel.  Kids and young teens, especially young girls, will likely enjoy the environment and social activities the most, but it is appealing enough for all ages to check out.

Favorite There Moments

So I need to make one last There.com post just to say goodbye.  The pic above is the first screenshot I took in There.  Most of the people in the screenshot, especially Twiddler, Marykins, and Emilia are people I knew in The Sims Online, and they encouraged me to sign up for beta.

Our primary activity in The Sims Online was making gnome statues to the point we were getting pretty sick of it.  The first item I submitted (and got approved) was a shirt with a gnome on it.  (Don’t tell anyone, I stole the gnome image from the TSO load files)

I never became a big developer in There, I sold enough stuff to get by. I lucked out and got a funzone (Ebony Rock) and made enough money to pay the rent on the thing. I left the funzone open for anyone to schedule events, because I was mad that There sold them off and left it up to the owners to decide who gets to use the funzones.  There was much more fun when they were all open and anyone could schedule an event.  So I was able to buy one that I could save and leave open.  Eventually, I stopped playing There and was running short of therebucks needed to keep up the rent so I sold it via auction. The thing sold for T$300,000 (about $150 US), and never had to buy Therebux again.  I think I still had around T$220,000 left when There closed.  When all the gains and losses are added up, I basically played for free, so Makena can keep my left over Therebucks if they want.

A community as large as There is going to attract some troublemakers, and no one was as notorious as Jopy. He got into There in early beta and took to heart the beta mantra of testing everything.  In the early days before port-a-zones, we could drop stuff anywhere we wanted, Jopy purposely ruined every scenic location in There with gigantic signs and lots of other crap.  He was well hated, but after a while many of us just started laughing at his exploits. A ton of improvements were made thanks to Jopy.  Anyways, one day I found Jopy left his custom buggy out for me to steal, and I hid it in the last place he would ever look… the egyptian sarcophagus.  It was very Jopy of me.

My first day in there, I got a “try it” hoverboard and liked it so much, I bought a jet black advanced hoverboard and rode that thing everywhere.  From day 1 until my very last day in There, I was on that board wandering around the countryside.  Somehow I never achieved “Legendary” status on that thing, but came damn close. I never achieved legendary status in any activity, but ended up as “renowned” in most of them.  Hoverboarding was my favorite activity…

… with underwear parties coming in a close second.

One of the There newspapers had a contest for a There version of a famous painting and I submitted a There version of “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper.  I came in second if I remember.

One of the bigger There independent developers Kittenkat came up with a way to change all the graphic files in There and turn There into a winter wonderland.  The idea of a wintery landscape eventually was added to the game in the form of “frosty” island.

Nudity was not allowed in There of course, but there were plenty of ways to fake it.  All you had to do was replace one of the shirt files with a skin tone file.

In the early days of There, I created a “nude patch” replacing the lame reward shirts with female bare chest shirts.  The reward shirt for hoverboarding “Ride” was the female bare chest for caramel skin, the most popular skin tone.  Eventually, they replaced the reward shirts with better prizes.  Months later hoverboarding “Ride” shirts became rare and were selling for ridiculously high prices.  The culprit was my nude patch which somehow became an underground sensation, especially at dance clubs.  If you had carmel skin, and wore a “ride” shirt, everyone with my nude patch would see you topless.

I preferred the Latte skin color which used the much less expensive “Host” shirt.

That is not all that I was famous for. I created the first ever “picture quest”.  Quests that tell stories were all the rage, but one of the things you could do with the quest kits was link to a web page.  So I took screen shots of me at 10 nearby locations, and in each quest clue I would give you a general direction to follow and a link to one of the screenshots.  The next clue would be located wherever I was standing in the shot.

I only did one, but the concept was popular enough that dozens of other picture quests appeared around There. The most popular variation on the theme, however, was the cross country buggy races. I loved those events, and won at least twice.

I mentioned before that the first ever official live concert in a virtual world by a signed band was held in There by British band Steadman.  You can listen to the concert here.  After the concert I was caught ass grabbing one of the band members

So many memories, but it is now over   One last pic to post.

Wish I was too!

Metaverse Reactions to There Closing

Many of the smaller 3D Virtual Worlds are trying to lure in There.com members.

Twinity wants to attract There.com developers by exchanging some Therebucks for Twinity Globals.

Active Worlds is offering 6 months free to former There players.

Frenzoo is offering free lifetime VIP status to There members.

Moove has a special sign up area for There members.

Kaneva has a There Channel available.

Blue Mars has a new region called Pavonis, designed by a member of There, with the same tropical archipelago theme of There.

Utherverse, makers of adult oriented virtual worlds like Red Light Center have created therenewworld.com Not sure how that will go over with the teenage crowd that dominated There.

Second Life created a special greetings area just for There members who join SL

A blogger at Second Life left a stirring farewell:

This week brought the sad announcement that the online world There.com would  be closing its doors come March 9. We were sorry to hear the news;  There provided a valuable service to its users, and is one of a very few  pioneers in what is generally know nas the “social virtual worlds” space. There  helped prove that 3D online worlds could be more than just chat rooms  with moving pictures. They provided a wonderful space for their vibrant  communities who gathered to hang out and have fun — even before the  paintballs became free.

Though Second Life has to an extent  served a different audience, we do hope that those who care to (and who  are 18 or over) can find as much enjoyment in Second Life as they did in  There.com. Our two platforms have developed along very different paths,  but each offers the opportunity to interact with other people in ways  that can’t be found anywhere else online — the opportunity for  unparalleled expression in an environment that offers experiences that  are every bit as meaningful as those that take place in the physical  world.

Many of us at Linden Lab know — or are –  There.com members. Others — myself included — have friends who work at  There. It’s safe to say that all of us are sorry to see the end of a  truly innovative company and product, but I’m confident that the people  involved with it, whether as employees or as members, will keep on  creating and exploring the most social and expressive technologies  available today and in years to come.

The end of any community  platform is an unhappy moment, and we certainly feel for the community.  Although it may not be the same as the world you know and love, we hope  you will come and explore another online world of possibility and  engaging experiences. We are working on creating some new places for  you, so look for news of those in a future post. We’ll look for you inworld.

What would Second Life be without There.com?  Both have as their original source material, the “metaverse” of Snow Crash, though their interpretation varied. Both opened their beta in 2003.  Approximately half of SL beta members were also There beta members. Because at the time There had more stuff to do, while SL was a pure build it yourself world, a lot of the early SL builds were inspired by There.com.

Many prominent SL pioneers came from There. Yadni, of Yadni’s Junkyard, the first great “freebie mall”, was from There. As was Starley Thereian of Celestial Studios, the first great high end fashion boutique, Desmond Shang who owns and operates Caledon, the largest privately owned themed continent (50 regions), Cristiano who runs sluniverse.com the largest independent forum dedicated to Second Life (and named after a once popular, now non existent independent forum called there universe dot com), to name a few.

Thanks to competition from There, SL gave us freebie basic accounts, auctions, classifieds, camera controls and voice capabilities.  Former There software engineer Jeff Ventrella joined Second Life for a while and gave us flexi prims, and improved avatars.

Second Life would be a very different place, and probably a lot smaller place, without There.com.

There.com Coming to a Close

There.com was the second 3D Virtual World I joined and from June 2003 to May 2004, it was my only virtual home.  I was a Beta and a regular, well known throughout the early days of There.

On Tuesday May 9th my former virtual home will close for good.  My former residence at the Ebony Rock Funzone will disappear in the virtual ether.

The announcement comes as a surprise to everyone, including some of the employees of Makena.  This thread at sothereforums.com is where a lot of former Thereans as well as former employees are going to talk about the closure as the official forums have closed completely.

From a technical standpoint, There was above everybody.  The biggest wants of Second Life players today is copy protection, smooth transition from region to region, better ways to market products, and better vehicles.  There had these things from day 1.  Avatars in There have capabilities still not seen in any other game.  Planet There was the largest avatar navigable 3D object, just slightly smaller than planet Earth.  Actual land mass is about 650 sq km, about 1/3 the size of Second Life.

If I were to design a new “ultimate” 3D Virtual World, I would start with There, radically improve the graphics, the avatars, and steal IMVU’s awesome interface, steal Second Life’s system of building, add scripting capabilities, and animation import.  At the heart of it though, it would still be There.

So long There, I will miss you.

What if you built an awesome 3D Virtual World and nobody came?

What if you built an awesome 3D Virtual World and nobody came? That seems to be the question facing the makers of a 3D virtual world that I recently discovered.

I was tinkering around with evolver.com a 3D avatar maker that hopes to create a common avatar for multiple web based 3D worlds. I was using it to create a new avatar for facebook, and I saw one of the “transport” options was something called

friendshangout.com

The name sounds atrociously lame. Sounds like a chat website for lonely emo teenagers. Who would want to go to a website like that? Curiosity, of course, got the better of me. The website was as lame as I thought it would be, featuring lots of pics of good looking college kids with dumb smiles on their face, and a video of some blonde chick reading marketing dribble from a teleprompter.

My first reaction was “I want no part of this”, my second was to see just how lame of a 3D chat this was going to be, like slowing down to look at an auto accident, or smelling expired milk before throwing it away.

So I create an account, go to the 3D chat page and pick a beach setting. My expectation dropped even further when I saw the 3D Chat runs in a web browser (remember Google Lively?). I was ready for the worst, and then…

OMG!!!

This was completely unexpected! A beautiful fully developed 3D world with awesome graphics, easy to use navigation, decent evolver avatars, that runs in a freaking web browser!

There are also vehicles to ride, and about a half dozen environments to explore. The only thing I didn’t try out was the chat feature as I could never find anyone else online. I pretty much had the place to myself, which was kind of sad.

This is a quality 3D Virtual World that impressed me way more than Blue Mars, and it is too bad it is buried behind crappy marketing.

Further reasearch indicates that the virtual world is based on the Unity game engine. The friends hangout “Island Paradise” is identical to the demo “Tropical Paradise” as seen on unity3d.com. Apparently some of the other places at friends hangout consist of other demos, or worlds created from arteria3d.com.

A little whois research indicates that friendshangout.com was registered over five years ago by a company that has a bunch of similarly designed websites, which tells me it is some off the shelf web template they are using.

So someone has managed to combined cheap avatars from evolver.com, with a cheap web based 3D gaming engine from unity3d.com (was $200, now available for free), and put up a cheap website with a domain they already owned.

If they were to actually get some professional web designer with a decent social network web system, and buy a decent domain name, and promoted it, they may have something really cool.

There is not enough content here for long term interest, but in the mean time, I am enjoying what is here.

It is a nice place to visit on the remote outskirts of the Metaverse.