What if the Metaverse were Chinese?

With news that now Shanda, one of the biggest Chinese MMO companies, is planning on making a metaverse world, it’s a legitimate question, If the flavor of a metaverse is driven largely by who is connected to it, then population will surely have a disproportionate impact on the overall flavor of the space. It might be that we say goodbye to the libertarian sorts of approaches that currently define the ideals of some virtual worlds, and arguably underpin the whole field (cf Bartle’s take on how the “hacker ethic” informed early MUDs).

The motive for Shanda is of course crassly commercial; after all, HiPiHi has already entered beta. In fact, the sheer lack of content here is reminiscent of the recent talk from Atari about making a virtual world: basically, not even an announcement, just the hint that maybe they are consdering one.

“We are moving to diversify our games,” Mr Chen told the Financial Times. “The only thing we care about is what users like, so we are also having a try  . . .  at this Second Life kind of direction.”

The Shanda chairman declined to comment on when the Shanghai-based company might release such a title or offer any further details. However, he did say: “We have this kind of plan.”

However entrepreneurial the companies in China might be, however, there’s always the fact that the government there, unlike the ones in the West, is hyperaware of the market and the field. And it’s not a libertarian sort of government at all.

There has been much talk of the possibility of a segmented Internet, precisely because of things like the Second Life ageplay controversy: different countries have different standards and laws, and web services that cut across national boundaries have to either abide by all of them, or be locked out of territories. But lockout is one thing, and outright evangelism is another:

Beijing has been stepping up efforts to control the internet, with the ruling Communist party Politburo recently calling for more online promotion of Marxism and a crackdown on “decadent” content.

So if Shanda’s world becomes the first metaverse to have a million actual active users, do Western companies flock to it instead, seeking revenue? What happens when a pop culture artifact like that promotes very different political and economic philosophies?