Cyber MEGACITY + more on Meet-Me

It helps to have someone fluent in Japanese in the office. 🙂 So first up, here’s word on Cyber MEGACITY, a newly announced virtual world.

Nikkei Exchange (Japan’s NYSE) announcement of a new virtual space research/holding company.

SBI Holdings is forming a new subsidiary (SBI Robo) in partnership with design firm Beyond C and marketing group ArchiveGate (AG Consulting) to create a new virtual space called Cyber MEGACITY, based on Tokyo’s 0^th administrative ward.

The article has very little about the actual product, since it’s basically an announcement of company formation. But it sounds like the goal is more mirror-world sorts of things, integrating real-world commerce with the virtual space. And it looks like they are aiming more at backend tech — some day even to be robust ebnough to use for something like a Virtual Wall Street. To quote the guy who translated it for me, “…more like a platform research organization…. looking to come up with a more robust, secure, and re-marketable infrastructure for tying virtual items to real property that they can then sell or apply to other virtual spaces.” Their design firm, Beyond C, are most well known as the designers for the series Animatrix.

Secondly, I mentioned Meet-Me the other day…

This winter, Japanese developer Meet-Me will be presenting a reproduction of the city of Tokyo similar to the virtual space Second Life.   Adult themes will be excluded, and the overall administration will be made as simple as possible, with the goal that both children and women can both safely enjoy the experience.

Meet-Me is the product of a joint enterprise between Trance Cosmos, From™ Software, and the Industry Financial news corporation [think the Wall Street Journal for Japan’s Tokyo area].  They plan to release the alpha version of what they are calling a “Second-Life like net-based 3d virtual space” in winter of this year.  Within the virtual Tokyo, users can freely construct buildings and exchange goods and services.

Avatar design will be provided by the participation of well-known anime production firm Studio Pierrot (IG), and the software will be administered and maintained by From Software.

Unlike problems that have famously plagued Second Life, the design aesthetics and player interaction will be tailored more to a Japanese audience, and adult themes will be prohibited to encourage safe participation by children and women.

 Some key points that the article mentions (and this is their wording and take on things, not mine):

•  Second Life is not well adopted by Japanese players because the Web 2.0 “open source” free-for-all model of construction and environment creation goes against Japanese aesthetic sensibilities
• The interface will be designed to be easier than Second Life to encourage participation by more casual and young players
• The avatar customization and building construction will be done via a very extensive library and not completely free-form like Second Life, and the types of business models permitted in-game will be designed to not allow gambling or other operations of questionable legality
• The primary business model is selling virtual real estate.  It sounds like so far, they have actually financed a significant portion of their production costs by pre-selling reserved virtual real estate
• They are finding that one of the primary draws to virtual spaces like this in Japan is a significant lowering of tatemae, which is an untranslatable word meaning the behavioral filter of politeness that permeates all of Japanese society.  While the politeness factor is still in play, and griefer players are far more rare than in “overseas” virtual spaces, they gave the example of a character asking another “What do you think of these shoes.”  The dynamics of the virtual space allow the other character to honestly say “Wow, those are terrible” with less inhibition than they might in real life, which they are discovering is an immense draw for many people, especially younger generations.
• The President has stated as their current long-term goal, the complete reconstruction of Tokyo’s 23^rd administrative ward, with all 500 train stations and all 1.7 million buildings.  (Even if they succeed, this is still only about 1/40^th of the Tokyo Metropolitan area).