Terra Nova: Arden Slows Down, Takes Breather

Ted says in the comments:

Emphasizing Shakespeare was a mistake. The burdens of a license! Everyone thought it was World of Hamlet and the point was to teach high school kids 2B|~2B. But teaching Shakespeare has always been an ancillary benefit, not the point. I thought it would be cute. But putting Shakespeare in the game, I found, took away resources from fun. Lore, by itself, did not make a fun game. Shakespeare also loaded us up with an entire community of expectations, people who dig the idea of a digital Shakespeare. To those people, I want to say YES, I dig the idea too, but please come up with the $50m it will take to build that world before asking me (AGAIN) when Arden is going to be done. I had $240K and was thrilled to have it. But that’s 1/200th of the money you’d need to do what some of the folks out there had dreamed up. Their dreams became pressure on us, and made me wonder why I didn’t say I was making Arden: World of Actuaries.

I did an interview with Virtual Worlds News, which has just been posted. There’s a fair amount of crunchy Metaplace info there, plus echoes of the recent discussion on categories, and of course my usual trademark philosophical rambling…

I do worry about virtual worlds having this enormous potential value, like social value, in terms of self-discovery and bridging gaps in cultures and bringing people together who wouldn’t normally interact. I want them to reach their potential for that. That’s the big boon they can bring society. I do worry that won’t happen. The Internet has the great advantage of letting the person who didn’t fit in in their small town find other people, but it also has the disadvantage of letting you avoid talking to people not like you. I see that as risky. I think it’s important to always be encountering viewpoints other than your own. With Metaplace as a network, it lets you serendipitously encounter that, but I do worry about it.

Virtual Worlds Forum Europe Conference Programme has the scoop. I’ll be on a panel, and I hear we may be doing a small demo…

Also, don’t forget that I will be at Virtual Worlds Fall next week, too.

Yes, the traveling is wearing me down. 🙂