Virtual Worlds 2008 Wrap Up

 Posted by (Visited 5722 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Apr 092008
 

Virtual Worlds News has a great wrap-up article covering all of the major blog posts and reactions to the show. Sounds basically like lots of dealmaking and announcements, but also some tentativeness from many commentators. Be sure to read the takes from Prokofy, Christian Renaud, Cory O., and others. Some echoes of my “high windows” keynote at the GDC Worlds in Motion Summit.

However, what really struck me walking around the show was how constrained the virtual world dream has become. There are a bunch of projects that look like less populated and less functional versions of Second Life, usually with some marketing material promising a “safer” or more “corporate” environment. A few other companies are promising rapid and cheap creation of advertising worlds, leveraging outsourced production.

Is this really the Metaverse? Is this even the 3D internet?

 -Cory Ondrejka

Apr 092008
 

I’m not sure there is, at least as we understand it. Not at the moment, anyway.

When we speak of “casual” we mean a cluster of things. Sometimes we mean targeting a different demographic, one not excited by the hardcore fantasy-and-sci-fi fictions we concoct. Sometimes we mean shorter play sessions. Sometimes we mean things like not requiring grouping in the worlds, which makes it easier for a less dedicated player to have fun.

More “casual” experiences often have a connotation of being shallow. One thing that is clear, though, is that it doesn’t matter how casual you make an experience, some people will use it in a hardcore manner.  And that means that it must have hidden depths of some sort. A shallow experience simply doesn’t tend to keep people.

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RSS feed fixed

 Posted by (Visited 6665 times)  Misc  Tagged with: , ,
Apr 082008
 

Someone finally pointed out to me that the feed has been busted for days. It’s fixed now. So you can go catch up, if you read the blog that way. Also upgraded one more version — almost to 2.5 finally. Sheesh.

I see I now have this nifty tagging feature. There’s a tag cloud over on the sidebar now, and I tagged some of the recent posts. I also installed a plugin that lets readers tag posts — it’s at the end of each post, and it lets readers suggest tags. Enough people agree, and the tag goes on the post. Spaces are allowed in the tags. So have at!

Apr 082008
 

Trevor F. Smith is, of course, the prime mover behind Ogoglio and Tomorrow Space, and he has a pair of posts that lay out a bit of a roadmap for the development of a 3d web.

Don’t run away screaming– it’s a lot more plausible than you think! But of course, I have some thoughts on his thoughts, too. 🙂

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