Is there such as thing as a casual online world?

 Posted by (Visited 11537 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,
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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Trevor Smith predicts the VW future

 Posted by (Visited 7651 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , , ,
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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IsoTileMaker

 Posted by (Visited 4935 times)  Gamemaking  Tagged with: ,
Apr 072008
 

isoicon.PNGI just realized I never posted about this over here, only on the main Metaplace site. A while back I did a little tool for Metaplace users to help them make isometric walls. Nothing too fancy, and there’s higher-end tools out there for this sort of purpose, but this does do some nice stuff like help you make sloping walls, do whole batches of textures and generate hundreds of walls quickly, etc.

So here it is — free, and no guarantees. 😉

If you want to check out some of the stuff that users have made with it, there’s a  little gallery thread over on the MP website. And the latest version is generally linked here.

Metachat is on Facebook now too

 Posted by (Visited 9841 times)  Gamemaking  Tagged with: , , ,
Mar 272008
 

You can get it here.

This actually connects to the same chat world as the one on MySpace, and the one on our forums. So it’s all one big happy cross-SNS virtual worldlet in Flash.

We also got a bunch of forums interested in trying to integrate a Metaplace world on their forums… it’ll be one based on Metachat to start with, though it can of course change later. It’ll be their own world, though.

Last time I mentioned this little app on here, people challenged the question of whether it was actually a world or not. Well, it supports hundreds to thousands, there’s physics, a sense of place and space, you can kick a soccer ball, interact in real time… the background could scroll, and you could have avatars instead of profile pics. So… close enough, to my mind. 🙂

BTW, we’re going to start spotlighting community members and their worlds. The first spotlight is up now — Tachevert (of WorldIV) and his world “Danser,” which is one of my favorite MP projects so far.

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