Sep 022021
 

A lot of people are talking about the “metaverse”, and as a result, a lot of folks are wondering what the heck that word even means.

Frankly, it’s a reasonable question. But as someone who has actually built, launched, and operated a metaverse before, I have answers!

I recently spoke at the Digital Economy Forum, hosted in Korea by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and organized by the Korea Startup Forum. After the panel, we got the question “what’s the difference between Second Life and a metaverse?”

Here’s the short-form answer:

Online worlds lead to multiverses which lead to metaverses. And just about no one has actual metaverses to offer right now.

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The Future of Online Worlds

 Posted by (Visited 5498 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Mar 252021
 
Colorful blue and green background with geometric shapes and lines. On the left: a circular picture of Playable Worlds CEO Raph Koster at a speaking event. On the right: large white text reads "The Future of Online Worlds".

We are starting to open up a bit about what we are doing here at Playable Worlds!

I am going to tell you that yes, worlds can feel alive, like real places. Places where you can stake out your virtual homestead, and leave your mark in a lasting way. Online worlds can be dynamic, fully persistent, and modifiable by players, and not just unchanging cardboard set pieces an inch deep and monetized a mile wide.

We have the technology: cloud computing power lets us do things with simulation and AI that once seemed impossible. This dream can come true.

To read more, head on over to the Playable Worlds website for the full article!

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Mar 052017
 

I have put up a page containing both a slideshow and a PDF download of the talk I delivered on Friday at GDC 2017.

I think it came out a bit more somber than I had anticipated, certainly more somber than the sample slides I submitted. We shall see what the long-term reaction is, as I pulled no punches in describing the awesome responsibility people have in building online communities.

I was also losing my voice, so it was very much a deliberate and slow presentation compared to my usual “high speed brain blast” as one attendee once described my usual speaking style.

Not only was this in the afternoon of the last day, but I was opposite the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, which is one of the best-attended sessions at GDC usually. So the room was definitely sparser than usual. That said, there were several old virtual worlds hands present to confirm what I said, backing me up during the Q&A period, and there were also a number of current developers of both social VR worlds and even social AR games like PokemonGO. (In fact, I heard a few members of that team were in the audience, and I hope I didn’t offend by picking on their game so much).

The session was filmed, so hopefully video will be forthcoming; once it is, I will post a link to that as well.

High Windows

 Posted by (Visited 5981 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Jan 172015
 

Almost exactly seven years ago, I gave a keynote at the virtual worlds-themed Worlds in Motion Summit at GDC. I was supposed to talk about why games people should care about virtual worlds. But I just couldn’t warm to the topic.

I was in the midst of wrestling with Metaplace, which was the culmination of ten years of dreaming about the potential of virtual spaces. We were trying to put into practice the ideals embodied in things like the Declaration of the Rights of Avatars, the loftiness of hopes for general empowerment thanks to the newly interactive Web. But at the same time, I was watching tens of millions of venture capital dollars flow into kids’ worlds, virtual worlds about McDonalds and by teddy bear companies and tied in to bad reality TV shows and more.

So I took my qualms to the stage.

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