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Twinity has just in the past hour passed one hundred thousand registrations. That was the reason I headed to Twinity’s website. What caught my attention were four new words:
It’s obviously unclear on how progressed Twinity are with Mac development (something we’ve now sought clarification on), but if things are progressing in that regard, kudos to Metaversum. That, and the regular growth in registrations bodes well for Twinity at this stage.
Update: I’ve misinterpreted the message on 100K – the actual number is 95K and “approaching 100K” – apologies.
After less than five months, Google have pulled the plug on Lively.
In a fairly terse statement, no substantive reason is given for the axing beyond wanting to concentrate on “our core search, ads and apps business”.
It’s a quick demise for a virtual world that showed some initial promise. It did have its controversies over its short life, but nothing that would have driven this decision. Lack of patronage is the most obvious explanation and there’s no doubt that competitors will feel a little more sunlight’s appeared on the horizon for their products.
Will you miss Lively? Will we see Google re-enter the marketplace in the near future or will they just buy up someone else to achieve any virtual world ambitions they have?
A potential new MMO kid on the block for 2009 is Gatheryn, the first title under development by San Francisco based MindFuse Games. They state that genre-wise, Gatheryn is “very steampunk-ish, with a deep story and setting reminiscent of the Victorian period.”
Although it’s an immersive MMO, MindFuse see Gatheryn’s key difference as its casual gaming focus rather than long-term grinding through levels. There’s some real cross-over with casual worlds – each player receives their own virtual space (apartment) which can be customised along with their avatar. There’s also a number of payment tiers – from casual play options right through to “extended community building and exploration”. There’s also the usual MMO features like a marketplace for trading goods and skill mastery challenges.
Graphically, it’s certainly competitive:
We’ll follow Gatheryn’s development over coming months. You can register for news updates and future beta invites here.
We first mentioned Metaplace over a year ago, and that year has been spent working toward a public beta. In the past week I received a beta invite and I’ve spent a number of hours using Metaplace. Overall, this is one impressive virtual world platform with enormous potential. It makes offerings like Google Lively seem just a little underdone to say the least.
My impressions of Metaplace so far:
1. Orientation as it should be
Any virtual world lives or dies on its initial impression to new users. Metaplace have obviously learnt from the mistakes of competitors by providing a highly integrated sign-up process. It looks slick but it flows nicely as well. The ‘Metaplace Hub’ is the central gathering point and it’s easily accessible at all times given the ever-present web interface.
2. Content creation is king
Second Life is arguably the best platform for unique content creation. Metaplace has some significant parallels but with a much simpler interface. From observing some of the chat amongst beta users there’s a lot more under the hood than initial impressions, but that simplicity is great for the inital learning curve. The tutorials are well integrated and The whole creation interface reminded me strongly of The Sims. For me the standout is the ability to directly import textures (tiles) from either your hard-drive or via a web image search courtesy of Yahoo – the imported images then merge seamlessly into your overall library.
Building structures is also fairly self-explanatory, with good preview functions. For users where content creation isn’t second nature, the interface will help them get started and hopefully more motivated to take on the deeper learning curve. Scripts, plugins, sprites and sounds are the key components you have to play around with once you’ve got a little more familiar with things. I’m no scripter so it’s hard to know how much complexity is built into the scripting options.
3. It has rewards hooks
From the moment you sign up to Metaplace, you start earning badges for standard activities like rating another user’s world or sending a private message. Metacreds are the currency of choice and they can be used to purchase virtual goods for your world. I don’t want to be repetitive, but the integration of the rewards gets a thumbs up. I also enjoyed the fact the rewards weren’t intrusive – it’s more an added bonus.
4. The user community is strong
Although by its very nature a beta means a smaller community, the one that exists seems strong. In the half dozen times I’ve logged in for an hour or so, there’s a constant stream of chat – mostly people answering questions from newer users on more complex content creation tasks. The web interface makes keeping in touch easy and a fairly standard ‘friends’ functionality exists.
5. Great Web / 3D integration
I’ve mentioned the integration aspects a few times, and with good reason. Because Metaplace runs within a standard web browser (I’ve used it successfully on both Firefox and Safari), it makes accessing the world so much simpler than say Second Life. Of course, there are trade-offs for that simplicity such as the graphical complexity of the world and arguably the degree of scripting that can occur. On the up-side, there’s good social networking tools, including the ability to follow any other user’s discussions via an RSS ‘Metastream’.
Another notable for Metaplace is its speed. Initial login takes around the same time as Second Life – the same for movement between areas. Managing private messages, rewards, profile info, avatar customisation and accessing tutorials all occur from the 2D web interface. It’s plain easy to use.
The sum up
The work put in by the Metaplace crew over the past year is really apparent. As a beta version, this is already an impressive virtual world platform that provides some meaty creative options for casual users that don’t want to spend days or weeks creating their space. If you haven’t signed up for a beta invite, consider doing so if you’re looking for something new in the virtual world space. If Metaplace had reached this stage of development 12-18 months ago, their success would have nearly been assured. In the explosion of new worlds under development now, competition is much tougher. That said, the quality of this offering is likely to win a lot of hearts and minds in the casual worlds space, whilst still intriguing the more hardcore content creator.
What do you think? Is Metaplace the sort of world you can see yourself spending significant time in? Does it open up options that other worlds currently can’t?
The past 48 hours have been fascinating to observe. Since the announcement by Linden Lab of price rises for OpenSpaces sims in Second Life, there have been protests, petitions and the odd paragraph of doom-saying. It’s been one of the larger resident backlashes since the gambling and banking bans, and some are voting with their feet already.
Bettina Tizzy has reported on a not insignificant influx of new registrations to the Openlife grid, run by aussie Steve Sima (profile here). The number is more than 800 since the announcement, taking the resident count above the thirty-two thousand mark. (Update: Steve Sima states that more than 2000 have now registered since the Linden Lab announcement)
That’s small change compared to Second Life but it’s a nice base from which to grow – something we discussed back in September. It’s a grid not as developed as Second life but that gap continues to close. The challenge for Openlife will increase if the spike in new user registrations continues – as Linden Lab only know too well, concurrency and scalability are big hurdles to jump. To that end, a development office in Taiwan is in the process of being set up, so it appears Openlife is a grid on the move.
Here’s an astounding statistic: nearly 36 million Nintendo Wii consoles have been sold, and that’s a conservative figure. The Wii is streets ahead of the Sony Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360, and is likely to eclipse behemoths like the Playstation 2 – Sony have shifted nearly 120 million of those but the Wii is at a much earlier stage in its lifecycle than the moribund PS2.
Compare those numbers to even the largest virtual worlds like Habbo and World of Warcraft and they emphasise the dominance of game consoles over similar PC-based activities. It remains difficult in some parts of Australia to buy a Wii over the counter – three months ago when I purchased mine, it took three attempts at three different stores before I was able to pick one up. When I finally did so and set it up, I was really gobsmacked at the centrality avatars are given on the Wii.
It’s all about Mii
A key part of the Wii experience is creating your avatar – your Mii (pronounced ‘me’). Every Mii is highly customisable and it’s very simple to go back at anytime and change your Mii’s appearance. In the pre-teen market this alone can provide hours of entertainment – I’ve seen kids aged between six and ten endlessly altering their Mii. Once your chosen Mii is set up, it then follows you into the Wii games you play. The Wii Fit utilises your avatar totally – it’s truly you as you enter a bunch of personal details like height, weight and eating habits . In the more game-like experiences such as Mario Kart, you can race your Mii against characters like Mario, Bowser and Princess Peach.
I feel connected
All that said, an avatar alone does not a virtual world make – the key is the Wii’s internet connectivity. Your Mii can mix with others you grant access and scores or Wii Fit results can be shared. There’s Mii contests and most games have some sort of online mode – Mario Kart for example allows you to race against other players worldwide, which is enormously fun. Actually getting connected is fairly simple, assuming you know the basic of wireless networking.
Not surprisingly, there’s also a Wii Shopping Channel where you can buy credits that can be exchanged for a range of products including old Nintendo Classic games like the original Mario and Zelda games. They work out at over $10 per download which isn’t cheap given their age, but the pull of sentimentality and convenience is likely to persuade some.
The contender for the title
There’s no standout aspect in the Wii offering that makes it a dominant virtual world contender – though the motion-aware Wii controller is an amazing piece of gear that cements that link between you and your avatar. It’s the overall offering that makes me think it’s likely to come out on top. Specifically:
On the age aspect, I’ve seen people in their 60’s immediately grasp the avatar concept as it’s presented on the Wii – two had never owned a computer. The Wii is far from unique in its offering – the Xbox 360 is testament to that. However, Nintendo appear to have created a product that has penetrated the mainstream entertainment market in a way no other console has to date. When you’ve got grandparents happily retelling stories of playing Wii sports with their grandchildren, something fundamental has occurred in the way gaming is perceived in society. Sony’s Home offering may provide some stiff competition in the medium term – but until then it’ll be fascinating to see how much the Wii saturates the market.
So there’s my hypothesis: by 2010 the Nintendo Wii will contain the world’s most populated virtual world. I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this.
A big thanks to beastandbean on Flickr for the Wii Fit photo and to gamesweasel for the Mario Kart Wii pic.
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