Journal
The Trough of Disillusionment
26 September 2007
Being a data junky I’ve enjoyed watching the stats for this Web site over the past couple years. I’m actually just about to hit 150,000 unique visitors which I suppose is a good enough milestone as any to reveal some statistics. Not so much as an exercise in egotism, but as a casual examination of Second Life’s popularity filtered through this site over the past ten months. I’ve had this site for over 2 years now, and prior to 2007, visits were few but steady. But as we all know, SL exploded this year with meteoric hype.
Why I Don't Have Comments
21 September 2007
A perfect distillation as to why I don’t allow comments on this journal. Very funny. The audio is NSFW.
Short MetaPlace Demo
20 September 2007
Video of Raph Koster giving a brief overview of setting up a MetaPlace virtual place. From the looks of it, creating a basic “metaplace” will be just as easy as creating something like a MySpace page. Just a couple of clicks and you’re done. In addition, to visit a metaplace all a user will need to do is visit the URL in a Web browser.
If Raph and the folks at Areae can make this work as he describes, it will really raise the bar for virtual world user experience. This is the kind of thing I’m talking about when I continually lambaste Linden Lab for the poor initial user experience in Second Life.
I recently had a friend who works at Columbia College here in Chicago describe her initial user experience with Second Life and it was as depressing as you’d imagine: difficulty in figuring out how to navigate the world, little direction as to where to go in-world, a rabbit hole of sim after empty sim except for a couple cybering, and, after a couple of confusing teleports, landing in an erotic art gallery where the proprietor was none to friendly. Eventually she was trapped and just logged off in frustration. She then complained that logging in again brought her to the same place where she was trapped. And that was the end of her Second Life.
Obviously we don’t know what the user experience of navigating each metaplace will be like. To a certain extent it will be up to the individual creator. But given that MetaPlace is so integrated with the Web and Web Services, I have to think that it will also leverage existing Web UX and UI patterns. In the video it appears as if there will be “stylesheets” or templates for creating a world. This will allow novice creators to use pre-built worlds that are ready to go, which lowers the bar, well, just about as low as it will go. Advanced creators will of course be able to use Lua, Web Services, and whatever other building tools Areae provides. I imagine there will also be a healthy business for good metaplace stylesheets.
What is MetaPlace?
19 September 2007
“Our motto is: build anything, play everything, from anywhere. Until now, virtual worlds have all worked like the closed online services from before the internet took off. They had custom clients talking to custom servers, and users couldn’t do much of anything to change their experience. We’re out to change all of that.”
I’ve been reading Raph Koster’s blog for a couple years now and waiting to see what he’d come up with next. I’m excited that that day has gotten a little bit closer. Can’t wait to see MetaPlace.
Hopefully 2008 will be the start of the 2nd generation of virtual worlds and will be as much fun as Second Life in 2003 was (probably wishful thinking, but one can dream).
UPDATE: Hamlet has the most detailed information I’ve seen so far on MetaPlace over at GigaOM. Now I really want to be in the beta!
What is VastPark?
17 September 2007
“VastPark is a virtual content platform featuring free tools, revolutionary distributed content syndication and enables you to deploy your own virtual world or online game within seconds royalty free.”
Looks intriguing. More information over at Metaversed. Hop over to VastPark to sign up for their beta.
Modo 301 Released
11 September 2007
Modo 301 has been released. Boy, I wish I had time to really sit down and took a look at it. Alas, real life work involved 2D design for the most part. Still, this release looks fantastic.
Oh, and since everybody’s doing it, I’ll bend to peer pressure and follow the trend. I guess I’m pretty damn nerdy. C’est la vie!
Year Five is Upon Me
30 April 2007
F our years ago today I created a Second Life account and downloaded the SL beta client. Public land was plentiful and you could fly across the entire world in a couple minutes. Oh, how things have changed. I was planning on a long diatribe on the state of Second Life to mark my 4th anniversary, but I just don’t have the time—real life is extremely busy at the moment. I do have a couple more tutorial translations to post, and I apologize to the authors for not posting them sooner. I will get to them this week.
My thanks go out to my Second Life partner, Caroline Apollo, whom I’ve had a lot of fun with over the past couple years. I’m sorry I’ve been so absent this past year—it’s not for lack of wanting to be in-world, hanging out, and having fun.
I’ll save my laundry list of criticisms for the way Second Life is evolving under the stewardship of Linden Lab. For now I urge you to visit project open letter and add you signature if you feel inclined.
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