GigaOM goes to HiPiHi

 Posted by (Visited 6192 times)  Game talk
Aug 252007
 

Wagner James Au was in Beijing, so he stopped by the HiPiHi offices.

Alas, he didn’t return with a guide on how to pronounce the name of the company. But he did return with lots of details about the virtual world, which is expected to launch a US beta in October.

For a Second Life user, the most striking thing about HiPiHi is how similar its interface is – reverse-engineered is probably the more accurate term. (This despite the fact that Second Life’s confusing user interface is easily its weakest selling point.) Xu said he conceived of the basic idea before even knowing about Second Life, but it’s abundantly clear he and his team have modeled a lot of HiPiHi on it. Like Second Life, content is streamed from the networked HiPiHi servers — which comprise the world — to users’ computers.

  4 Responses to “GigaOM goes to HiPiHi”

  1. + Discussion:Raph’s Websiteand Computerworld

  2. The first thing that came to mind is something like “Yippy-I-Ay”, like the song lyric only without the “ay.” 🙂

  3. http://gigagamez.com/2007/03/05/first-looks-at-a-chinese-second-life/

    HiPiHi (pronounced “high-pee-high”) literally translates to “The World Exists Because Of You.” (Quite similar to Second Life’s official slogan, “Your World. Your Imagination”.)

  4. Solipsism Rising? 😛

  5. Yeah, it’s “high-pee-high”. I thought I included the pronunciation in the article, but maybe it got taken out in the edit process. I can’t tell, because I’m still in China, and GigaOM has been blocked by The Great Firewall. 🙁

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.