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Video tour of (most) virtual worldsAugust 5th, 2008 |
Personalize Media has a 2008 Metaverse Tour Video that is worth seeing if only to see broad trends in the space right now. It leaves out most of the gaming worlds, but covers kid worlds pretty well, as well as the emerging “overlay avatars” space.
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Neat stuff, since I’m not a virtual worlds person (no one I know personally is on one), it’s nice to know about them all. Strange quotes attached though, hehe.
Oh, and this might be an interesting related video for you Raph and others, the last minutes of EA-Land / The Sims Online, which is now offline. Interesting…
“Lost Server Connection”: The Last Minutes of a Virtual World.
I haven’t heard of most of these. Pretty fancy chat rooms they’re making these days.
I’m not sure why Spore’s there. I know players can exchange content, but I didn’t realize it has an online virtual worldly component.
“Pretty fancy chat rooms they’re making these days.”
Yeah, you can say that again. Am I the only one here who fundamentally Does Not Get This? 
I mean, I can understand forums, interactive blogs, and things like LiveJournal – they are ways in which we can interact rapidly with one another while not in the same area. I can speak to you all, even when it’s after midnight here, and know that over the next days many people will read what I write, think about it, and perhaps comment on it.
That’s connection without the necessity of actual presence.
But these avatar chats – they’re more like IRC channels. You have to BE there to talk about things. You have to be present to catch events as they go on. And while I like the idea of being able to join people in a game whenever I want like you can in an MMO, I just Don’t Get why people would want to be able to log in to a virtual bar to talk to random strangers about random things.
Well, you get immediate feedback to whatever you are saying, and depending on the chat room, you often get positive feedback that contains no negative details.
MagicMan247: “Man, Age of Conan is a dumb game.”
Girl_on_Fire: “LOL. Yea, it is. 
”
Some days preaching to the choir just feels good.
As for Spore, it’s a Massively Online Single Player game. (Can I get an LOL?) I like to think that Spore is the idea Will Wright came up with after the suits gutted The Sims Online from “interesting idea” to “Club Penguin without games”.
@geldonyetich – You’re right, Spore is an odd choice to put in there. While there is an online content exchange element it actually goes only about as far as something like Facebook or MySpace. There isn’t an online interactive component that takes place within a virtual world. All the clips are actually from the Creature Creator, which is even less connected than the full game will be upon release.
I’m curious why they included A Tale in the Desert, too. It’s a very niche MMO, and not known for its chat space.
I find myself more drawn to the stylistic ones, and not so much the spaces trying to be realistic. I wonder if that’s just me. Maybe most chat space users like realism.
I think another point of the virtual bar is that it doesn’t cost any money and it doesn’t take any energy to go. Fantasy gamers want to slaughter goblins, so we play games about that. Chat spacers might want to hang out in bars, but if you’re a 55-year-old woman you’ll get funny looks if you walk into a hip hop club. Not so much if you’re going to a virtual club as a virtual hottie.
Gamers overestimate the power of slaughter and underestimate the power of chat.
It isn’t the interactive graphics or the power of presence. It is embedding a 3D client with easy to customize features into an environment that already has a strong affinity quotient. Once the spore lands, if that is there, it begins to grow and shape the environment by symbiosis. If not, it dies there.
We spent years trying to create online shops. What we are discovering is we need parks and lover’s lanes. Shops will spring up there anyway as long as the environment doesn’t disallow it.
Gamers overestimate the power of slaughter and underestimate the power of chat.
In MMO games we can chat, and do other things-crafting, diplomacy, build cities and enviroments-, and not always connected with goblins slaugther, we cant blame gamers for that the current trend in MMOs for the masses is centered in kill things, and for go to a virtual shop I prefer a current commercial web site how Steam or Ebay, not a virtual space.
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