Raph’s Website » Metaplace is now in open beta

Metaplace is now in open beta

May 15th, 2009 (Visited 2139 times) Tags: metaplace

Yesterday was a big milestone for me. Anyone can now go to Metaplace.com and register. You get a small world for free, with full access to all the content creation tools. Lately, I’ve been describing it at “the power of Second Life, with the ease of The Sims, on the web.”

It’s early days yet, of course. There is a lot more left to do. For example, we have not yet released the ability to embed worlds on websites and profile pages, which is a huge part of the story. There’s more to come in terms of web integration, plugins on the marketplace so that it gets easier and easier to make what you want, and so on. We’re not done by a long shot.

But it’s still exciting. As users create more content and share more, the power everyone has to create will rise dramatically — we’re making the classic bet on users and the network effect that has helped so many websites. I can’t wait to see what develops.

Here’s the welcome video, for those who have not seen it:

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Gamesblog newsbucket | GameWitz wrote on May 20th, 2009 at 11:04 am:

[...] Academic papers on games and web from AHRC-BBC >> bbc.co.uk• Metaplace is now in open beta >> raphkoster.com• Game Studies – Issue 0901, 2009: EverQuest 10 years later >> gamestudies.org• How David Beats [...]

Raph’s Website » Metaplace is now in open beta | Richard Carey > Digital Media wrote on June 1st, 2009 at 4:10 am:

[...] Raph’s Website » Metaplace is now in open beta. [...]

Arrakiv said on May 15th, 2009 at 10:14 am:

Once again, congratulations on the milestone. It has been quite fun following the development of Metaplace, as a social network, a development platform, and as a virtual world. I’m excited to see what new, fresh ideas open beta will bring as more people sign up.

Sebastian said on May 15th, 2009 at 3:35 pm:

Oooh! EXCITING! The beginning of the new-wave, the 4th (?) generation. Hopefully this’ll be the cue for me to finally drop WoW and move on over.

Pfft, fat chance. Damn, damn, damn the obligation.

Inventing something, Raph, that eases the transition to a new game from a game that you’ve invested 4 years, blood, sweat and tears into. ASAP…

^Invent

Rik said on May 15th, 2009 at 11:36 pm:

Is that the real voice of Cuppycake? I miss the old video, you know the one, with the guy with the beard.

Solok said on May 16th, 2009 at 4:58 am:

Congrats Raph and the rest of the team!

Btw – cuppycake sounds HOT…..I’m just sayin

ReleeSquirrel said on May 16th, 2009 at 8:48 pm:

Wow, Cuppycake has a great voice!

And WTG on the Open Beta. You’ve come a long way from that painful alpha test! XD

Dblade said on May 17th, 2009 at 7:38 pm:

I’m sorry raph. I’ve tried it, and unless you plan to add a lot more, it’s very lacking. I’ll try to add feedback to the beta as I can, (it’s my first beta experience) but you need to take a step back and give it a serious look as a non-creator to realize its problems.

Raph said on May 17th, 2009 at 7:52 pm:

Bring on the feedback! Bear in mind though, right now it really is tilted pretty heavily towards creators, not consumers of content.

Marty said on May 20th, 2009 at 8:12 am:

Congrats! This is really beautiful.

Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 21st, 2009 at 11:29 am:

Very nice video!

We Fly Spitfires said on May 25th, 2009 at 10:26 am:

Looks pretty sweet I’ll need to check it out. Do you think this sort of thing is going to be the new Facebook?