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By N2H
Welcome to Raph Koster's personal website: MMOs, gaming, writing, art, music, books.

Blue Mars open beta

September 2nd, 2009

Blue Mars is entering its open beta. For those who have not been following it, I’d describe it as a contemporary take on the There.com model more than a Second Life style environment — brand partnerships, high quality graphics, aimed at adult social interaction. They do have a developer program, however, so there is content creation capability for those who enter the program. As a result, it’s gotten most of its buzz from within the Second Life community to date.

Blue Mars is a free to play massively multiplayer virtual world featuring stunning graphics, realistic characters, and endless social bonding activities. The Blue Mars virtual world is made up of an expanding set of independently operated cities that feature unique themes, activities, and attractions such as shopping, avatar customization, unique personal spaces, and games like dancing, racing, and golf. Cites on Blue Mars are tied together with a unified login system, persistent global Avatar ID, and platform wide participation based reward system that encourages users to explore, play, and make new friends.

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3 Responses to “Blue Mars open beta”

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  1. Yukon Sam said on

    It looks pretty flavorless, and their inability to integrate building tools into the client puts them behind the curve. On the plus side, if it pulls some people into VR who are intimidated by Second Life, that’s beneficial for all of us. I’ll probably take a look at it, but there’s nothing there screaming that I must have this NOW.

  2. steve said on

    It is VERY early days for Blue Mars and although it is very sterile at the moment it IS like a huge blank canvas. Although creating content for BM requires knowledge of quite high end software (Maya, 3DS Max etc) they are mainstream products, unlike Second Lifes own propriety tools. Over time I believe content creation for BM will become more accessible to people without intimate knowledge of 3d modelling tools.

  3. Slyfeind said on

    Their “How is this different from Second Life” has no differences I can see except the mere existence of NPCs. There’s this “LUA” thing, so maybe if I used LUA I guess I would be interested…?

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