Forterra Systems has announced OLIVE, an SDK for building virtual worlds.
For those who don’t know the history: once upon a time, there was one company called There, and it made a world called There.com. There had trouble gaining traction with its consumer service, and eventually, there were moves made to shut it down. This despite the fact that it featured, IMHO, some of the best interaction design in social virtual worlds — in some ways, just ahead of its time.
Wired has an article titled ‘Next-Gen Multiplayer Worlds Are Built to Snare Nongamers’ that is adorned with screenshots from Tabula Rasa and Fury. I cannot think of any non-gamers I know who would jump at either of those. 🙂 They also have a pic of Whirled though it does seem to feature a zombie.
Hmm, where’s the online world that looks like a Michael’s craft store?
The South Korean government has even dropped the requirement of military service for those willing to work in the game industry, considering digital games key to the international export of Korean culture.
Virtual Worlds News has the details because they beat me to having the article translated. Ah, the cruel battles of blogdom.
In any case, head over there for the scoop. In short:
The big news today is of course the announcement that Eve Online will allow players to elect an oversight committee, intended as a response to the recent charges of corruption.
I have to admit I feel ambivalent about it. I have been playing with the idea of player-elected representatives for a long time. At one point, I wanted the SWG correspondents to be player-elected. Ironically, players seem to react negatively to this sort of idea when it’s presented — take for example, the player commenter over on Scott Jennings’ blog, who basically dismisses elections of all sorts with the remark
So, players elect people to go check up on CCP. No way will those guys be favored stooges for the resident uber-guilds.
Kinda like Senators are favored stooges for lobbyists, I guess is how the logic goes.
