Virtual Worlds News: VirtualWorldsNews Interview: Hui Xu, HiPiHi Founder and CEO

Of particular interest: the idea that HiPiHi plans to work to create standards for virtual worlds across the Web.

Oddly fascinating. Basically, a game of clicking on a hotspot and swiping the mouse.

But the storyline makes a big difference, and the basic metaphor of slap, dodge, and counterslap makes for something that feels different and fresh.

In short, you play a woman born to low station who married into a rich and powerful family. Then her husband died the next day. But as the widow of the eldest son, you are trying to take ownership of the house over two sisters and the mother. Class struggle, lost love, a symbolic rose, an evil matriarch… it’s all very Gothic. 🙂

• Warren Spector’s new blog
•  A run on an SL bank
• Twinity, covered one place, and WebbliWorld and JumpStartWorld in another
• Kim Pallister argues that “free” is a real threat to all current MMO developers
• N’Gai Croal goes after Ebert’s going after Barker on the games-as-art question

I have thoughts on Comic-Con as well, but have some errands to run over lunch, so… those are for later. 🙂

I chatted for a while with the folks at Kingdom of Loathing while at Comic-Con. These guys are determinedly indie: they sell merchandise, but they do it just about at cost. For income, they mostly rely on donations for the premium items, but they don’t engage in what most of the industry would call a real microtransaction business.

And it’s working for them, at least at this scale. Some stats, slightly lower than usual because of the usual summer doldrums:

Read More “Kingdom of Loathing is doing quite well”