So here I am at the Metaverse Roadmap Summit and we’re about to talk about history…. and I realized that my timeline is hugely out of date — like, four years. And someone says the phrase, “Wisdom of Crowds,” and I figure, hey, it’s time to ask all the readers of the blog to help fill this out more.
Dan Terdiman has an article up on the SDForum I attended yesterday.
He played on the first MUD at Essex university with Richard Bartle. He’s a WoW guild leader and an island owner in Second Life. He’s also a big wheel in the dot com world, as a VC and as a board member, and so on. And below is my notes on his speech.
Will Harvey of IMVU just showed some stats showing that a clear majority of people use IMVU to meet people as either a primary goal or as a goal equivalent to chatting with existing friends.
But we hear repeatedly now that in the MMOGs, people play with their friends, people they already know, and don’t want to meet new people.
What’s the difference caused by?
CNet reports that Oblivion get re-rated, because underneath all the clothes, the avatars are naked and a mod can reveal that.
You pretty much have to include a nude or near-nude model in order to have a good clothing system, because anything drawn onto the base model will show through when you do certain clothing types. You could, of course,go to the extra lengths to have alternate underwear sets drawn onto alternate base models, so that there’s always a base model to choose from that works with a given piece of clothing, but what an asset nightmare.
The real question in this case is different: why is Barbie-level nudity mature? Is the art on the base nude models not Barbie-level? If not, why not? If so, then what’s the problem? We give Barbies to very young kids with no qualms…
