|
The Archives
-
03.06.08EA’s Sims Carnival Beta Testing LaunchedIn tandem with the recent launch of EA Land, the Sims Carnival is now up and running. But a post on Giga Omni Media’s news reader points to the burgeoning battle between the EA platforms and other high profile platforms like Metaplace and Whirled. Underlying the development of all these gaming platforms are the issues of content ownership, which will be one of the defining features of the virtual economy as well. If games increasingly become a co-creation of users and developers, revenue sharing, distribution rights, and publishing rights all need to be worked out. Metaplace and Whirled have revenue-sharing plans built ...
-
01.11.08Closing of Second Life Banks Distracts from Sources of ValueThe recent announcement of the closure of the Ponzi schemes, er, banks, in Second Life seems to have generated more buzz than it merits. The response SHOULD have been "yeah, and what took them so long". The membrane has dissolved that divides most virtual worlds from the "real". Financial instruments, currencies, payments, and values are not DIFFERENT because they take place in virtual worlds like Second Life. Some virtual worlds may try to preclude the intrusion of economics within their game economies as a way of preserving the "magic circle" of play, but even Warcraft which officially doesn't accept out-of-world trading ...
-
12.19.07Games Everywhere – and the ubiquitous metaverseLivegamer's move into a "free economy" of sorts is the topic of an insightful blog posting by Wayne Porter, and I'm hesitant to comment much because I'm such an amateur at this stuff. Porter points out that the trading of virtual goods is brought repectibility by LiveGamer and its significant venture capital backing. The broadening of economic trade outside the magic circle of games is further evidence of not only a migration of people to virtual worlds but wealth and economic production as well. From my amateur's armchair, I've given my take before on the economies of virtual worlds, riffing off the ...
-
12.18.07Knock Knock Metaplace: Let Me In!Not being one of the super-elite (or lucky registrants) currently beta testing Metaplace, my curiosity is, of course, insatiable. Being in the alpha group on other worlds just tends to disappoint - I suppose I'm more of a beta man. But I'm mostly curious because I'm interested in knowing whether Metaplace will tend towards being a gaming platform or will be broad enough to entertain other approaches. Well...it's not much, but a few screen grabs from projects of Raph Koster are at least crumbs to the starving.
-
12.18.07How Virtual Worlds will EvolveA wonderful summary by Wayne Porter attempts to predict the use of different virtual world platforms, focusing on Metaplace, VastPark and Second Life. To wit: Second Life I believe the struggles with Second Life have been based around its hyper-freedom. You cannot fit square pegs into round holes. This does not mean it does not have value, only that its value is misunderstood or misused....it will continue to serve niche and fringe markets and attract hyper creatives. I think new worlds or platforms like VastPark will fill the gaps that Second Life cannot due to the nature of the platform. VastPark From what I gather ...
-
12.10.07Metabucks in/out of Metaplace: Linden Awaits Stroker SerpentineOver at Metaplace a blog posting explaining that the Metabuck will be a convenient tool to allow world builders to opt in or out of the Metaplace currency model. As posted: Of course, we're all about freedom so we don't require builders to use our currency; they could easily bridge to their own web service and use whatever currency they wish. Of course, if the builder just wants gold pieces in their fantasy world, with no bridge to real world currency at all, that is also an option. No one is dragged into using real money trading (RMT) if they do ...
-
11.04.07Changes to Virtual Economies and the Dissolving Membrane: Metaplace, Second Life, TwinityA few developments seem like natural shifts in the nature of virtual worlds and their economies but leave me perplexed about the future. I'm not an economist and don't really know the first thing about it other than what I've picked up in bits and pieces with my initial framework provided by Edward Castranova who helped me to understand the reason for the biases, misunderstandings, and flaws in virtual world economies. First, the developments. Metaplace allows selling of goods using Web services bridge As posted this past week in reply to my comments on Metaplace, Raph Koster points out that the economy of ...
-
11.02.07Metaplace: Buyer Beware – The Apple or the Geocities of 3D Worlds?Raph Koster is a leader in virtual world development - he's seen it all, done it all, and has a proven track record of success. In forming Araea there was significant interest and excitement in what he's come up with next - a follow-up to Everquest or Star Wars, a new platform, a new piece of technology? (Edit: See Raph's reply to this post below) Metaplace was the answer. As Raph recently commented: "We are re-inventing virtual worlds that stop working like AOL," Koster said, "and start working the way the Web does ... You can build a massive multiplayer game in minutes, ...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.