Metaplace

It’s been fairly widely reported over the past week that there’s a new kid on the virtual world block. Metaplace has some significant backing and looks promising. Some key snippets from Metaplace’s company, Areae:

“We think there are all kinds of things on the Internet that would be improved if anyone could have a virtual place of their own”

“committed to an open markup standard for our network protocol - anyone can write a client for any platform they want. We decided to use Web standards for everything we could, which is why you can have a game world that is also a website, or use Web data to populate your world. The scripting language (we call it MetaScript, of course) is based on Lua. You get the idea - no ‘not invented here,’ no closed proprietary approaches”

“We knew it was all coming together when one of our team made a game in a day and a half. And then stuck that game on a private MySpace profile. You can inherit someone else’s world (if they let you) and use it as a starting point. You can slurp whole directories of art and use them as building blocks. Cut and paste a movement system or a health bar from one world to another. Use an RSS feed for your NPCs. We made puzzle games, RPGs, action games… and set up doorways from one to the other”

“We fully intend to be customers of our own product. We’ve already started work on our first big game - a ‘worldy MMORPG’ with what we hope will be a ton of fun game play. What’s more, we figure that some of you who have been looking for a game like that might want to help us build it.”

Metaplace is at alpha testing stage and if you’re keen, you can sign up for that testing.

Popularity: 6% [?]

The SL voice experience so far

On the SLOz forums, Juko Tempel has invited comments on residents’ experiences with voice in SL to date.

How have you found it? How often do you use voice versus text?

Popularity: 11% [?]

Weekend Whimsy

Each Friday we provide a sampling of content generated by SL users and posted on services like YouTube:

1. Strangefates at Midnight Blues

2. Aleksie’s Dance

Popularity: 4% [?]

Toxic Garden

I’d still argue that the Greenies Build by Rezzable is the most impressive SL presence I’ve seen. I’d read about some other Rezzable builds like The Cannery (SL Artwork from a number of artists) but hadn’t checked any out. When I TP’d to The Cannery I went to the Map View and noticed the enourmous array of sims that Rezzable own.

One that caught my eye was Toxic Garden. It’s very different to the Greenies build but contains its own fascinations. I won’t wreck the spontaneity of exploring Toxic Garden by giving too much away, but do ensure you pick up the anti-toxin armband at the entrance.

Toxic Garden is in beta and there are opportunities to give feedback to Rezzable.

Check it out in-world

Popularity: 7% [?]

2.5 million SL users by 2010? Maybe.

Veteran aussie SL developer Gary Hayes (Gary Hazlitt) has postulated that there may be as many as 2.5 million simultaneous SL users by mid-2010. Guessing at numbers that far into the future is always going to be crystal-ball gazing but instinctively 2.5 million doesn’t seem out of the bounds of possibility - particulary with improvements in scaleability that should occur in coming months and years.

Such numbers would equate to around a couple of hundred thousand aussies in SL - that’s quite a critical mass.

One note: the 80 000 concurrency experienced last weekend was probably a glitch.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Third-party SL viewers continue to grow

Since the open-sourcing of the browser code, the innovation that’s occurred in that area has been substantial. A recent browser iteration I noticed was one that blocks eyesores.

I’ve been a bit conservative and just used the stock standard LL browsers but I’m interested to hear about any third-party browsers you’ve used and why.

Popularity: 7% [?]

More than just the jitters? Australian business in Second Life

One of the most commonly reported aspects of SL is its relationship with RL business. A year ago, the reporting was predominantly rose-shaded and that continued up until recently when some US business reduced or ceased their SL presence. The mood change in the mainstream media was noticeable and to a large extent its continued. Even in the SL blogosphere there’s arguably a more sceptical tone adopted in relation to corporate presences - there were always sceptics but there’s now a wider acceptance of the pitfalls of doing business in SL. That said, corporations continue to set up shop - Peugeot are a recent example.

In an Australian context, Telstra and the ABC’s launches remain the largest to date with a few smaller presences either established or under way. Is it just our relatively small population that explains the state of play or a fundamental case of ‘wait and see’?

Popularity: 5% [?]

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