Slashdot Mirror
Beginnings Of The Metaverse For The Gaming World
narq writes "From the world of Counter-Strike comes an interactive 3D environment for online interactions. Users will be able to accomplish productive goals or just waste time. I can't wait for the sword fighting algorithms to start to take shape. Here is the post at Counter-Server."
How is this relevant at all?
Don't want to be flamebait here or anything, but really... this stuff has been going on for years. Like Activeworlds has been doing since like 1997. You can even build your own stuff (landscaping, buildings, even entire cities -- I did so when I was 14) in real-time. Sure, you can't shoot people in the face, but do you really want to all the time?
I suppose this is News For Nerds because Counter-strike is l33t or something. Frankly, I wouldn't want to chat with most of the CS community... I might get accused of cheating using a Chatbot :)
But seriously, this has been around for years. I fail to see why this is important. Must be a slow news day.
Lordfly
hookers and grits.
this article doesn't provoke the kind of discussion you talk about because we're all skeptics.
remember HABITAT for the commodore 64? for quantumlink (now AOL), it was a persistent, customizable world. nice graphics for the time, great concept. it was turned into Club Caribe and launched with much fanfare. what have we learned from this foray into persistent online worlds? people want to collect tokens to buy stuff. like new heads. and they want to have sex online.
how bout ultimate online? people want the same thing. everquest? dark age of camelot? name it-- it's the same. everyone wants power, fame, money, and sex.
sure, you could launch yourself at more humble pursuits, but you'd be squashed out by the powergamers. even this would be turned into a game: have a nicest place, own the nicest stuff. or be the coolest.
people in _snow crash_ liked the metaverse because if afforded them the opportunity to be something they're not. it allowed them to be somewhere else. but even when they were able to go beyond the world around them and into another, they were still limited by real-world contraints: if you couldn't afford the right stuff, you looked like poop in the metaverse.
i guess what i'm trying to say is that the current mindset, and the current subset of the population who would engage themselves in this particular world, will probably just turn into the same crap the other game worlds have turned into. let me repeat that i think that this one _will_ be turned into a game by its players.
does this mean it shouldn't be done? no. with time and good feeding, it might normalize and develop a population of users who can actually enjoy every aspect of the world.