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There Inc. Officially Launches Online World
Thanks to Yahoo! for hosting the press release announcing the official opening of There Inc.'s online world. This ambitious PC-based virtual world, created "with over $37 million in funding", is aimed at the 'mainstream market' and highlights socializing and playing, as well as world object creation, since: "70 percent of all objects currently for sale in There are created by members and 80 percent of events in There are organized by members." Real-life money can be converted to in-game currency, and during the Beta, "members... voluntarily spent on average of $7 USD per month purchasing There currency and buying in- world goods." There are even some amusing advertising tie-ins: "Digital versions of Nike's AirMax 2003 and Nike's Zoom Celar have been created... members who buy these Nike shoes for their avatars will find... they can run faster."
If I spend some fraction of a *real* dollar on virtual sneakers, my virtual avatar will virtually run virtually faster? Sounds to me like There Inc. has 1. invented a new way of getting people to pay for advertising - one suspects that the real-world products won't have much if any effect on one's real-world running speed (unless you're an Olympic-class runner, in which case one hopes you'll already know which shoes are best for your job), but the appearance in the virtual world of an increase in speed will "contaminate" the There user's attitude toward the real-world product - and 2. [they have] given themselves a license to print money. After all, the only thing they're selling is a certain configuration of electrons with a remarkably limited use.
Random spotty review follows...
:)
I've been There for awhile now, and while the initial cost outlay is staggering for an online game (I have to pay WHAT just to get voice chat? I have to pay WHAT to get a compass? HOW much just to hear jukeboxes? etc.) once you have a decent set of clothes and a vehicle or two, you're all set for casual play without a need to buy anything else. I think they should've included more of their 'options' as game features in your basic subscription, but that's the only real money dig they get on you if you're not a fashion hound.
While the product placement is amusing, in the end it doesn't really make a huge difference. Nobody buys the overpriced 'speedy sneakers' when you can just get a hoverbike which plows across terrain at insane speeds to begin with for cheaper. It's more fun to submit your own clothing designs and play marketer yourself rather than spend on corporate marketers; I've designed a few shirts and I'm hoping once key bugs are ironed out, I can start using gmax to make new decorative objects like arcade cabinets.
For a more hardcore if rougher around the edges experience with better user extensibility, check out Second Life -- but I checked it out and passed on it, because at the end of the day I just want the program to work so I can relax and chat with folks. There is a very polished, very simple GUI driven chat client aimed at casual users. I'll save the technical tangles for my day job.
I doubt they mean you can get real money by playing online - They don't host a currency, they host a coupon or coin system, perhaps. You can, within their framework, convert from real to vitual, but the only way to convert money out is by working for There.
I wonder what they'll do when people start trading stuff external to the game for real cash?
-Adam
"with over $37 million in funding",
All that money...dropped on a worthless project...
Oh the waste...the waste!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
The use of real world money in a virtual MMOG is not unique or new with There. Project Entropia has been doing this for what, a year now? That's not to say it's a GOOD game per se, I've heard from several that it's actually very horrible (mostly because you have to shell out real world cash to get anywhere).
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
From what they're saying, and from what I've heard on previous /. discussions, I think There will go places. Just a place to go online, hang out with friends, play a game, etc. It's so simple and crazy, it works. $50 a year sounds fairly reasonable as well.
I was reading about There a few days back and since I'm in the middle (actually, finishing off) Snow Crash, I was thinking that this online world is a lot like the Neal Stephenson Metaverse, all the capitalism and stuff.
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
People with mundane, boring lives play video games to escape, and play as "someone cool." Why would people with mundane, boring lives shell out money just to role-play as themselves?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
What a great way for me to know who I can cold-call and sell absolutely nothing of value!!!
Heck I'd like to see the numbers on who plays and pays in There and who pays for stuff from infomercials. It's gotta be a high percentage.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Well, it's a cool but hardly a new or novel concept or implementation. I suspect it will never reach it's full potential for the basic reason that it's elitist, non-productive, proprietary and restrictive.
How is it elitist? Why, of course, the prices. The cost is simply too high for more than a few affluent first-worlders to afford.
It's not very productive other than sheer entertainment. How could spending time there be profitable other than as a diversion from real life?
As well it's OWNED. The company tells you what you can, and can't do.
I propose someone, (hey Carmack) create an open 3D system that anyone can access or contribute to. What we really need is an evolving 3D net world. Wouldn't it be cool to have a way to do this that's not dependant on one company?
Perhaps some clever hacker could create an open 3D protocol that would allow for 3D worlds to be easily created and used by everyone. On this note, WTF ever happened to VRML?
Words to men, as air to birds.
There has Will Harvey, the kid who created Music Construction Set way back when, also a C64 computer port of Marble Madness, and Zany Golf and The Immortal for the Amiga, on board. It's nice to see him finally get a new project.
Also there is a guy I've talked to, not in person but online, Jeffery Hunter (I think that was the name), who was once working on WorldsAway, which was an earlier attempt at this kind of virtual world thing.
There itself seems to be inspired (though vastly changed) by the Habitat line of virtual worlds, of which WorldsAway was one. I was rather involved with WorldsAway once upon a time, and they even had a article in Wired magazine once upon a time, but word is that management was clueless and forced out the good guys, of whom Hunter was one. So at least I know it's in good hands.
Hunter was cool. I ran some fairly gonzo events in WorldsAway once upon a time, I mean really weird stuff, blow your freakin' mind stuff, and he helped a little from his seat On-High. I took it for granted back then but now I see that most management would rather not try that kind of oddness. There must be something cool happening there. (Pun not intended.)
Anyway, There. I signed up for the beta but never got the disk in the mail, and didn't hear from them for the longest time. Now they send me e-mail every couple of weeks begging me to buy their program thingies. I'm sorry, but a purchase fee, a subscription fee, *and* people can spend real-world money for in-world advantages?
I'm sure there are people out there who can afford all that but currently I'm not one of them. Also, when I was in WorldsAway I discovered it to be an immense time sink. I don't think I'm ready for that kind of commitment to a non-human-female kind of thing at the mo'.
Found it kind of funny actually. Everywhere I went, I felt like I was in a virtual simulation of a tourist trap, where the only point was to buy items, and for vendors to take your money away.
--- It's not my fault this post looks redundant. I just type too slow.
"IT MUST BE THE SHOES!"
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
There has problems, but it's interesting. It is not the Metaverse, it's a commercial product. It's pay for play, but it's probably about 1/2 game (treasure hunts, buggy racing, hoverboard tricks, trivia contests, etc.), 1/2 3-d chat service (with amazing emotes and an incredible amount of avatar customization).
I have fun in There. I thought it was worthwhile to invest a few $ to play around with the cool hoverboards and other stuff and to log on occasionally to chat, explore, and play with no pressure. It's no Evercrack, but that's part of what i like about it. A good way to think of it is that you are creating your own fun with the tools they provide and those tools are good and getting (mostly) better.
Feel free to ask if you have any more specific questions. I'll try to answer honestly with the good and the bad.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Also played the beta. I had fun with it until they made it impossible to hit people with buggies and send them flying. For a while it was as good as I'd expect an online GTA could be! They created a really large persistent land mass, which was interesting for about a week. After that, it's like... "Hmm, do we want to stand in a semi-circle and talk next to a pyramid, or in a spooky castle??" Who cares! I think There is the ideal society Hitler would have striven for if he lived now and spent too much time watching MTV. There's a huge array of avatar configurations (I know, because I created a rather er... lumpy and ugly one), but most people in the game seemed to pick very similar appearances. When I played, the game was populated completely by a host of trendily dressed caucasian characters. It was spooky. And something just doesn't seem right when you're paying money to buy a shirt that will give your character a six pack.
--- "Yeah, I'm a bit stressed out. I have a research paper due tomorrow and it has to be +5, Insightful."
Have you seen how you "get" to play this?
You submit your system specs, and they "invite you."
I think the CEO is a disciple of Hitler. Virtual-anti-semetic. Only blond-haired, blue-eyed ditzy teenage girls are allowed.
Fuck that.
Insert clever one liner here.
...is right here: "There is the first online getaway that combines the power of chat with the fun and excitement of online games."
Now, I haven't played many MMOs, but I have played a few. And for the most part, modern MMOs are just glorified screen savers with IRC built in. I'm not sure how this could be considred "the first."
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
You should check out the totally open-source, free-software project currently being developed, WorldForge. It is still in progress, but they have a huge team and a lot is being done. Take it and run.
---Psilosopher
It's somewhat elitist and "OWNED", but you can say the same sort of thing about other online games. Sometimes it takes a company that's in it for the money to make a solid entertainment product. Other times, this fails horribly. Haven't tried There, so I can't say where they're headed.
As for an open 3D worlds system, it's a fine idea, but would require a lot of focused work (far more than, say, creating a MUD or the like). VRML collapsed under the weight of 'too many cooks', although X3D is alive and kicking. Even with X3D, a great client application, and serious server hardware, it would still take a large number of "clever hackers" to maintain a "open 3D world" system.
Having played (and mocked) several instances of the There beta, I have to contend that this news story is even in the right place. There is not a game: there is no score, there is no goal, there is no point. There is merely a chatroom with avatars, vehicles, and pointless crap you can fritter away your money on. Would you call Habbo Hotel a "game," because it's the same thing that There is doing, at what I assume is a fraction of the cost.
- colin
Since this game promotes capitalism, I should be able to open my own virtual sweatshop and pay 8 year-old Indonesian kids to log on at 8 cents an hour to make those virtual Nikes for me to sell at $120 per virtual pair. What a great idea!?!?!Phil Knight is totally going to make me a Vice President of Nike for this one.
I agree that there's often a need for revenue in order to support professional development, but I believe that open platforms and standards spur development far more than closed or proprietary systems do. Sure, ownership guarantees profits but one only has to look at the net or OS's to see the obvious disadvantages of overcontrol. I suspect that MMOG's will never become massively popular until the those worlds become "free" worlds. This also applies to other game genres. Imagine if you will a protocol / server that allows Q3A players to fight against UT players. In this regard, I can only hope that open alternatives are developed that allow users to interact without being forced to pay someone to do so.
I found FreeWRL by following your informative post about X3D, it's a Canadian governmaent supported development which looks very cool. Could this be the 3D browser I've been hoping for? I hope so. I can't wait to actually travel through 3D cyberspace ala Lawnmower Man or Neuromancer. There's also WorldForge which looks cool, but is more limited to game development.
Thanks to both of you for steering me in the right direction. Oh, and thanks to those who modded my orignal comment up. Of course, no thanks for the over-rated from some bitter poor soul with nothing more positive to do with thier points. Some people eh. (shakin head)
Words to men, as air to birds.
How on earth are they going to be able to sell this to the mainstream market if it won't run on my Pentium 4 with 512 Mb Ram and a Radeon Mobility 7500 (problem is the video card apparently)? Lower the system specs, you fools.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
There are a thousand chat rooms I can join on the internet. There are also Massively Multiplayer Online Games that I can play that are graphical chatrooms with fictional goals. Can anyone tell me why I'd play There? It just seems like a really badly rendered chat room where you spend real money to get fake (very fake) things. It'd be one things if say, hoverboards looked just like the ones from BTTF2 or the shoes looked like ACTUAL photographic 3d Rendered Nikes. But other than that, I just can't see a reason. Help on purpose here?
schild
editor, f13.net
Here is a Wired News article about There.
There is even a picture of a Shopping Cart Hoverboard I modeled.
This adds a whole new possibility to the origin of The Matrix...perhaps the machines didn't really enslave humankind but we all rather enslaved ourselves in a virtual word and the machines just took over, trapping us there. Perhaps The Matrix will come true now, as technology advances I'm sure There.com will march right aongside until you do have to hook up right through the back of your neck for the ultimate virtual experience. As people find living in a perfect virtual world is easier than dealing with real life, more will join till everyone just lives life there and the machines do take over. Or perhaps we just willingly leave the machines in charge of the real world, so we can live our fantasy lives inside There.com. It's madness I tell you! Pure madness!