There Inc. Stops Consumer 'Virtual World' Updates

Thanks to Terra Nova for its story discussing a major refocusing at PC 'virtual world' company There Inc., as an official statement mirrored on ThereUniverse.com explains the company is "changing its strategic direction to focus on our technology platform", and "we will no longer be making regular updates to the [There 'virtual world' consumer] software, and we will not be fixing bugs", some claim due to plateauing interest in the game. Terra Nova points out: "Presumably There will be continuing their work with organizations like the US Army. Though they make it clear that this isn't a shut-down of the consumer world, it can't be good news for the development of virtual worlds beyond the typical D&D-inspired MMOGs", a category which also includes PC 'virtual world' title Second Life.

Comments

so where is the "game"??

[oooorainbow]

Their biggest problem is there isn't enough game to it, and people lose interest very quickly. Numerous companies like this have seen failures in the Asia part of the world, and no, a shift to technology focus will not change their fate. They are no idSoft.

Not to be compared with Second Life

[MBraynard]

Second Life was a limitless environment - people living inside of a CAD programing environment. You could *create* your own RPG or FPS or whatever within it. Mostly I created odd architectual objects and star trek uniforms. But you could really create any kind of object and program scripts to make it do pretty much anything.

Most people just built houses and furniture, but some were exceptionally creative and ambitious.

Compare There to the Sims Online maybe. Not to Second Life.

As somebody who beta'd There...

[Txiasaeia]

...nobody's missing much. It was basically a glorified chatroom with a few flash games. I was expecting something like the Metaverse from Stephenson's Snow Crash, but what I got was a bunch of people out in a forest, the desert, beach, and various other locales. What's the point of playing games just so you can customise your hair style or clothes?

Furthermore, what's the point of having a "game" with the same rules and goals of reality? It's more fun to get a few friends and go play frisbee than log on, run around a bit, and type in some stuff.

What about furcadia?

[apezaholic]

Furcadia has had a lot of success. It's been running for like 4 years or something like that. There are usually about 400+ people on at any given time. Plus it's free. www.furcadia.com

Re:What about furcadia?

[bersl2]

MUCKs are successful because they often are accompanied by a specific focus for creative efforts---in Furcadia's case, anthropomorphism---instead of being solely a free-form modeling environment.

Hah.

[Wtcher]

I have a There.come beta account. Or /had/ a beta account... I don't even know if they still are in that stage, I never bothered to pursue it after I captured the CD and discovered that IE had to be set as default browser. ;)

From what I read of There.com, the world seemed to be a marketer's utopia; the essential keystone of the world would be that you'd pay real money to buy virtual accessories so you could fit in with the rest of the population. Now, while I'm not going to rip on the flagrant shallowness of such an existence, I would like to note that I can already do that in real life and derive a more concrete sense of accomplishment doing so. Sort of.

I feel that purely social realities are profitable and sustainable (ignoring M* of old), but that they aren't approaching it from the right perspective. They should take on a more design-centric process for developing these things.

Someone posted about Furcadia earlier. The nice thing about Furcadia is that you have the freedom of doing many things there - just socializing with friends, roleplaying, even scripting and designing new areas for people to explore. The other really nice thing is that they don't make you pay out the nose to access the community.

Re:annoying forced interaction

[secolactico]

Nice idea, I don't want to play like that. Anonymity died at that moment.

I played once and never looked back.

Wise choice. From what I read, There was essentialy, a chat room with pretty graphics. Even the documentation said that if you didn't enjoy interacting with other people, then the game was not for you (or something to that effect, I haven't looked at it since they were in beta). So if that's not your thing, there were several other multiplayer worlds to cater to you.

Re:annoying forced interaction

[KDR_11k]

Because anonymity leads to idiocy allowing "anonymos cowards" in MMOs would be suicide. Really, there are already enough idiots, botters, griefers, etc. in MMOs with personally identifiable data, allowing for anonymity would encourage people to flame each other and so on. Slashdot has the MOD system, but ho would that work in a realtime MMO environment?

(Karma Whoring: The Game, or what?)

Re:Virtual world memories

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been a member of the online community known as There since October of last year. We're definitely not dead yet but with all things that are living and breathing an amount of optimism for the future is a necessity. With the decision by There Inc. to take the staff down to a skeleton crew and discontinue patching the product we are obviously dismayed but I think most of that is because all of us had great optimsim that There wasn't just a game, but it was the logical evolution of chatrooms, IM clients, and sites such as Friendster. Built into this playground were all of the tools that people would need to create, relax, and experience a remarkably diverse spectrum of social interraction.

I think it was my second night in There and some guy had listed a party at his place. I showed up to his virtual house, with its virtual decorations and listened as this guy played music that he had selected of his his shoutcast server over his inworld stereo. I was in Tampa Florida and he was in Sweden.

I was part of a company that's principle mistake was being ahead of it's time. I think this was the case for There as well.