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 quite 'There'?

[E_elven]

The problem was that the game just wasn't There. Too much to do, but a lot of it was just the same as Here.

And, by the way, There are games out There that are not just your average D&D-ripoffs. They just don't have graphics.

Visit www.mudconnector.com, www.topmudsites.com or www.mudmagic.com.

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.

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.

And the price of therebucks plummeted

[V_M_Smith]

as people madly tried to sell off their accumulated wealth.

The results are here. Keep in mind that the nominal prices of tbux are $1.12/2000 (from There.com) and $1/2000 (from tbux.com, another large reseller).