Slashdot Mirror
Koster's Areae Unveils Metaplace
Some nine months ago veteran MMOG designer Raph Koster announced his new game company, called Areae ... but not what they were making. To go along with the TechCrunch40 Conference, the company has finally taken the wraps off of their project: Metaplace. Essentially, Metaplace is going to be a virtual world toolkit. The whole thing is built on open standards, and attempt to 'bring virtual worlds to the web', instead of keeping them boxed away in a separate little garden. As the site puts it: "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." Virtual World News and GigaOM have writeups of the presentation at the TechCrunch Conference, while Areae's Community Manager Tami Baribeau writes in a post why gamers should care. Over at his site Areae President Raph Koster just breaths a sigh of relief.
"The whole thing is built on open standards, and attempt to 'bring virtual worlds to the web', instead of keeping them boxed away in a separate little garden."
:`(
That sounds like VRML
I hope that this will allow people to focus on the story, not just the glitter - that'd be an improvement. Not to say that I don't like snazzy-looking games and VR worlds, but rather I'm saying that if it became trivial for them to look good then game creation could focus on the story and interactions between players. That's part of the longevity of a story world.
Sounds like it would also give a leg up to those who are good writers, and we might see their works more easily put in front of people.
I just hope we don't get people and/or corporations trying to treat any of this like it's IP, and potentially ruin it for everyone.
I remember when VRML first came out. I played with it and could do fun things with it... but I can't write a game story to save my life. Well, when compared against a real writer.
More like many virtual worlds full of many virtual rolling tumble weeds and exaggerated population figures.
While I could play around with the Web 2.0 and community hype, I do believe that the future of multiplayer games will be based on user-created content.
I will be interesting to see how this things works out. Maybe I can even read TFA after the slashdot effect wears off.
I lost my sig.
Isn't it lame enough in 2D?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Has anyone got any -real- info on this? Does it include physics? Is it DirectX based? How flexible is it? Do you run the server, or do they? Can you do commercial apps, or only free ones? Can you restrict access to your worlds?
I can think of quite a few fun little physics-based games to make, but it would totally depend on how flexible this system is. I've been thinking about getting into game programmer for quite a while, but with the current frameworks out there, it's not a trivial task. This kit makes it sound trivial.
I've signed up for the alpha, of course... But I'd rather have some real information now.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Okay, what about the guy who wants another person's level 60 to be impotent when imported into their own world. Do magical elves loose their powers when imported into a Halo Clone, or do they become god-like?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What a great idea! Next up, let's put all the worlds web sites on a single server. Because then it's all connected and stuff! And since the internet is built on open standards and all companies play nice, there should be no problems.
Years ago this was already being done using god-awful VRML plugins...MMOG's are not new, and ones that you can customize are not new. The fact that Metaplace is tied in more strongly with new web technologies is somewhat interesting, but other than that...really, why should -any- gamer care?
Better yet, let's take apart the whole post that supposedly answers this very question (http://www.cuppycake.org/?p=251):
"Secondly, Metaplace.com itself will be a virtual worlds portal that allows you to discover and play new games and worlds. Rate your favorite games, earn badges, connect with other gamers and hop from one world to another with ease. We expect all sorts of unique games and worlds - everything from your standard RPGs, to Tetris clones, to Amazon bookstores, and university lecture halls."
Second Life with achievements and hyperlinks. Big deal.
"Where have all the modders gone? That's right, there aren't any left!"
Uhh...once again, there's people making -real- money off the content that they've created for Second Life. As for the rest of the modders? I don't know...I was playing Open Arena the other day, that's a completely open-source FPS based on the Quake 3 engine, with user-created content. Urban Terror's another Q3 mod that's gone standalone. Hell, some of them go ahead and write their own great games from scratch (Battle for Wesnoth). Where -did- all those modders go? Well, they either went to Second Life or continued customizing game engines like they always have. If there were no modders left I seriously doubt that GTKRadiant would still be releasing.
"We know that MMO gamers as a whole aren't really 'feeling' the current choices of games that they have. There is a lot of subscribing and unsubscribing and resubscribing."
This is just pure "mouthnoise," to put it politely. No one I know playing World of Warcraft has complained about how many times they were "subscribing and unsubscribing and resubscribing," because it just isn't that big of a problem. Not "feeling" the current choice of games they have? I know you wouldn't mention WoW by name because that would ruin the hype machine, but Blizzard isn't exactly a miserable failure at MMOG design. Check the numbers out sometime.
And perhaps the most interesting point of all, as subtle as it is:
"We host the servers for you and provide forums so you can interact with your players."
Great, right? Not necessarily. If the only place that you can store Metaplace content is on Metaplace servers, what's to stop them from charging for storage space? Changing their ToS to indicate that they are the real "owners" of any content uploaded to the site? Hell, the only part they even mentioned being "open" is the client, and that only as an "open standard..." In other words we're likely to get a specification, but if you want an open -source- Metaplace client, they're going to leave the work up to you. Just as well that they did anyway, because even if you did write your own client, you'd still need their servers to store the content on, and there's no gurantee that their open "standard" is going to be any more standard than the kind that Microsoft likes to produce.
I'm sure this post will be deleted before it slows down the hype machine any...but if you're expecting gamers to care, you're going to have to try a whole lot harder.
Anyone else think of Otherland? Cool idea, but the MySpace thing ruins it.
What I want to know is can these worlds be private so as to keep out griefers etc. and only allow in those you want in it.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
So in essence what this is:
A set of API-s that connect various games into a single community. They host it, and if you don't waste many resources it's free. If you do (i.e. become popular), it's no longer free, you pay hosting fee.
They have an example client, most likely Flash-based, 2D isometric game that renders their "world" definition.
Koster, in his own words, can't program a damn thing, and in my opinion, the way he imagines this working is waaaaay out there.
Quote from him:
"You have to admit it; the whole concept of 'play anywhere' is pretty neat. How often have you wanted to play a game with your friends, only to find out that their video card can't support the game? Have you ever been trapped in an airport for longer than expected with just your cell phone or an ancient laptop? We plan to show you just how good a game can look in a browser, and just how much fun it can be to play. Imagine people playing YOUR RPG on their cell phone, or in their Facebook, or in the sidebar of a gaming blog. That is accessibility, and we're out to show you just how awesome it can be."
Oh right, accessible gaming! The same RPG in 2D Flash, 3D, and Java! This will work amazing right? No, it won't. It'll be a disaster.
Let me foresee how this will go:
1. We'll see few games attempting to work on multiple platforms, and thus they will remain ridiculously simple so they can be played at all on anything from a cellphone to freak gamer personal computer desktop.
2. We'll see some more fun games, which you can only play on one platform, either 3D only or 2D only.
Either way, he expects to deliver the API-s, the sample isometric world viewer... and then expects their "users" to code everything, from the hot 3D versions, to the cellphone clients.
I only can sigh, and forget I wasted my time on trying to comprehend what the hell was he doing, since he's apparently trying to market it as something big, and it's not.
Is it just me, or does anyone else keep seeing 'Meatplace' instead of 'Metaplace'?
http://xkcd.com/386/
Unless my MetaSpace can be painted in green and magenta, be decorated with four hundred billion "sparkly" stickers and "hilarious" photos and video clips that "YOU JUST GOTTA SEE", and have horrendous low-quality looping emo-rock in the background, it doesn't belong on my MySpace page, dammiT!
Damn you Raph Koster! Why don't you die!!!? Get a job as a "creative consultant", earn some money and leave "virtual worlds" alone!.
So, just like Myspace then.
Lot's of Blahblah, the only thing downloadable is a zip of various versions of the companys icons, no technocal details and registration for the alpha version gives no details but requires one to fill out aprox. 50 fields with personal details. ... etc.
The impression of this website fits to what many people here are saying: That this guy is know for large-type gameproject screwups and shady marketing ploys. To me it looks like a marketing scheme to push some half-assed idea and grab a little cash on the way.
As a contrast - and I'm not saying I'm a fan or even a user - Second Life in the beginning had little more than two guys. One business man and one programmer. The business man did his job and the programmer built a powerfull, usable protocoll and a plattform independant client for it. It probably takes no more than minutes to get up and running with SL and start building and scripting your primitives-based 3D objects. In a nutshell: It works and is flexible enough to get the attention of IT opinion leaders.
Many companies have tried to build rich 3D clients and plugins since around 1999/2000. Quite a few very good ones failed down the road or went into hybernation mode. The only one I know of that really took of is SL. This Metaplace on the other hand has nothing to offer that I can't build myself in a few days - a mediocre website filled with marketing-babble.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
oh and pps
I stole your fucking lunch money.
[quote]"(Metaplace will launch with this 2D isometric graphics view as standard)"
It's not even an immersive 3D world.[/quote]
IMO, 2D isometric is a good standard that I wish a lot of developers would go back to. Even though you run a completly 3d engine 2D isometric is actually a good thing.
One of the reason I hated EQ and preferred to play UO and Diablo was because the 2D isometric view always was static and never caused me problems nor something else to mess with. Let me play a CRPG and not a damn FPS.
It might be the fact I like to look at the world as miniatures like real life role playing games, but maybe I'm just old school.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
As their servers can't even handle a slashdotting! How are they going to handle thousands of virtual worlds?
In 6 months, we'll see thousands of "JOIN MY RAD MMO ITS SUPER COOL KTHX" posts and such. Everybody will have their OWN VIRTUAL WORLD with noboby playing them. It's like MUDs. Anybody can host a stock plain MUD, there are already hundreds of them. But they're pretty much all empty unless there are tons of original content.
So we'll see maybe 1% of original MMOs and the rest will be stock crap. Big deal.
Also, looking at the website and graphics, it's gonna be: Cute ponies, glitter, anime-style characters, pastel pink... This is game development for 12-years old kids. Well, except for the flying penises.
All Hail Discordia. Hail Eris. Fnord.
Is "slurping" a directory the same thing as "squirting" your favorite song? What ever happened to "copying"?
This toolkit sounds like it will have great potential, but because people are jerks, it will be misused to full extent and Raph will be attributed with providing tools to someone who gets 15 minutes of infamy for the porn/gay-bashing/raping/killing/unsocial MMO they create with these tools. Meanwhile, some good quality MMO will be completely ignored and eventually lost. All along the way will be thousands of MyMMO's cluttering the bandwidth with tons of empty promises.
I'll wait for the YouTube version.
Only Multiverse gives you the freedom to self-host (and keep backups), but it does so at the cost of the freedom to modify and redistribute the software. Second Life gives you the software freedom for the client (and claims to be releasing the server GPL soon, as well), but you are currently limited to subscribing to create a "private" environment on their servers only (which, afaik, you cannot even make backups of). Metaplace will host your private, low-traffic environment for free, but still won't let you self-host (although backups are undetermined).
There are deal-breakers in all of these, so far as I'm concerned. Second Life is still closest to ideal, I think, since they have made numerous claims in the past that they're going to release their server GPL. If Metaplace's APIs are as open as they're selling, however, they may give Linden Lab a run for it's... er, license, if it turns out to be easier for third parties to reverse-engineer the Metaplace protocols into a FOSS server.
So how does it work when a World of WarCraft character, a StarWars Galaxy character, and a MySpace user decide to PVP?
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
VRML failed because you were all alone, and because the spec was designed by academics without any interest in or concession to real-world computing capabilities. X3D fails for the same reason; if anything, the spec-wankers and academics worked twice as hard making it unusable.