THERE.com

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Nalates
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THERE.com

Post by Nalates »

OMG... THERE is closing?

Here is the story: There.com is closing on March 9th, 2010
Nalates
GoW, GoMa and GoA apprentice - Guildmaster GoC - SL = Nalates Urriah
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JWPlatt
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Re: THERE.com

Post by JWPlatt »

Wow. I only skimmed the article, and I don't know their code/business model. Are they taking all their code down with them and locking it away? Will the owners do something new with it? If they aren't open source, what would happen if they were? Let's keep an eye on the failure mode and what they do with it, if anything.
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Dot
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Re: THERE.com

Post by Dot »

The faqs say No to open source. Details here: http://www.prod.there.com/info/faq
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Nalates
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Re: THERE.com

Post by Nalates »

It seems the reason there will be no open source for THERE, is they sold of the technology some time ago and only license it. :shock:

CNet has a ... recount... of THERE's history. Real-world woes shuttering virtual world There

On the other side of the coin are social networking games like Facebook's Farmville. Where virtual worlds once ruled, FarmVille dominates

The single reason for a shift away form 3D worlds is given as:
CNet wrote:The real question in my mind is why is all the money flowing to iPhone apps and 2D kids and Facebook games? The answer, according to those who spend the most time following these fields, has everything to do with how easy they are to use.
[...]
Even some of the biggest innovators in the 3D virtual world space agree with Meiners' take.

"Using the Internet in a real-time, low-latency communicative way where it brings people together socially hasn't been broadly explored, and now it's beginning to be explored," said Second Life publisher Linden Lab founder and chairman Philip Rosedale, "whether it's Twitter or a 2D Flash game, so those systems generally offer people something, and they're relatively easy to build."
[...]
"If you're an entertainment company or media company, you may be exploring 3D virtual worlds," Sherman said, "but it's just [a small] part of your bag of tricks. You've got iPhone games, Flash games, and social games. You go where your users want to go, or where they're already at."
[...]
A game like FarmVille "does a lot of fun things," said Meiners. "It enables people to have a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, fun, and to share that with others...the experience, but also gifts and such. And it's all very easy to tap in to. It doesn't demand much.
[...]
Meiners also thinks that the popularity of social games, either for adults or kids, is grooming new audiences for future immersive virtual worlds.

"I know people are graduating to more sophistication in their social games," he said. "I think some of it, at least, will lead to virtual world experiences."
One of the reasons for entertainment being interested in 3D is the ability to immerse an audience in an experience. It appears the biggest problem with 3D for the majority of the population is the complexity of navigating in a virtual world. This means over time audiences will migrate to more complex environments as they learn to deal with them, which is similar to Meiners thinking.

The social tools that allow people to connect and play in a virtual world seem to be the part missing in THERE and SL. Both worlds have those tools but they obviously don't work as well as Facebook's and by association Farmville's. SL appears to have recognized the problem and is working to change. The recent addition of MOAP (Media On A Prim) allows one to easily create a Twitter HUD in game (development time for a user, about 5 minutes - one has to be using the SL 2.0 Viewer).

We have seen Uru fail several times due to financial reasons. If Uru fails again, it will because of boredom... lack of interest. My interest in Myst Style builds is that they are likely to co-exist with and survive Uru. Experimenting with Myst Style builds now should give us some idea of what needs to change in Uru to keep it popular.

While I am happy the Cavern opened... that may not have been the wisest move. I think it would have been far better to wait until at least some of the tools were in place for adding fan content. Six months from now those catching up on their Myst experience with Live will be looking for new content. If it is not being provided, they will be experiencing negative 'withdrawal pains' we have been through and Uru will again be losing players.

The ability to spread the word of new age releases may allow Uru to survive. It sort of goes back to episodes. But Twitter may allow a call to go out to followers and they will return to the cavern. Lots of possibilities... but I don't see anything overly reassuring on the horizon.

One of the common problems in Uru right now is new people learning to play Uru. Having the viewer in the classroom provide information on reaching the Greeters and links to the GoG's manual on the web site could be a big help. For now getting that done is a difficult and long process... we soooo need open source.
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Re: THERE.com

Post by Mac_Fife »

Nalates wrote:We have seen Uru fail several times due to financial reasons. If Uru fails again, it will because of boredom... lack of interest. My interest in Myst Style builds is that they are likely to co-exist with and survive Uru. Experimenting with Myst Style builds now should give us some idea of what needs to change in Uru to keep it popular.

While I am happy the Cavern opened... that may not have been the wisest move. I think it would have been far better to wait until at least some of the tools were in place for adding fan content. Six months from now those catching up on their Myst experience with Live will be looking for new content. If it is not being provided, they will be experiencing negative 'withdrawal pains' we have been through and Uru will again be losing players.
This possibly isn't the right thread to discuss these comments, but I strongly suspect that there are a number of reasons for why the cavern re-opened when it did and how it did. I don't have certain knowledge that these are "fact" in themselves, but they have reasonable basis in fact:
  • Cyan, working basically on a shoestring, were finding that they had little or no "spare cycles" to do anything aside from paid work, so Open Source was probably no nearer reality now that it was when it was first announced.
  • Cyan quite probably rented a server cloud to support MagiQuest Online development and testing. Could be that they paid for a years rental and after handing the game over to Creative Kingdoms for open beta testing, found that they had a server cloud that wasn't doing much. So, since they been promising the fans various things over the time since the cavern last closed, Cyan felt they had an opportunity to offer "something".
  • Using a donations scheme allowed some experimentation in how well that could fund something like this (this is possibly going to give some valuable data on the viability of running Open Source shards, so it is an experiment worth watching). If the donations go well, then some work can be taken on by Cyan to a) work towards the open source release, b) accomodate some fan content or c) produce some new (but small) content of their own.
  • After a two-year hiatus, without opening a cavern in some way it becomes hard to guage what the true interest in an online Uru really is. Without that knowledge it is hard to measure how much effort you might be expending in flogging a dead horse to get Open Source (or anything else Uru related) out.
But I do agree with the sentiments over boredom setting in. Interestingly, with no active DRC characters in the cavern, this probably makes it easier for people to create their own storylines and RP: There's no worry that your story will be overshadowed because a DRC event will happen around the same time and take away all your audience; There's no worry that a Cyan led story will contradict your story or vice versa (provided the storyline is contemporary).
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