One World, or Many? Metaplace's Web-eats-MMO versus Second Life's Metaverse-swallows-Web... versus Google

S. Zamboni wore this T-shirt around Second Life for years-- did he see the future first?

My interview with Raph Koster on his launch of Metaplace ran several days ago on GigaOM-- go here to read it.  Winding down, we talked a bit about his company's vision of the metaverse, versus the Lindens' vision.  Basically, Metaplace wants the Web to engulf everything we've come to associate with online worlds (avatars, virtual currency, etc.), which would be in marked contrast to the Lindens' idea of the metaverse gobbling all the Web's key features.  Raph believed it was unwise to force users as Second Life did into a single world, crammed up against neighbors they didn't like (often for moral reasons), and that this made them focus too much on the platform, as opposed to the network of different worlds.  Which is the wiser vision?

Of course, I argued on behalf of Second Life; in my experience, I told him, the belief that the world was a single "nation" was fundamental to its growth and the quality of its content.  Residents would not have had the incentive to invest so much work and voluntary community building in it without having, for lack of a better word, a kind of patriotic loyalty to Second Life.  That was true especially in the beginning, but remains mainly true, because while there's also a robust internal economy now, only a 1000 or so Residents make a substantial income from their SL activity. 

On the other side, Raph argued that the explosion of private islands in Second Life suggested the Metaplace vision made more sense.  People were rapidly moving away from the main continents into private-controlled servers, which in effect meant they were cutting themselves off from the "one world" vision.  I should add another point in his favor: while the notion of Second Life as a country was important to its growth, it also heightens the rancor when the Lindens are seen to have failed in that ideal.  Because then angry Residents aren't just complaining about poor service from an Internet company-- it's like they see the Lindens as Founding Fathers betraying the country.

What do you think?  Add to this mix the recent news that Google or another top Internet company is quitely jumping into the metaverse space.  For what it's worth, I agree with TechCrunch's Duncan Riley that whatever it is, it'll a Web-based application-- which would fall in line with Raph's Web-eats-MMO vision.

Comments

[Relee Baysklef]

Metaplace is very interesting, and it's gonna be great I'm sure. But I don't think things are going to go the way they expect.

It's true that Second Life's core was the main grid, though I'm not sure that can be said now. Too many griefers, and the Lindens are all but powerless against them. People are moving to private islands and wanting to host their own sims because they need security that Linden Labs can't provide anymore. Metaplace will probably have a single 'core' world created by Areae just to show what people can do, and give them a place to log on to when they're setting up their Metaplace compatable browser. We'll have to wait and see if that works out like the main grid on SL.

From what I've seen, one of the biggest problems that Areae will have is piracy. Second Life's objects are maintained by the asset server, which keeps everybody honest. You can't rez something that doesn't belong to you. When it comes to Metaplace however, you own the server and the world, and create it to work any way you want. Someone else can steal aspects of your world, or your entire world, and copy it, and there's no asset server to check with and say "Yeah this guy owns this."

So the whole concept of ownership will be different and incomparable to Second Life's ownership. Furthermore I don't think Areae will be able to do anything about it, the way Linden Labs can just kick someone out of the world. People's only recourse will be legal.

In all I look forward to it. I'm sure I'll be able to do things with it I've only dreamed of in Second Life, but I really don't think they can be considered to have parity.

The final irony is that I wouldn't be at all surprised if the two became compatable, with Second Life becoming merely another Metaplace on the internet. Wouldn't that be a larf?

[Relee Baysklef]

Eheh, sock in mouth. I had read quite a bit about Metaplace before, but your interview reveals quite a bit that is different. Actually it does sound a lot more like Second Life than what they were describing before.

I had thought they were merely building a tool, not a service.

[Markus Breuer (Pham Neutra)]

The three most important principles responsible for the success of virtual worlds - IMHO - are
# the world
# the avatar
# a consensual experience of the world between you and other avatars

It is not necessary for this world to be rendered in perfect 3D and not necessary for it to be continuous like SL.

All of these success factors can be (and are already being) implemented within the confines of the HTML/Flash/Java web. I am uncertain, though, about the level of fragmentation (one website – or even one web page – as a “world”) that Metaplace and similar projects are introducing. Different worlds in different styles for people with different tastes are nice. But to have a few million of them might be … a bit much.

It is often more fun and leads to an immersive experience more easily, if the world is rendered more realistically and gives us a larger context with easy to understand metaphors for moving from one location to another, though. Please note that there has been a certain trend in SL for private islands to be clustered into small continent-lets. 256m by 256m is not really a large area in which to create an interesting world in.

That’s why I believe that projects like Metaplace are an intermediate step in the development of the Metaverse. They are nice and will be successful because they are accessible to more people than the more demanding, continuous 3D worlds. But if people can access worlds which are rendered more richly, more realistically, which offer a larger context etc. they will probably choose this alternative if it can be accessed at similar cost and with similar ease.

[larryr]

20 dollar a month isps hosting your vr worlds servers.......need more "land"..lol buy a 100 dollar 500 gb drive.

sounds familiar to anyone whos been around for the last 10 years....

and again. whos financial interest is served using metaplace? whos content is freely cut and pasted and reused as open standards? i havent seen any reporting-- excuse me "blogging" about this "small" issue.;) is it to be another vc funded- lets use the mass for free fodder to sell adwords too...? and if so.. beware the waking of the monkey boys when there school loans are called in...;)