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Is a Metaverse the Future of the Internet?
TheHatter
Member Posts: 2,547
First off, what is a Metaverse?
Simply put, a Metaverse is a 3D Internet. Users come in and create content, much in the same way they create web pages, except with a 3D Avatar representation of themselves in a 3D environment. A Metaverse is an MMO, but an MMO is not a Metaverse. Games like WoW cannot be considered a Metaverse, because you cannot go in and create content from scratch and share it with others. Even things like Wurm come close, but are still not a Metaverses because you are limited by the in game tools the game designers have given you to create the content.
If WoW is not a Metaverse, then what exactly is a Metaverse?
There are only a handful of them out there currently. The thing about the ones out there is that most people do not like them at all. The find them to be weird, dull, pointless, or anything along those lines. Which, I can understand completely. But, those of you who are a little bit older, can you remember the early days of the internet before the Dot Com Boom? It was pretty much the same thing. It wasn't until the idea was spread to the general public, did the internet really take off.
Second Life is probably the best known and most well done Metaverse that's in commercial release currently. Most people think it's a place that where perverted furries go to have weird cybersex, when in fact most of the people in Second Life never indulge in those types of activities. The weird thing is that it's pretty much the opposite of what happened to the internet in the 90s. Whether it was coincidence, or whether they are related, the Dot Com Boom came about around the same time that Internet Porn did.
The thing about Second Life is that users are extremely limited in content creation. While they have much more freedom to create than in most MMOs, they do not have the resources to truly create what they have in their heads. The way 3D images are uploaded is just horrible (even though it's going to be fixed) and the scripting language you are given is probably more limiting to the creator, than basic HTML was in the beginning. To me, the thing I enjoy about Second Life the most is that I feel like I am on the ground level of something very big. Of course there are other things about it I enjoy, but being on the ground level and understand things that most people don't even know about but may become every day knowledge, is very cool.
But now, we have other companies taking the initiative to create their own versions of the Metaverse, such as Avatar Reality with Blue Mars. Blue Mars is just like Second Life in the sense that the world is left up to the users to create and manipulate, but with one major and important difference... The tools they are given are much more powerful and uses real programming and scripting languages that people already know, instead of backwards, extremely limiting, and head smashing proprietary LSL (Linden Scripting Langauge) that is used in Second Life. This will give the creators the ability to create just about anything they can dream up and turn into code and graphics, much like full fledged games are made today. They will have the ability to make everything from Flight Simulators, Racing Games with Physics, First Person Shooters, and the list could go on and on until the end of time. While, it's not completely malleable as a game made by a big company from scratch, it does come very close.
Today, we have every-day normal people using the internet to reach out to their friends and family on the internet through sites like MySpace and Facebook. Almost my entire family is on Facebook now and that includes my Mom, Dad, Sister, and even my Grandparents and their brothers and sisters! But, if you think about it, what is the main hook for people who use Facebook? Is it the fact that they can just connect and talk with friends and family? Or is it the fact that they can spend hours upon hours on Facebook, doing all sorts of random things. Like playing games, sharing links to funny pictures and sites, and reading about things they are interested in? If they just wanted to connect with friends and family, then don't you think MySpace wouldn't have been completely over ran by Facebook? MySpace started to gain speed, then was just completely demolished by Facebook.
Now, Blue Mars is still in it's very early stages at this point and there is no way to really tell if it's going to succeed just yet. But from what I've been reading from the developers gives me the impression that they plan to try to make it big, very big. They even have plans on creating a cloud environment to run the game, which would give them the ability to spread it to many more users than anything before it has even hoped to accomplish.
This thread has gotten a bit longer than I had hoped and I could keep writing about many other aspects of what a Metaverse is and what they could be, so I'm just going to end it here and ask:
Now that you know what a Metaverse is and hopefully have somewhat of a feeling of how powerful they can potentially be.
Do you think that the potential of them expanding to a much wider audience is possible?
Do you think they could potentially be the future of the internet some day?
Disclaimer: This is NOT an advertisement for Blue Mars or anything of the likes. Blue Mars just happens to be in development and to me has more potential than anything before it to change the internet as we know it. I personally don't even know if it will succeed or fail or even if the client will be user friendly enough for people to actually want to download it. As it stands now, the user end client for Blue Mars is complete trash. But, they have stated it's the least of their worries until they get the rest going and get users creating content. The Developers Client is very nicely done so far.
Comments
I think you will see more and more virtual worlds like Second Life, where players can create things.
But I don't see those worlds (or that metaverse) as being games - more like virtual playgrounds. One guy makes a castle and the guy next door makes a ferris wheel. Sure you can enjoy both, but it lacks a common theme, a unifying purpose, a ruleset and a gaming objective.
What would be cool is to see a metaverse where you can make more things, but you have to make them within parameters consistent with that world. So if the game was set in Roman times, you can make an aqueduct but you can't make a snow cone shop. If that happens, then yes I think that could well be the future.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
as long as they cloud server play, than maybe.
PS3 has something like this
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Well, that's really why I mentioned Blue Mars. I have yet to really get down and dirty with the content development, but from what I understand is that they will be allowing the content creators to set rules just like you have described.
And I do know that the development tools are powerful enough to actually create a Game with objective. There are already a couple out there now and the client is free. They have developed a Golfing game and a flying racer type game where you fly through hoops and have to try and beat times.
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If your thinking about Playstation Home then I'm pretty sure it doesn't let you create your own stuff, you can decoreate stuff already made but as far as I know only gaming studios and the like can actually make content for the world.
nah 99.9% of the players don't know how, have no talent of, and don't want to create anything. They want entertainment.
I wouldn't put my faith of my futuer entertainment in player created trash. It is not worth the time to sort out of 1 diamond in a million carbon lumps.
Player created mods can be a fantastic addition to a game, FO3 and Civ4 spring to mind. But the game needs to be great to make people want to be in it, creating more content. A set of tools may not be enough.
Congratulations, you're capable of pulling a statistic out of your ass and generalize what "everyone" else wants.
Leave it to a closed-minded WoWbot to not want more freedom and creativity.
Well, that's what SL brings to the table. What makes me excited, is the what Blue Mars may potentially bring to the table. It isn't simply just a set of tools, but THE tools. C++ & LUA script and full compatability for 3D programs such as Maya, 3DS Max, and Blender. The tools BM gives you, really aren't worth anything without prior knowledge of programming and 3D Modeling. But, does that mean you can't enjoy the things other users create?
nariusseldon is absolutely right and that's the great thing. 99.9% of the people on the internet don't create websites, possibly even less. BUT, there ARE people who do. Just like places like Facebook, how many of you know people who create Facebook apps? There really aren't a whole lot, but there are a ton of Facebook apps. What about the iPhone or the Droid? I only know a couple app developers for those, but is there a shortage of apps? Absolutely not.
With things in a Metaverse, you're not really looking at a game per say, but instead a 3D representation of the internet itself. Without many MANY more people to consume the content created, the content that is created becomes worthless. In the IT field, you need hundreds or thousands times more consumers than you have producers, otherwise you just end up with a whole lot of untouched, unappreciated, worthless content.
Which actually may be one of the problems with Second Life currently. They have made it extremely easy for the general user to come in and be a content creator and the world is full of "player created trash". Just because you don't create or care to create content, doesn't mean everyone feels that way.
I have actually been debating on starting a project in BM, but have been weary as to how well the environment is going to do or how well the company is going to run it. It's alot of time and alot of effort put forth into something I really don't know how the future is going to unfold. The more I think about it though, the more it intrigues me and the more I want to be on the ground level of something that may very well become very very big.
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Places like Second Life are so goddam BORING though. People just standing around in random landscapes, wearing pointless costumes waffling on about about their favourite snacks or how nice each other looks. They're just dressy-up chatrooms for the uncool.
Well if we use your example, made up as it is ofc, that 0.1% is still a hell of alot of ppl out there creating things for the Web.
We put our faith in this 0.1% everday of our lives anyway, you know the ones, the ppl that actually get off their arses and work in Government, become Doctors, become Lawyers, Nuclear scientists etc etc etc, that 0.1% of the worlds population.
The rest of us would be fubar'd without them.
I see a great potential for people to make mini games such as DOTA, basically like custom map in warcraft(RTS) or starcraft.
But I don't really see it as a future of MMO. The thing is there's no interconnection between every landscape in second life. It's basically thousands of player made world.
Another problem I see is the lag. So there's a limitation on what it can do.
I think that something that allows people to create has a huge potential. But not as a MMO game. In an MMO, you need to have a focus, a direction. Allowing people to create whatever they want will get you SL pron and everything else. The game would lose it's meaning, it's flavor, it's atmosphere. Games need an identity, and those would blow that identity out the window.
Where I see this being a huge boon to the industry is as a home for people to make and display their work, whether that's art or scripts or entire systems for MMOs. Imagine if Indy game developers could buy these directly, adding it to their games. Even larger companies might easily be interested. Companies with the funds could even buy very large "islands" in such a "world" to allow people they are interested in to show their work on a massive scale. They may even go as far as to give proven talent finacial advances to work on ideas.
Once upon a time....
I think one of the biggest hurdles these Metaverses face, is the same thing that's going on in this thread.
Before they can be popular, they need to get rid of all misunderstanding about a Metaverse being a 3D representation of the internet, because that's exactly what they are.
An Island, or a Sim, is like a web page. Some entity develops it and pays for the server space and the traffic. Users come in and do whatever in this space and then move on to the next one, just like browsing webpages on the ineternet. Granted, the development of the space is much more complicated, but that doesn't matter because there will be no shortage of developers for it.
This space could be a game, a shop, or even a 3D representation of something in real life like what Amaranthar said. Second Life has actually put alot of money into the corporate showcase and has failed miserably. Mostly, I think it's because they tried to do something way before it's time.
Perhaps, we won't really see the Metaverse become what it should be until we have the Futurama technology. But, if you know what episode I'm talking about, that's EXACTLY what a Metaverse is. Remember they were going through shops, chat rooms, and at the end they had a battle between each other. Everything was there that is on the internet.
^-- Metaverse --^
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Well, in SL you do have alot of junk, but you have alot of great things. The junk is simply bypassed and alot of times the great things are too. They allow for anyone to create anything they want, so long that the adult stuff is kept off to the side on islands.
Blue Mars on the other hand, has quality control, much like Apple's App Store. Part of this problem is that they also have rules regarding the content and restrict adult oriented stuff. Granted, I'm not into the sexual stuff, but I really don't mind other things that can be considered "mature" or "adult". This could potential be one of the factors that make it or break it.
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