I have to confess, I originally joined the Metaplace cyberspace back in May of 2009 and have been an occasional visitor ever since (though mostly only to see specific events rather than for general exploration). So it seems a little odd that it's only now that I'm writing down some initial observations! It just seemed the right time to put down some thoughts so let's see what we can find to say about Metaplace.
Avatar creation is simple enough in Metaplace although frankly the options available are almost pointless. This is simply due to the fact that once you are inworld, the size of your avatar means that your avatar's appearance is lacking in any real detail. You can at least zoom in using your mouse wheel which is a benefit not shared by Blue Mars as I discussed here although when you zoom in, the detail of your avatar becomes heavily pixellated. That being said, I did what I could to recreate Senban as much as I could.
After a useful tutorial on how to function in this cyberspace, you're let out to fend for yourself. One thing you'll notice that's different to Second Life is the way you get money (called coins). You get money for adding friends, money for visiting places, money for finding the golden egg hidden in each place, money for leaving comments about each place. Like Second Life you can also buy inworld currency using your credit card but as you can get a lot of money just by wandering round, this doesn't seem necessary. Because each location seems to turn into a game of Hunt The Golden Egg, it's impossible to avoid comparing this cyberspace to the computer games of the eighties and nineties. Given that you can attain levels that unlock new capabilities (like being able to run instead of just walking), it's again impossible to avoid comparisons. In fact I'd personally go so far as to say that Metaplace is a gameplay-based cyberspace and not a virtual world in the sense of say Second Life. I would even go so far as to say that Metaplace has more in common with Zwinky than with Second Life and indeed it shares a great many characteristics with that cyberspace, although it does have far superior graphics to Zwinky.
Much as I pointed out when I discussed Blue Mars in this blog, Metaplace has the amazingly annoying method of putting people's chat in speech bubbles.
One thing I've noticed with some surprise about Metaplace is that there is a casual violence towards lower lifeforms built in and encouraged. Metaplace is populated with cute-little furry things called Meeps. There are in fact a variety of these based on size and colour.
These again give the impression of computer games of the type where ghosts chase you round a maze and in fact I even found a dungeon maze where red Meeps would chase you round while you attempted to collect treasure chests. If they caught you, you screamed and died, splashing blood across the floor which was surprising given the fact that Metaplace seems to be aimed towards a younger demographic.
But as I say, there isn't just the violence of red Meeps towards you - you are actively encouraged to treat the blue Meeps with similar casual violence. For example, near Metaplace Central you can buy a blue Meep from a vending machine for 25 coins and throw it to a shark in the sea nearby - the shark thrashes around and blue blood stains the water.
I also found a desert region where you could load blue Meeps into a cannon and shoot them across the terrain until they hit something with a large green splat!
The overriding culture of Metaplace seems to me to be geared towards creating a user-generated game universe, a next generation Zwinky as it were and in that sense I'd say it succeeds because almost every area I visited had little games that could be played, if indeed the whole area was not set up as a game such as Zoo Escape which mimics the gameplay of the classic arcade game Frogger. But for anyone to consider it a valid virtual world along the lines of Second Life, Blue Mars or There is an attempt to take it out of one market (in which it succeeds) and to place it in another (in which it can't help but be considered a relative failure). Metaplace is an interesting place to visit from the viewpoint of metaverse exploration and it's an interesting stage in the development of cyberspaces but I don't believe it has a future beyond what it was apparently created to do. Yes, it has the benefit of being able to embed worlds inside ordinary web pages and yes, it's possible to interact with objects inside those worlds which enable you to browse a seller's items but ultimately these are mere side issues to the main business of this world, no matter how many articles are written by the Alphaville Herald attempting to make it seem more serious than it is. Does it have the potential to include more serious issues and break away from the user-generated gameworld impression? Can it become more than a mere point-and-click adventure game? Perhaps and developers are no doubt working on it but right now I think Metaplace is having trouble preventing people from running round shouting "paku paku paku" while eating power pills and looking for Mario and Donkey Kong.
Avatar creation is simple enough in Metaplace although frankly the options available are almost pointless. This is simply due to the fact that once you are inworld, the size of your avatar means that your avatar's appearance is lacking in any real detail. You can at least zoom in using your mouse wheel which is a benefit not shared by Blue Mars as I discussed here although when you zoom in, the detail of your avatar becomes heavily pixellated. That being said, I did what I could to recreate Senban as much as I could.
After a useful tutorial on how to function in this cyberspace, you're let out to fend for yourself. One thing you'll notice that's different to Second Life is the way you get money (called coins). You get money for adding friends, money for visiting places, money for finding the golden egg hidden in each place, money for leaving comments about each place. Like Second Life you can also buy inworld currency using your credit card but as you can get a lot of money just by wandering round, this doesn't seem necessary. Because each location seems to turn into a game of Hunt The Golden Egg, it's impossible to avoid comparing this cyberspace to the computer games of the eighties and nineties. Given that you can attain levels that unlock new capabilities (like being able to run instead of just walking), it's again impossible to avoid comparisons. In fact I'd personally go so far as to say that Metaplace is a gameplay-based cyberspace and not a virtual world in the sense of say Second Life. I would even go so far as to say that Metaplace has more in common with Zwinky than with Second Life and indeed it shares a great many characteristics with that cyberspace, although it does have far superior graphics to Zwinky.
Much as I pointed out when I discussed Blue Mars in this blog, Metaplace has the amazingly annoying method of putting people's chat in speech bubbles.
One thing I've noticed with some surprise about Metaplace is that there is a casual violence towards lower lifeforms built in and encouraged. Metaplace is populated with cute-little furry things called Meeps. There are in fact a variety of these based on size and colour.
These again give the impression of computer games of the type where ghosts chase you round a maze and in fact I even found a dungeon maze where red Meeps would chase you round while you attempted to collect treasure chests. If they caught you, you screamed and died, splashing blood across the floor which was surprising given the fact that Metaplace seems to be aimed towards a younger demographic.
But as I say, there isn't just the violence of red Meeps towards you - you are actively encouraged to treat the blue Meeps with similar casual violence. For example, near Metaplace Central you can buy a blue Meep from a vending machine for 25 coins and throw it to a shark in the sea nearby - the shark thrashes around and blue blood stains the water.
I also found a desert region where you could load blue Meeps into a cannon and shoot them across the terrain until they hit something with a large green splat!
The overriding culture of Metaplace seems to me to be geared towards creating a user-generated game universe, a next generation Zwinky as it were and in that sense I'd say it succeeds because almost every area I visited had little games that could be played, if indeed the whole area was not set up as a game such as Zoo Escape which mimics the gameplay of the classic arcade game Frogger. But for anyone to consider it a valid virtual world along the lines of Second Life, Blue Mars or There is an attempt to take it out of one market (in which it succeeds) and to place it in another (in which it can't help but be considered a relative failure). Metaplace is an interesting place to visit from the viewpoint of metaverse exploration and it's an interesting stage in the development of cyberspaces but I don't believe it has a future beyond what it was apparently created to do. Yes, it has the benefit of being able to embed worlds inside ordinary web pages and yes, it's possible to interact with objects inside those worlds which enable you to browse a seller's items but ultimately these are mere side issues to the main business of this world, no matter how many articles are written by the Alphaville Herald attempting to make it seem more serious than it is. Does it have the potential to include more serious issues and break away from the user-generated gameworld impression? Can it become more than a mere point-and-click adventure game? Perhaps and developers are no doubt working on it but right now I think Metaplace is having trouble preventing people from running round shouting "paku paku paku" while eating power pills and looking for Mario and Donkey Kong.
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