f13.net

By way of Worlds in Motion (http://www.worldsinmotion.biz/2007/07/chinas_answer_to_second_life.php) comes an overview of Hipihi (http://www.hipihi.com/index_english.html), China's version of Second Life, with the expected cultural distinctions. It's currently in beta, and the CEO is hoping for 100k by end of year.

In general, I find it very interesting that open-ended virtual experiences both haven't started there nor taken off huge here. I'm not really surprised though. The people most likely to encounter these types of experiences are bouncing off of games first, and as such have a gamer expectation for entertainment and reward. The WIM article makes a point to note "Chinese gamers tend to prefer more structured and immersive gaming environments like World of Warcraft", but I don't think that's exclusive to their culture.

The only thing interesting about SL to me is how long it took companies to realize a) how few people actually are in the game world (versus the touted millions); and, b) how long it took them to realize there's no real money to be made there. But even as a concept, I think it provides insights into just how much customization people want.

I draw a distinction between user-created content and user-manipulated content, and see the vast majority of activity in the latter. And this isn't restricted to virtual worlds either. But in terms of them, SL skews more towards the creation side, as even if you're technically manipulating prims, you're still doing so to create something from nothing. In terms of personalization, I feel way many more people would rather "make something their own" than "make something from scratch".

I have no idea if Hipihi will take off in China like SL didn't truly in the U.S., but I don't think it'll be huge. I did think it worth mentioning because we get to watch this launch over there into a gamer-focused environment, to see if that culture goes a different direction than ours has.

I think you're spot on here. Starting from scratch is HARD. Modding existing content not so much. Game mods are as old as the genre afterall. IMVU (who's had 15,461,607 registered members now) went that route by seeding the initial content and then allowing people to derive their own content from it.

Second Life has been around so long now that initial quality seed content from users exists now though. Or is it still not accessible by normal people? Probably not if you have to pay Lindens for it.

95% of user created content is crap. 95% of the people realize their crap is crap and do nothing with it. Five percent is deluded enough to release their stuff to the public. in a freebie zone.

If you are the 5% that isn't crap - you're making money and not giving it away for free.

Needless to say - Second Life is all about needles in haystacks.

Yeah, but unlike SecondLife, IMVU charges you for about anything related to content creation and publishing, while SecondLife only charges you for uploading textures (that is if you actually need new ones uploaded).

How many people truly into SL aren't pay some sort of fee either to buy Lindens or to rent property? This came up in the other SL thread, about how so many people rent property to avoid paying the monthly fees tied to land ownership. But they still gotta be getting their Lindens from somewhere if they're doing anything more than manipulating prims and hoping for the occasional passersby.

IMVU is interesting. I didn't realize it hadn't gotta so popular though.

Well, they managed to make it as downright ugly as Second Life.

Yea - it's amazing that a majority of people are not famous/good artists.