f13.net

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/virtualworlds/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212900535

Should I continue reading past the first paragraph?

I mean, the guy is already writing a magically fake history.

Edit: Ok, I read it, and this bothers me, so much so I can only reply with a quote:

I don't understand... what bother you about that paragraph? That is it speculative? We're in beta, we have no revenue yet, any answers to that question are speculative. :)

It doesn't seem like a business model. In fact, no one knows or understands how you're expecting to make money, but I think most are interested. This far in, saying you're not announcing that yet sounds more like "we don't have one." In short, basically, you've created a neat system that's great for farting around, but expecting digital goods to have value I think, is really a case of a dreaming more than anything else. Perhaps it's just me having no faith in People creating Anything. Also, perhaps it's that Metaplace doesn't have enough focus. Either way, it smells of hope and not much else.

They could do it iTunes App Store style where they provide the marketplace/infrastructure for people to sell their goods through and they take a cut of that money.

What happens if nobody wants to charge for their stuff? I've noticed the really cool stuff tends to be given away for free, unless it's from someone who only wants to make money, and then it's kind of crappy.

Currency that is sold through MP and if people spend it in a world, the owner gets a cut.

That's not the case in The Sims or Second Life. A lot of the really good stuff in those games you have to buy.

It's not like we haven't discussed it plenty before.

Yes, there is a marketplace. We will mint currency, users can purchase currency, users can use the currency to buy things on the marketplace. Users can make stuff, users can charge for things. Users can make money. We can take a cut.

Yes, there's obvious candidates for upsells. Space is the most obvious.

Neither of these are particularly radical. If you think digital goods have no value or are not a decent business model, you've been under a rock lately. :)

Ok, but you haven't explained how you're going to get people to buy. Beardy creators are easy enough to find in almost any arena. But purchasers are the hard ones to get. What incentive do people have to actually buy anything? Or is this a matter of creators supporting creatives and you're just going to give the bandwidth to explorers away for free?

In other words, I'm not getting it.


No one said this. It just seems like you're hoping the Second Life phenomenon strikes twice.

Metaplace is not for you :awesome_for_real:

I see it more like a proper version of The Sims Online.

Except for it's not, at all.

Who is it for?

People who play the Wii :awesome_for_real:

I really, really don't think so. But it's nice to see you don't know either ^_^

I think the virtual world building aspects will be the most popular, at least initially. The game building stuff I think will take longer to mature.

OK, so its a 3D isometric browser-based world/game builder thingy - humm....

Let me think ....

OK, someone build me a variant of X-COM 1  and  Diablo 1  my two favorite isometric games and I'll be there, wallet open...

Stop reading my mind!

So far what we have seen is that just about everybody builds. So yes, content creators selling stuff to content placers.

PS Schild, I dont know how long it has been since you logged in, but it's a lot more like the Sims visually and toolwise than it used to be :)

If I ever have to get dragged into some online VW through the library, I hope Meatspace can handle the stuff that people like about SL, but more and better.

I know zero about your new project, Raph (sorry), but what kind of stuff do you guys have for meetings and project sharing (the stuff discussed in the SL thread), or is it more about gaming?

There was no porn I could find so I am guessing not.

Honestly I think Metaplace has much more potential even as it is now in beta for the kinds of business meetings and whatever people were expecting from SL.

Trippy is right.  It's all about The Sims when it comes to revenue model.  He said "The Sims Online" instead of "The Sims, online" and unfortunately schild immediately had a pizza-making flashback or something, but TSO was crap and not like The Sims.  Metaplace has the potential to be a huge hit with the group that likes to play virtual dollhouse, which I feel is a very under-monetized market.  What I am saying should be no surprise to anyone who has a passing familiarity with The Sims and its community, but so far it's mostly theory since only The Sims does what I am thinking of... as far as I know.  Raph would know since he's undoubtedly researched anything similar.

The Sims is a game. This is not. I don't see how the two are at all comparable.

If people create content in The Sims and other people buy it the motivation is that you can use that stuff when you play The Sims. There is no game here to play as far as I can tell.

Second Life seems to be the much more apt comparison.

There is a metric shitton of free mod content for Sims 2. I never even look at the for-pay stuff. It's not that much better.