By way of
Worlds in Motion comes an overview of
Hipihi, 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.
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