Submitted by Triss Gray on Tue, 22/12/2009 - 13:23
Posted in
During Second Life's lifecycle, many "competitors" have emerged and have sunk back into oblivion (google's Lively anyone?).
One of the more promising in my opinion, at least as far as intellectual property and "consumer rights" is concerned, was Metaplace. This was one of the only virtual worlds with a TOS that deviates from the LL-type coroporate style of "for any and no reason" and "all your base are belong to us":
Unless the fabric of the virtual space is threatened and so long as world creators and users are not in violation of the EULA or relevant national or local law, we will endeavor to provide our world creators and users with the following rights. Metaplace also requires that world creators and users meet certain responsibilities as set forth below.
Rights of world creators
- Freedom of speech.
- Peacefully represent their religious beliefs, but not to the exclusion or disparagement of others.
- Reasonable processes to resolve grievances with Metaplace™.
- Own their intellectual property.
- Create and destroy their own world at their discretion with no liability to Metaplace™ or users.
- To be the sovereign power of their created worlds and subject to rights reserved by others to have full power and authority in their created worlds.
- Earn and extract economic value from created worlds.
- To be secure in their created worlds so that communications, designated private spaces, and effects, are protected against unreasonable snooping, eavesdropping, searching and seizures. Any such activity will only be undertaken with good reason, such as investigating the violation of the EULA, these Terms of Service, or applicable laws.
- The enumeration in this document of rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by world creators.
- Set up worlds with their own rule sets that may differ from the rules here, so long as they make that rule set available to world users and do not violate the EULA. Any Terms of Service that deviates from the standard Terms of Service must be displayed for world users.
This morning, I received a letter from Metaplace that they will close their user parts starting January 1st, after going out with a big-bang final party. They will also keep maintaining forums, so Metaplace users can stay in touch with eachother. Also, signups will stay open until the last moment, and no billing will occur in this last month, so users can show off their creations one last time, and export belongings.
The reason for the closure is that they weren't able to gather sufficient "traction" to continue the project. the company behind it will continue with other activities though.
Unfortunately, over the last few months it has become apparent that Metaplace as a consumer UGC service is not gaining enough traction to be a viable product, requiring a strategic shift for our company.
We’re sorry to announce today that Metaplace.com will be closing to the public at 11:59pm on January 1st, 2010.
...
In the meantime, we want to thank you all for your support, your effort, your creativity, and your loyalty. We know that many of you will be disappointed by this outcome. We are too. We are embarking on a new and exciting direction, and it feels strange not to have you all along for the ride.
It has been a privilege to have had you here with us on this great adventure, and we hope that this community – this wonderful, engaged, passionate, friendly community – lives on and on.
We’ll miss you -- and we hope to see you again.
Metaplace Team
I briefly tried metaplace, but didn't really like the way it looked and functioned as far as user experience was concerned: the viewing perspective, graphical possibilieites etc were far behind Sl imho. It is still sad to see one oft he virtual worlds with a very promising TOS go dark...
More info:
- metaplace website & FAQ (metaplace account needed)
- previous writings about metaplace on sldm site
- Metaplace veterans forum
Thats sad. Metaplace was for
Thats sad. Metaplace was for sure a very promising projects. I guess now Blue Mars is going to be the most probably competitor for SL .. sadly, it is one with a very restricting policy towards content creation .. on the good side, it seems to offer the possibility to really own your own world on your own server with BM only providing the platform to do so. I would need to get a bit deeper into this to be sure of course.
Anyways .. I am sad to see Metaplace go like this.
P.S
Lively was cute ^_^ .. and the most epic fail in the so far short history of virtual worlds
Yeah, seems the most rumors
Yeah, seems the most rumors is around blue mars now... though I must say I tried it for like 5 minutes, and wasn't too happy with the experience....
I have a account there since
I have a account there since when they announced to open it for the first users ^^ .. however it is still very very lifeless and empty and lots of thigns need some getting used to but they have potential. Hoever I still don't like their content policy and the need to be a registered (any maybe even the need to pay to be allowed access to creating tools .. but I don't know and admit to be lazy and not having looked at it that good yet).
Hmm... It is still sad to see
Hmm...
It is still sad to see one of the virtual worlds with a very promising TOS go dark...
I'd indeed hoped we could check Metaplace for what changes it might have brought to other VW operators ToS concerning useremancipation and -rights...too bad.
I've not tried Blue Mars yet, but as Rin already stated, the creation-process is way more strict and closed (it seems) than SL's scheme, although with the recent changes in SL, concerning Merchant and Creator programs, changes on SLX etc it does seem LL wants to move towards such a creation-scheme as BM as well...
I have looked at the content
I have looked at the content creation process in Blue MArs and it doesn't look that bad actually. All the creator needs to do is to register and then they get the tools in the form of a sandbox on theri own PC for free. The registration is free too so in the end it doesn't create a barrier as I thought it would. On the other hand, the content creation tools seem not to work that smoothly yet (like many parts of Blue Mars .. but it might be also the fact that BM needs a more powerful computer then mine) and I suspect them to be more difficult to use then the SL ones.
So I guess it is not so much the need to register that would make it difficult for beginners to start creating, but the more complex tools and the specifics of content creation in BM. It looks less bad and much less 'controlled' or 'closed up' then I first thought. A definitve positive turn for my perception of BM.
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