“There” will be starting over.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s likely you don’t know what There was.<\/p>\n
Sometime around 2003, I got an email inviting me to be a “beta tester” of There.\u00a0\u00a0 It was software that was developed as a 3D virtual world.\u00a0\u00a0 It was fairly innovative at the time – it was built with a huge chunk of Venture Capital money.\u00a0\u00a0 It was a great prototype, but a horrible business model.\u00a0\u00a0 It had a lot of similarity to Second Life if you are aware of what that is.<\/p>\n
After the beta was over, it was time to see if people would actually pay for a subscription.\u00a0\u00a0 “Virtual stuff” in the world (clothes, vehicles, houses) had to be purchased with real money.\u00a0\u00a0 People didn’t want to pay – they loved it as long as it was free.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There paid people a referral fee for signing other people up, even if the other person didn’t end up joining and paying – so the place was flooded with millions of fake accounts.\u00a0\u00a0 (See AOL: 1995)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Money would be made from getting Wall Street investors seeing big subscriber numbers, not actual revenue or people.<\/p>\n
The fatal flaw was as soon as ~1000 people were using the service\u00a0at once, the servers couldn’t keep up.\u00a0\u00a0 They figured the breakeven point would be about 1 million paying members.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Even if the servers kept up, there wasn’t enough There there to keep it from feeling crowded.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Making things even worse was that technically if a large group of people were in one place (like an in-world concert), the interactions among them explode exponentiallly and it becomes impossible to work (if you’ve ever tried to run an IRC server and watch how bandwidth explodes with the number of people on a channel, it’s the same problem)<\/p>\n
Realizing that it would be impossible to build a real product from the prototype, the VC people bailed on the project and\u00a0fired most of the staff, especially the developers and artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rather than focusing on people who would pay a lot to use the service (to pay for the staff), they went the opposite direction.\u00a0\u00a0 “Let’s make it all free and rely on volunteers!” – did I mention the software\u00a0developers were from the San Francisco area?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anyone could sign up without proving who they were.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The place was flooded with 11 year olds, most of whom were just interested in being rebellious\u00a0kids.\u00a0\u00a0 Even more annoying was the service included voice chat – so as you’re doing the things you enjoyed, you would end up hearing 11 year old boys practicing their newly found freedom to curse and be anti-social.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Since they were not paying anything and there were no “police”, nothing could be done.\u00a0\u00a0 If it got to the point they closed the account, there was no way to stop them from\u00a0just\u00a0creating a new account.<\/p>\n
The avatars of the world were adults with the ability to customize your skin stone, how muscular you are, how big your boobs are,\u00a0the color of your hair and eyes, etc…\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Being a 50ish male interacting with a 3D character who may be another 50 year old or might be a 9 year old girl…\u00a0\u00a0or the 9 year old may be within hearing range – is very dangerous – so you have to assume that everyone is 9 years old until proven otherwise.\u00a0 (and that women are gay men)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another amusing angle was the conflict between There purporting to embrace diversity, but wanting to exclude religion.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I bought several Jesus signs before they banned the person who kept pushing the issue.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They came in useful several times for various reasons.<\/p>\n
I found Runescape – a much less sophisticated technically, but richer environment.\u00a0\u00a0 People have to pay to use Runescape – while the place is dominated by teens, they know there are real limits and if you cross the lines, you could lose the “stuff” you had worked for months to earn.<\/p>\n
So There closed at some point.\u00a0\u00a0 I just discovered that it is coming back – it will be a paid-only service and nobody younger than 18 (the old rule was 13 – but that was widely ignored, including by its own employees who let their kids “play”).\u00a0\u00a0 While it will be an “adult only” service, it won’t be an “adult” (aka XXX) service.<\/p>\n
So if I suddenly seem to vanish, be sure to look in There<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “There” will be starting over.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s likely you don’t know what There was. Sometime around 2003, I got an email inviting me to be a “beta tester” of There.\u00a0\u00a0 It was software that was developed as a 3D virtual world.\u00a0\u00a0 … Continue reading