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When I heard about Raph Koster [1] creating Areae I got excited. When I heard him talking about it I got more excited. Then, when I heard him talking about his more deep insights about the future of Virtual Worlds I got... scaried. No way a guy with such a vision would make such, in my point of view, mistakes. But he did: in the middle of awsome texts he would drop here and there something I wasn't liking. So, when I knew that Areae was announcing its product, I was extremely curious and yet afraid that it would come something I would not like. He announced Metaplace, and I got the feeling that, after all, he was doing well - heck - I badly want to try it. It was exactly I was looking for! Since it is in a closed beta stage, I can only but read everything I find about Metaplace, but today I got... disappointed. I'm not going to dig into that issue this time, since this isn't a post about Metaplace (I'll leave that to a later time), but some things he said that was just shocking to me. For instance, Metaverse's default client (the one they provide) communicates using telnet [2]. Hello? Communicating credentials and conversations via telnet from a Flash app (client side, you know?) to your servers? Have you never heard about encryption? Anyway, in the same day I posted about "one avatar to rule them all" [2], where I talked about companies like Linden Lab and IBM that believe that virtual worlds should be capable of accepting visits from other worlds' avatars, if they owners want, I read this interview to Raph Koster where he says that, among other companies, folks at Areae think that virtual worlds shouldn't be capable of accepting visits from other worlds' avatars.
Since there are so many arguments from one side and another, I just want to have a clue (tho' the data retrieved will not have revelance...) of how many people think one way or another...
So there's a poll: do you think that virtual worlds should be capable of accepting visits from other worlds' avatars if they choose so?
Please vote by following this link: http://www.polldaddy.com/p.asp?p=118953.
[1] - http://www.raphkoster.com
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telnet
[3] - http://mindboosternoori.blogspot.com/2007/10/one-avatar-to-rule-them-all.html
I voted "no" but what i really meant is "whatever".
ReplyDeleteI see Virtual Worlds as a way to explore identities and my own identity. I don't like Virtual Worlds where you are supposed to be you. I don't want a 3d internet either. The 2D is faster, more practical and easier to use. When i think about virtual worlds, i think of being a cute faerie that helps little children in one place, and a bad-ass assassin space ninja in another.
Besides, the number of metaverses we need is pretty much one.
On Telnet -- Flash does not allow UDP connections. And encryption is largely pointless for real-time network streams (the client decrypts it to display stuff, whereupon the network stream is in the clear in memory and can be read). And we want to enable anyone to write clients.
ReplyDeleteOn the avatar issue -- the discussion wasn't about "take your avatar if you want and if the other world operator allows" it was about "there should be one avatar standard for all worlds." Those two are not really equivalent. I have zero problem with one world letting you bring in an avatar from another world (though it may run afoul of the DNA patent I referenced in my post).
-Raph
Noce to see some comments too :-)
ReplyDelete@Tralves: "I voted "no" but what i really meant is "whatever"." -- Well, that sounds like an Yes to me...
@Raph:
On telnet, what you're saying is that having privacy and encrypted data is pointless in a MetaPlace virtual world? I'm preety glad that you want anyone to be able to create a client: heck, I'm eager to get my hands on Metaplace and build a talker-like client for it, so you can have the same world with (at least) two clients, one via telnet-ssl (preety much as anyone connecting to a talker or MUD) and another, to the same world, via the browser... Anyway, One thing doesn't imply another. You can design any auth and encryption method and anyone can implement that on top of their client... Think of HTTPS as an example. The way you're designing it, there's preety much no way to have the content running from the client to your servers in other way than plain text, including auth credentials and conversations...
On the avatar issue, I guess that you're talking about something different than I am. I was refering to your interview to The MMO Gamer, where you say "Our take on this whole “universal identity” thing is that people don’t actually want it in their virtual worlds. People like having alts, and they like being a spaceship person in one and an elf in another. They like that and they like that consistency." My question, perhaps wrongly explained was: "do you want it in your virtual world?", or, in other words, you say that you think that people don't want it, but I don't think so.
Making a poll was my way of finding out really what percentage of people think as you assume "most people do", and what percentage thinks as I do... What would be really cool, tho, was if you made such a poll on your blog, since it would get a lot more voters ;-)
Can you please point me to that oust where you reference the DNA patent stuff? I guess I missed that one...
Ah, I see your concern about the encryption now.
ReplyDeleteAdding a layer for a secure connection is in fact easy. In fact, we already do it for various things in the process, such as authentication. What we don't do is run an encrypted stream all the time.
In addition, we support it for all sorts of web applications already on that side of things.
As far as the universal identity, or whether people want alts, etc... The incidence of alternate id's and avatars today across the industry appears to be near universal. Keep in mind, a single-sign-on scheme is not necessarily the same thing, of course -- you can have a single-sign-on and still have bunches of publicly visible identities.
Anyway, the sort of figures I have generally seen are the typical user having more than two identities, and having as many avatars as the system allows. Anecdotally (since I have no stats for SL), the same is true there. I have two or three SL accounts, for example... I suspect that is quite common.
"Anecdotally (since I have no stats for SL), the same is true there. I have two or three SL accounts, for example... I suspect that is quite common."
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm don't thing that one thing is the opposite of the other. I understand why people might want multiple avatars (one per world, or serveral per world, it doesn't matter). That doesn't mean, tho, that I wouldn't like to walk into Second Life with my avatar from my own virtual world, where I am an elephant...
My point is, having the possibility of multiple avatars for one virtual world isn't impeditive of having a way to walk with my SL avatar into Areae's virtual meeting room in a Metaplace world...