SAN FRANCISCO--It will likely come as no surprise to anyone familiar with virtual worlds and online games that they can be hacked. But what might come as a shock is the sheer breadth of types of exploits that are possible.
That was the broad message of a Thursday panel called, appropriately, "Exploiting Online Games" at the RSA 2009 security conference here.
Moderated by Gary McGraw, CTO of software security consulting firm Cigital and an author of several books, the panel took the audience on a deep dive into the diverse ways that hackers and others have figured out to either skim real money or to gain game play advantages not available to normal players.
McGraw opened the panel with a brief explanation of the fact that there are real, functioning economies in virtual worlds and online games, and that players cash in their virtual goods for real money, to the tune of more than $1 billion a year. This, of course, is old news to those in game playing circles, but for many of the security experts in the room, it may well have been eye-opening.
And, McGraw said, it's the very fact that real money is at stake that often gets otherwise uninterested game players to pay attention to the security risks they face every day.
"There's a whole bunch of normals (those not steeped in knowledge about computers) using games, and they don't care about security," McGraw said. "But they like their stuff, (and) when their stuff gets taken, that really hurts the hell out of them. That's a way to start a conversation about computer security with normals, because almost everybody knows somebody who plays online games."
The first panelist to present was Greg Hoglund, the founder of Rootkit.com and the CEO of the consulting firm, HBGary. He explained that online games are regularly under attack by two discrete types of cheats: exploits--actual bugs in games that clever hackers have figured out how to mine in various ways, and bots, which are essentially automated macros that can be used to perform mundane tasks again and again and again, and very profitably.
The bugs, Hoglund said, often exist "at the borders of systems," and are used for things such as duplicating gold, or leveraging poor synchronization between back-end databases to extract money out of a game economy or even to gain teleportation powers that otherwise don't exist.
Hoglund also recalled a security expert who figured out a hack that allowed him not only to filch Second Life users' virtual currency--which is directly convertible to US dollars--but also to get ahold of users' credit card information and then use it to buy more of the currency to trade in. That exploit, Hoglund explained, was done only to prove that it could be done, but it underlined some of the significant risks facing players of online games and virtual worlds with functioning economies, as well as the publishers of those titles.
He also talked about bots, and explained that they, too, are often employed to gain an advantage most players don't have. They are almost universally prohibited, but Hoglund said creating them and using them is remarkably easy for those who know what they're doing. And he talked about one he had written to use in World of Warcraft that allowed his character to stay safe from attack from the rear, while also luring in loot-bearing enemies to kill. Once killed, the enemies would be regenerated by the bot, allowing Hoglund's character to kill them and pick off all their loot over and over again, a process that netted him significant profit, he hinted.
Similarly, he explained that games like World of Warcraft have vulnerabilities that allow savvy hackers to tap into the games' code, allowing for all kinds of new abilities, like being able to perform 15 charms at once, not available to the public at large.
Hoglund said companies like WoW publisher Blizzard are always actively trying to stop players from employing bots and ban those they catch, but added that for those who know what they're doing, detection is not something to worry about. And that, of course, is one of the explanations behind the so-called gold "farmers," often teams working in third-world countries whose job it is to run multiple accounts simultaneously, usually employing bots to perform gold-earning tasks and essentially just making sure that their in-game characters don't get "lodged in a tree."
Courts weigh in
Next up was Sean Kane, a partner with the New York law firm of Drakeford & Kane, and a leading voice on issues surrounding the law and virtual worlds.
Kane talked about two specific cases, one that is several years old and one that is much more recent.
The older case, Bragg v. Linden Research, focused on whether Linden, the publisher of the virtual world Second Life, was right to shut down the account of a user who had discovered an exploit allowing him to buy virtual land at below-market prices. Mark Bragg, the plaintiff, demanded $8,000 in restitution and eventually won a settlement from Linden in which his account was reinstated. But that only happened, Kane pointed out, after a federal judge ruled that the arbitration clause in the Second Life terms of service was onerous and one-sided.
At the time, the entire virtual world community had been watching the case closely, as many thought it would be the case that for the first time established the real-world value of virtual goods (and despite the fact that Bragg, himself a lawyer, had filed his suit in state court with a hand-written form), However, the settlement, not long after the federal judge's ruling, side-stepped that outcome.
But what many found interesting at the time was that Bragg had argued his hack was fair game, since all he did was exploit a feature hidden in the Second Life code. In effect, Bragg argued, code is law, and anything that players can do with the tools at their disposal is legitimate. Linden obviously disagreed, but ended up settling anyway.
Kane also focused on another case, MDY Industries v. Blizzard, in which MDY had created a bot, called Glider, that allowed players to level-up their characters without even having to be playing.
Blizzard sued for copyright infringement, arguing that bots like Glider were prohibited under its end-user license agreement (EULA) and that only that license actually allowed players to run WoW. In essence, the argument said that by running WoW under circumstances that violated the EULA, Glider was supporting copyright infringement.
Ultimately, though many argued that Blizzard's argument was beyond specious, the courts ruled in favor of the publisher, awarding it $6 million. But, not surprisingly, the outcome is on appeal.
Hacking Disney
Aaron Portnoy, a researcher with Tippingpoint security research, took the microphone next and talked briefly about his experiences hacking the Python code of the Disney online game, Pirates of the Caribbean. He explained that because Python is a dynamic language, he and a colleague had needed just a couple of days to reverse-engineer all of the game's code, and were able to use their exploit to get their in-game characters to do things that were otherwise impossible.
During a panel on exploiting online games, Tippingpoint's Aaron Portnoy talked about how he and a colleague discovered that Disney's online game Pirates of the Caribbean was written in Python, a language that allowed them to reverse-engineer the game's code in just two days. The result was that Portnoy's character was able to fly high in the sky, whereas everyone else in the game was limited to jumps of just four feet high.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)For example, Portnoy said, he was able to easily get his character to jump high in the air, while the standard maximum jump was just about four feet. Or, to jump out of a pirate ship, walk on water at a speed faster than sailing ships in the game could travel, and attack at will.
"Everybody could see my guy jumping over buildings for miles," Portnoy said.
And, given how easy he and his colleague found it to reverse-engineer the code, Portnoy said, "It's almost like (Disney) didn't even consider security."
Gaming the games
Last up was Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins. He talked, also relatively briefly, about how easy it is for some cheaters to exploit the game of online poker.
Essentially, Rubin argued, a hack called a Sybil attack--which employs fake people participating in games--makes it possible for online poker players to gain a big advantage over their opponents. That works, he said, by making it possible for a single player to control multiple hands in a game, allowing that person to see more cards than they would otherwise, and get a better handle on the odds of their own hand.
For example, he said, in a game of Texas Hold'em, a player employing a Sybil attack on an online poker game could control multiple hands and see things like whether the fives or eights they need to complete a full house and beat an opposing player's flush had already been played.
Rubin's point, then, was that game operators need to work harder at identity management, in order to keep players from employing such exploits. He didn't, however, offer any solutions as to how to do that.
All told, the panelists made it clear that just about any kind of online game or virtual world--especially those where money is on the line--is subject to some kind of hack or exploit, and that for those with the skills to launch such attacks, the barriers stopping them are easily surmountable.
The lesson, then, is that publishers of such games need to think harder about how to manage their players' actions and expectations. Otherwise, players may find themselves in games that are so compromised that the economies collapse and the fun disappears.
With Metaplace, almost anyone can build their own custom virtual world. Its tools make it simple to script any object with various actions. And every object and world in Metaplace has its own URL.
(Credit: Metaplace)Why play someone else's virtual world when you can build your own?
That's the major premise behind Metaplace, a new browser-based virtual-world platform from, among others, former Sony Online Entertainment chief creative officer Raph Koster.
Built to run inside the browser on any Internet-connected machine, Metaplace employs a simple, 2D, Flash-based graphics system that fronts for a fairly sophisticated set of content creation tools and what may one day be a complex open-ended economy built around user-created content.
In fact, because of the 2D and Flash nature of Metaplace, it's easy to miss that the platform offers users some of the easiest virtual-world building tools that have ever been made available. And while Metaplace has been in closed beta since October, it is expected to emerge into a public and open beta period sometime later this year. See below for an invite to the closed beta.
The company, which was formerly known as Areae, raised a $6.7 million funding round last October, led by Charles River Ventures. In total, it has raised $9.4 million.
Rising to the top
Metaplace has a little something for everyone. For the casual users, it has any number of user-created worlds to play, and there's a basic central Metaplace world that is an easy gathering place. Each can be rated, and the highest-rated rise to the top, allowing users to skip messing around with the system's chaff and instead concentrate on the wheat. But for those who are interested in creating their own virtual world, Metaplace offers a cornucopia of tools and choices that make it quick and easy to get a brand new world up and running.
Of course, as with any user-generated content system, the good creations are far outweighed by the bad. As Koster himself put it, "There are more than 25,000 Metaplace worlds, most of them are empty and most of them are crap."
But if it sounds like Koster is bashing his own system, he's not. Rather, he's touting how easy it is for anyone to start a virtual world that itself can be accessed by anyone on the Internet in mere seconds. Indeed, it's not an exaggeration to say that just about anyone could have a rudimentary Metaplace world up and running in less than five minutes.
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'Battle' is a 2D, real-time, combat-oriented, multi-player, Flash game that will be the showpiece for a series of innovations for Multiverse Network, among which will be to give people the ability to interact between 2D and 3D versions of the same game.
(Credit: Multiverse Network)Developers of 3D virtual worlds and multiplayer games may soon have access to tools that would allow them to build connected, promotional 2D, Flash versions of the same games.
These new tools are at the heart of Battle, a simple Flash game being released Thursday by the Multiverse Network, a virtual worlds middleware company.
A simple Flash game that runs on Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and Kongregate, Battle is really the showpiece behind new Multiverse technology that could, for the first time, make it possible for developers using its platform to build full-scale downloadable, virtual worlds or online games to create scaled-down, 2D, browser-based versions of the same titles and let players compete between them.
At the same time, Battle is also an example of what Multiverse co-founder Corey Bridges said was one of the first-ever multiplayer, real-time, action- or combat-based Flash games. To date, nearly all Flash multiplayer games have been turn-based, meaning only one person plays at a time, or have very basic game mechanics.
And while, as a platform company, Multiverse isn't in business to create games itself, Bridges said Battle shows that a wide selection of games that previously had to be played using a downloadable client could now be played in the browser.
"Now, you can have proven genres of video games, really popular games, like shooters, real-time strategy, sports and things that exist on consoles or specially installed games," Bridges said, and "those types of games can live in your Web browser without a download."
The immediate appeal to game developers of this innovation is being able to use the Multiverse tools to bring a wide variety of existing types of games to Flash, games that in the past required downloadable clients. And that could mean opening up such titles to far larger audiences, since many people don't want to have to install special software in order to play casual games.
As a tools company, Multiverse is not in the business of building games. But Bridges said the point of its building Battle itself was both to show off the latest set of features the platform offers, and to go through the process of using its own tools, so those inside the company know what its clients' experiences are like.
Multiverse offers its development platform free of charge to anyone who wants it, and hopes to make money by levying a commission on any game made with its tools that charges a fee to play. To date, there are no publicly-launched games built with the Mutiverse tools, though Bridges said several are in beta and are close to being launched.
To some observers, the best thing about the technology underpinning Battle is the marketing opportunities game like it can offer larger, more complete 3D, downloadable multiplayer games and virtual worlds.
"The real benefit of this is that nobody's ever created one tool that lets you have two views," both 2D, in Flash, and 3D, into the same game, said David Fox, vice president of technology at casual games developer, iWin. "This lets (game designers) have a free trial version on the Web and a download for the 3D experience without having to create everything again."
Fox did add that he was "dubious" that Multiverse could deliver on that promise but, not knowing very much about the initiative, said, "the proof is in the pudding."
But Bridges indicated that proof is just around the corner.
"We've got a very small handful of our existing developers taking their (in-development) 3D worlds," Bridges said, "and these developers are making a window into those worlds that can be done in Flash, and that's a pretty interesting new way of thinking about a virtual world experience."
Indeed, he added that he sees the 2D to 3D cross-over element of the tools being a good way to get players hooked on a game concept before convincing them to upgrade to a full 3D version. Yet, they would be able to play against people running the full 3D game in order to get a sense of what the entire experience might be like.
"This demonstrates that Flash is well on its way to becoming the default real-time interaction platform for the Web," said Raph Koster, founder of Areae, which is making Metaplace, a platform that lets anyone design their own Flash-based virtual world, "and it enables more kinds of games than people generally think possible."
As of today, Metaplace is in closed beta, but hopes to be opening up to the general public before too long.
Koster said that it's clear that Multiverse is making important strides in developing new kinds of real-time, multiplayer Flash games, but said that others, including Metaplace itself, have created games enabling such types of play.
Still, Bridges said he differentiated Multiverse's tools by their ability to create real combat action in a game like Battle.
Peter Haik, a co-founder of the virtual worlds development company, Metaversatility, which is using Multiverse's tools in some of its projects, agreed with Bridges' assessment of the Flash games market.
Haik said there are other multi-player Flash games, but they tend to be casual titles aimed at kids.
Multiverse's tools, he suggested, are geared mainly toward producing full-scale virtual worlds or massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), and therefore have much more scope for being used to create crossover between rich 3D games and 2D Flash versions.
"The true innovation" of the Multiverse tools, Haik said, "is that it's sort of an agnostic client, where if someone is in the Flash application, and someone else is in the 3D client, they can interact, and it doesn't matter what the other one is running."
And he said, Multiverse brings serious server technology to the table that runs separate from the various social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, and that is what enables the rich crossover experience.
One other important element of the toolset Multiverse provides, Bridges said, is a rendering engine that allows developers to generate Flash assets using the items from their 3D virtual worlds.
"It's really cool," said Bridges. "We have a Web-based automated system where a development team just uses a Web page, uploads a 3D model, and back comes the generated Flash files. It's a really quick way to convert a 3D game into a Flash game and make it look really, really good."
LAS VEGAS--MindArk, the developer of the science fiction-based virtual world, Entropia Universe, has announced that it is spinning off the functional game side of its business into a separate company.
Known as First Planet Company, the new entity will be a stand-alone company that will run the actual virtual world, which it is calling Planet Calypso. MindArk will continue to operate the platform side of its business, focusing on tools that it can make available to partners looking for a custom virtual world.
In recent months, MindArk has put a lot of its energy in developing relationships with outside entities that want to build their own planets in Entropia Universe. To date, it has signed up five partners.
But as part of the spin-off arrangement, announced here at CES, First Planet Company will be treated as one of those partners.
Among others that have set up shop in the virtual world are a Chinese company that is investigating using the virtual world for cultural purposes and a firm that is looking at using Entropia Universe as a virtual theme park. And still another is looking at giving the game's players immersive environments based on hit Hollywood films.
A scene from 'Lively,' the virtual world Google launched in July and which it said Wednesday it is closing at the end of the year.
(Credit: Google)
Once thought to be its answer to virtual worlds like Second Life, Google's Lively launched this summer to much fanfare.
Lively was Web-based and allowed anyone to set up virtual spaces, such as rooms, that could be embedded onto blogs or Facebook pages.
But the project never picked up much steam.
Now, Google has decided to shut the project down.
"Despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year," Google said on its official blog Wednesday evening. "It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business."
The post said that those who were working on the Lively team would be reassigned to other areas within Google, suggesting that the move does not mean layoffs.
Google also said that because the project is being shut completely down, it is encouraging "all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms."
Disclaimer: My wife works at Second Life publisher Linden Lab.
Focus group testers play Gaia Online's forthcoming casual MMO, 'zOMG,' at the company's headquarters in San Jose, Calif. The new game, which is scheduled to go into public beta in a couple of months, is an adjunct to Gaia's existing casual virtual world, which has more than 7 million users.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)SAN JOSE, Calif.--How do you fine tune a game that has been long in the making and is just a couple of months from going public?
That was the central question behind a focus group I sat in on Tuesday, as the developers behind the wildly popular casual virtual world Gaia Online invited seven devoted players to put zOMG, their new massively multiplayer online game, through its paces.
During the session, which lasted about two hours, the seven players--five women and two men ranging in age from 19 to 25--were asked to pound away at zOMG in a bid to help the designers see just what was working at this point in the development process, what wasn't and to discover whether the players would recommend the game to friends.
Already, the Web-based Gaia Online has more than 7 million unique monthly users, and an auction system with more than 100,000 transactions per day. Gaia is mainly a social environment without a deep goal-oriented gaming element, but now, with the planned launch of zOMG, the company is adding an MMO that will be a separate, but adjunct, gaming environment that will essentially have direct paths into the company's larger virtual world and which will be peppered with references to the original environment.
The Tuesday focus group wasn't the first Gaia has held at its offices, and it won't be the last. But it was the first time the company had allowed a reporter in the room to witness the proceedings, a risky move if the testers said they didn't like the game.
In the end, I'd say that the testers I watched were generally pleased with the game. They liked its mechanics and the way it tied into the larger Gaia Online world, but they did have some sobering comments for the producers about why they would recommend it to their friends.
But more on that later.
Gaia Online co-founder Derek Liu looks on as the focus group testers play the new MMO.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)The session was hosted by Kate Pietrelli, an account manager at TriplePoint, Gaia's outside PR agency, and was attended by several members of the game's development team, as well as Gaia Online co-founder Derek Liu. Throughout the two hours, she directed the players through the game and peppered them with questions about what they were experiencing.
She began the session by asking the testers how they felt about using the trackpads on the PC laptops they'd been given, rather than mice.
One tester, 25-year-old Crysta Coburn, said she was happy with the trackpad, and that she tended to be using it when moving around from place to place in the game, but reverted to using keyboard commands when fighting.
But four other testers said they wanted mice for a better experience, and the producers handed them over a minute later.
At one point, the players were all in what is known in the game as the "Village Green," and Pietrelli asked them how difficult it was, particularly when they were engaging with "the gnome," an enemy non-player character.
"When you get out of the sewers, it's kind of challenging," said 21-year-old Alex Lapin.
"How do you deal with that," Pietrelli asked.
"Run," Lapin joked.
"You hope that there's nice people around" to help out, added Sara Newman, a 24-year-old tester.
Pietrelli wanted to know how the social elements of the game were working, so she asked how many of the testers had joined groups, rather than playing solo.
Most of them said they had.
"As soon as I signed in," said Coburn, "I was like, 'Who wants to join a group?'"
A scene from 'zOMG,' the new casual MMO from Gaia Online. This is the null chamber, the place where players go if they die in the game.
(Credit: Gaia Online)A 19-year-old tester who called herself Malo added that one of the benefits of being in a group is that players can see the attributes of everyone else they team up with, which is helpful for collectively combining skills and talent.
Malo also said that she liked that it was easy to see a symbol that identified which player had initiated a group.
And Desire Lyon, a 24-year-old tester, said that she felt that being part of a group was beneficial when the game gets complicated because "you kind of need someone around to help."
One of the main tools in zOMG is a series of rings, each of which bestows on its wearer different skills and powers.
Pietrelli asked the testers if they found that the game made it easy to switch rings when they were in the "Null Chamber," the place they go after they die in combat.
Lapin responded that, "Maybe (the producers) should make it so you can't switch rings for a minute after you die."
But others didn't like that idea.
"I don't know about that," Coburn said, only half-joking. "You need to pipe down a little bit over there."
As with any MMO, an important part of zOMG is the accumulation of treasure, or "loot," and Pietrelli asked the players what they felt about the system for accruing loot.
Coburn said, "Honestly, I'm paying absolutely no attention to loot...I can't figure out what it does."
The so-called village green, in 'zOMG,' the new casual MMO from Gaia Online.
(Credit: Gaia Online)That seemed like a useful bit of feedback to senior producer Dave Georgeson, as he responded, "Well, that's a good note right there."
A few minutes later, the testers were asked what level their rings were at, and most answered that they were still just at the first level.
Coburn, however, had a different take.
"Whenever I have a choice of rings, I'm like, 'Where's the selfish bitch option?'"
And Lyon added, "I like the 'Improbability' ring, but only because I like the name."
She was referring to the obvious allusion to the Improbability Drive from Douglas Adams' series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
To which Georgeson added, "You can tell by the descriptions (of the rings) that we like the books, too."
Then, Pietrelli asked the testers about their thoughts on the balance between areas of combat and other areas.
"I think it's really well done, actually," said 19-year-old Sierra Payne.
"The mobs aren't so bad if you have people with you, for sure," said tester Stephen Welch, also 19.
Georgeson started to explain that the mechanics of the game were such that players were rewarded with more loot by working in groups than they would be by working alone, and asked if that meant that the testers would be more motivated to join groups.
Around the room, the testers echoed out, "Oh, yearh."
And Lapin joked, "Join my krew or I'll break your arm."
Face-to-face encounters
A little later, the discussion turned to the balance between using the in-game communications system and talking face-to-face. Lyon said that she thought talking face-to-face was less likely.
"We're all in the same room, within three feet of each other," Lyon said. But "it's easier to talk on the Internet than face-to-face."
To which Lapin added that he'd like the game to feature hotkeys that would produce battle cries and taunts such as, "Fear my leet skills."
Soon, the discussion between the Gaia team and the testers got very interesting.
Pietrelli asked the testers whether they would recommend zOMG to friends who don't already play Gaia Online, and if so, why.
"Probably (I would)," said Coburn, to "the ones who play (World of Warcraft) but can't afford (that game's $15 a month fee)...It's free. That's the only sell (of zOMG)."
"Wow," said Pietrelli, clearly taken aback.
Lapin seemed to try to change the subject slightly by adding, "I'd probably get some of my friends from Magic: The Gathering and say, 'Instead of kicking your butt there, you can help me out here.'"
Later, I asked Pietrelli about Coburn's comment.
"I think she probably didn't explain herself very well," Petrielli said, "and I moved on from that quickly (because it's a large group). I can follow up with her later."
But before letting the testers leave, she did return to the subject with the group still in the room to ask Coburn to elaborate on her comments.
"I think that's the biggest selling point, that it's free," Coburn confirmed, adding when I asked her to say more that zOMG would be competing with many other casual MMOs, and that its game play alone wasn't setting it apart as much as the fact that there was no charge to play.
She tried to soften her comment, but only slightly.
"It looks nicer, too," she said, "and the game play's better. And it's free."
While the testers broke for a quick pizza lunch, I pulled Petrielli aside and asked her about the value to Gaia of this session.
She explained that it was just one of several such focus groups the company had held with players, and wouldn't be the last. But she said that every bit of feedback the development team could get from players, especially as the game is just a couple of months from being opened for its public beta, is worthwhile.
"I think it's very helpful," she said, "especially for the development team, because they've been so heads down...So getting feedback from uses is a priority for Gaia in the development of the game."
As the testers returned from their pizza break, Pietrelli put a few more questions to them.
And before she finished, she asked if there was anything else the players wanted to say to the development team.
"We love you," said Welch. "Now work faster."
And with that they all dove back into zOMG, and didn't look like they had any plans to depart, despite the end of the two hours allotted for the focus group session.
"It's gong to be difficult to get them to leave," Petrielli told me. "They won't stop playing."
Places, a new initiative from the Multiverse Network, will offer users the ability to connect through Manhattan's Times Square. Earlier this year, the company first demonstrated the Times Square environment, at the time to showcase its graphics capabilities and to explain how many users it could fit on a single server.
(Credit: Multiverse Network)The Multiverse Network, a developer of virtual world platform software, announced Wednesday that it was unveiling what it calls Places, two related social elements that tie Multiverse users together.
Essentially connective tissue for users of the Multiverse platform, Places has two separate components.
The first is a social networks application that automatically connects people using Multiverse virtual worlds together with others who are also friends in social networks like Facebook.
The second part of Places is a new virtual world centered around a digital representation of Manhattan's Times Square. Now anyone who installs Multiverse's World Browser--the basic Multiverse virtual world software--will be able to enter the Times Square environment and connect and socialize with friends, play games, view interactive entertainment, and meet and greet in personal, private destinations.
This is notable for two reasons, and seems to be a culmination of much of what Multiverse has been working on the last couple of years.
On the one hand, until now, Multiverse has fashioned itself strictly as a platform provider, offering others the ability to build virtual worlds using its software. On the other, Multiverse last year unveiled a prototype of the Times Square environment as a showcase for its ability to host large numbers of people on a single server.
But from the beginning, Multiverse offered the promise of tying users of all the virtual worlds built on top of its platform together. It was never entirely clear how that would work, and to date, there had been no publicly available, completed worlds made using the software.
Now, however, it is clear Multiverse is using the Places model to showcase its technology and demonstrate that its platform is capable of supporting a 3D social virtual world, somewhat along the lines of Second Life.
Disclosure: My wife works for Second Life publisher Linden Lab.
Another interesting piece of Places is that it is, as Multiverse puts it, "an open-source virtual world." This means, the company said, that developers can "access, modify, and add to its user interface, avatar behaviors, menu system, art assets, avatars and--most importantly--its game play or structured interaction capabilities."
This would seem to indicate that Multiverse will be allowing users to make wholesale changes to the Places virtual world along the lines of the kinds of modifications and content creation that is possible in Second Life.
What's not clear is the scope that developers will have with these tools and whether they will be able to make adult content.
This is interesting because one way that Multiverse has tried to position itself to corporate clients wanting to build a virtual world on its platform is that those clients wouldn't have to worry about their own users encountering objectionable content.
In a separate announcement also made Wednesday, Multiverse said that Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron--a member of the company's board of directors--plans to use the platform to build a virtual world based on his film, Titanic.
Called Places in Time: Titanic, it will be structured as an educational environment in which users can explore much about the voyage and fate of the doomed ship.
The Titanic virtual world will be a "destination" for users of Places and is clearly meant to demonstrate how third-party developers can expand upon the platform.
The virtual world, There.com, appears ready to reach for some new and broad audiences, announcing Tuesday night that it would finally be offering support for Mac OS X, as well as a new Facebook plug-in and an instant message application that can communicate directly with anyone on the Internet.
In October 2003, There, as it's known, launched to big headlines and heavy expectations.
There.com announced support for Mac OS X, as well as a new Facebook plug-in and the first IM application capable of communicating with those inside the virtual world.
(Credit: Makena Technologies)One of the first 3D social digital virtual worlds, it presented users with a rich and complex environment complete with a functional economy, the ability to create content and even flying hoverboats for five.
But There costs tens of millions to produce and within months of its launch--after many months in beta--the company behind it nearly folded.
What happened next is rather complicated, but essentially, the There virtual world technology ended up in the hands of early eBay employee Michael Wilson, who kept the service alive and set about to rebuild a user base.
Over the years, it has slowly done that, and now it has a steady user base well into six figures.
There draws many comparisons to Second Life, and indeed it may be closer to that popular virtual world than anything else. But it is aimed at teenagers and has strict limits on what users can create. Anything they create must be vetted by Makena, while Second Life users have almost entirely free reign.
(Disclosure: My wife works for Second Life publisher Linden Lab.)
Now, after nearly five years, Mac users will finally be able to check There out. For me, that's a big thing, as I've been separated from my beloved hoverboat for many years since the PC I was playing the virtual world on became too decrepit to be functional and I became a hard-core Mac user.
And many other Mac users, especially students looking for a fun, social, easy-going environment, will also likely be ready to try it out.
Another big part of the Tuesday announcement is ThereIM, an instant message application that allows users to communicate with others on the Internet, even if they're not playing There.
ThereIM is an instant messaging application that will allow users of the There.com virtual world to communicate with others on the Internet who aren't in-world.
(Credit: Makena Technologies)And perhaps the biggest most far-reaching piece of news here could be the Facebook plug-in, known as Facing There, which allows There members to present their profiles, on the vastly popular social networking service. This may not have the richness of other Facebook applications, but it could bring some attention to There in a very large community.
Whether these three developments are enough to get There back on the map is hard to say. In some ways, it has suffered because it hasn't put much energy into publicity the last few years, choosing instead to build a strong, loyal user base through word of mouth.
Here's hoping these moves help it get the notice it deserves.
'WTF?!' is a side-scroller role-playing game that is a spot-on parody of 'World of Warcraft,' the most-successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game in U.S. history.
(Credit: Aoedipus)Over on Boing Boing this evening, I read about WTF?!, a terrific-sounding sidescroller role-playing video game that is a spot-on parody of World of Warcraft.
In his post about the new game, Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow linked to games guru Greg Costikyan's own entry on WTF?!, which drew the parallels to the massively successful WoW and an image like the one above: "It's a World of Warcraft screenshot, right? Well, no--it's a screenshot from WTF?!, a Flash-based sidescroller parodying WoW. And it's note-perfect, too--every interface element and the backgrounds and characters look like they're ripped straight from Azeroth."
In WoW, Azeroth, of course, is the planet on which that game takes place. In WTF?!, the geography is known as Azimuth. Get it?
The scenario of the parody is as follows: "The time/space continuum of Azimuth has enfolded. A Rift Lord's unwittingly opened a portal from the earthly netherworld, and the place is crawling with infamous historical thinkers, like Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Mary Daly, each of whom is trying to enlist your help in (the) effort to figure out (what) WTF Azimuth is all about."
Well, this looks like it could ensnare a lot of people, especially those who are fans of WoW but happen to have a little time to spend on something else, or those who snarl at giving WoW publisher Blizzard Entertainment $15 a month and would rather get the look and feel of that game for nothing.
For now, WTF?! is just a demo with limited play available, but it sounds like a full version could well be in the works.
So what does it all mean? It means there are some seriously funny people out there who love a good time, who are having a bit of a laugh at WoW's expense, and who have a really good eye for detail, as any WoW fan will agree.
Bless them.
On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I'll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South's most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I'm doing on Twitter.
Weblin is a service that allows people to have avatars that appear on the Web pages they visit and communicate with any other Weblin users who are visiting the same pages.
(Credit: Weblin)If you're a social media addict but think that visiting regular Web sites is a lonely experience, you might want to take a look at Weblin.
Created by a German company, Weblin is designed to make the experience of surfing Web sites social--or make services like Facebook or MySpace.com more social. It does so by letting users create an avatar that they can then, effectively, take with them as they move around from site to site.
If they then find themselves on a site that is being visited at the same time by other Weblin users, then they can communicate with each other.
Weblin's main model is a small download, but it is also about to launch a light version that will require no downloads or plug-ins and will simply auto-assign users an avatar rather than them getting to choose their own.
(Credit: Weblin)The main Weblin service is a small download that allows users to register and then create their own avatar. But next week, Weblin plans to launch a light version of the service that requires no download or plug-in and which assigns an avatar to everyone who uses it.
That means that users would have less control over the experience, but at the same time they'd be able to use Weblin without doing anything except use the Web. Additionally, the light version will not require registration. Rather, users will just have to enter a URL into a Weblin page.
Down the line, Weblin says, it hopes to make it possible to integrate Weblin with users' existing avatars from some virtual worlds.
For the time being, of course, Weblin's utility seems like it only comes from there being a critical mass of users and when users visit sites that are popular with others employing the service. But over time, if it grows large enough, it could provide a fun alternative to the traditional way of using Web sites.
On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I'll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South's most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I'm doing on Twitter.
