Metaplace: Shut Down
Metaplace.com is closing on January 1, 2010: 70,000 virtual worlds will vanish from the Internet; http://j.mp/8dyizq
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker 11:29 on 22. December 2009 Permalink |
Metaplace: “Over the last several years, we here at Metaplace Inc. have been working very hard to create an open platform allowing anyone to come to a website and create a virtual world of their own. – 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.”
VB: “The company says it will turn off billing immediately and refund any fees paid for virtual items or subscriptions in the month of December. Users will be able to retrieve some assets from their worlds so they can conceivably reconstruct them on some other platform. But there is nowhere for them to migrate the worlds to, as is. Users can capture their worlds with screen shots, data downloads etc., and they can commisserate at a forum site.”
MJ: “The biggest shame of it all is that Metaplace is an engaging, complex virtual environment that offered enormous content creation options. That this is lost when there are so many cookie cutter 2D worlds with limited creative options is sad, but the history of virtual environments is littered with examples of promising developments that didn’t reach their full potential. Metaplace is one of them now, but hopefully the technology behind it appears in another form in the future.”
HB: “When a platform disappears, however, it’s not just the content that’s at risk. If a company uses a virtual world in order to interact with customers or with a larger community, then that community vanishes as well – as is now about to happen on Metaplace. – Current Metaplace users will either move to other worlds or leave virtual worlds altogether. If they get new virtual identities elsewhere, they will most likely have new user names – making it difficult, if not impossible, to recreate the community of one social network on another network. – This will be the single biggest loss that comes out of the Metaplace closure.”
Gwyn: “Koster’s Metaplace had the advantage of at least having a solid technological platform – for the expectations generated in late 2007/early 2008. As for its business model… it was not clear. Everything was to be given away for free, except for some obscure licensing schemes, which were never the strong points. This is not surprising – almost all hi-tech virtual world start-ups keep giving everything away for free, and then suddenly realise they don’t have a working business model.”