Can SL survive this?

Coming soon folks, in April 2009, Blue Mars, the absolutely stunning new MMVW from Avatar-Reality, based on the awesome CryEngine 2.

Just take a sneak peak at the new World, and ask yourself, 'Can SL survive this?'

http://www.youtube.com/user/microARN

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I'm not sure SL is going to be able to survive their latest "shot in the foot". People are righteously furious. Their rate increase on the OS sims is the biggest F-U the residents have received, and I anticipate them leaving in droves.

Even if they back off the rate increase...their credability and intregrity has been completely and irrevocably damaged.

All that said (it's my speech for the day), I'll go look at your link.

I never believe anything I can only see on youtube . . .

Pep (Promises, promises)

It looks pretty nice, but I'm personally not into the futuristic aspect of it.

Good-looking environments, yes. But notice how the 'camera' just skims over the 'people'---were those even real avatars, or just place-holders?

The only 'person' shown for even half a second was an underwater suit made of spheres, raising its 'hand' in salute---not very impressive.

They're going to need decent avatars if they're going to compete with SL, and they didn't show any evidence of such in that video.

I think SL will survive it.

The problem is, it's seems to be aiming for the same hole that SL has been trying to jam itself into for the past few years - and that has failed, time and time again.

The current sneak peak only features the first build (their version of welcome island). They promise that avatars will be based on the 'next-generation character animation technology and advanced behavior system'. The beta starts at the end of 2008.

We must wait for that to see how the avatars look.

I would not worry about the present futuristic look, or the name Blue Mars. How that world develops will be up to the residents (so I believe).

We shall have to keep an eye on this.

But, I must admit, those graphics have me watering at the mouth

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can you build? It doesn't say..

All it says is that you get a good chance at spending your money.

What kind of Super Machine will you need for that one? You can have the mouth watering graphics.

They can promise all they want. We've heard enough empty promises here.

Unfortunately it looks like Blue Mars will feature mostly third party content- you can earn inworld money by taking on a job. The graphics do look mouthwatering though.


http://blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/briefingroom/2008/08/06/avatar-reality-names-vse-as-developer-of-first-blue-mars-city/

From the trailer alone, I don't think this will be any threat to SL because it does look like a video game, not a platform. Content seems to be predefined, and all the talk about platforms, business opportunities etc seems to relate to in-game stuff.

Magellan !!!!!!

So THAT'S where he's been off to! Quick, someone tell the Lindens...

If the only reason to be in any virtual world - SL included - is building or business opportunities, then it is doomed anyway. (Without an audience and consumers neither of these are sustainable.)

The sea looked superb but I dislike swimming and suffer sea sickness,shame.

http://uk.media.pc.gamespy.com/media/142/14211566/imgs_1.html

Just stills - but they are stunning

Gorgeous! And you can bet that in the near future, something more SL like and comparable to the graphic's engine used with Blue Mars will come. It's inevitable. When that happens, I will most likely defect.

SL has a lot of sucking up to do, and I personally don't think that they'll survive once something comes along that matches or surpasses what is offered here. Greed is a bad thing.

I don't really like sight-seeing and consuming things, however I'm sure lots of people do. Blue Mars looks dull to me.

I like (positive) futuristic settings and Blue Mars looks like the sort of VW that I would like, but I have the feeling that this will be for Windows only; just another VW Mac (and Linux) users wont be a part of.

But content creation (and flying ) is what I like about SL, so if that's not offered I won't be missing much.

yes they will survive.

I'm with you, Brenda. I don't need mouth-watering graphics to enjoy the things I do on SL. In fact, I'm STILL not using the RC/windlight viewer/whatever and enjoy SL very much.

SL still beats the text-only medium I enjoyed for over 12 years

But windlight IS in the main viewer, its not separate. o_o

This looks beautiful, I might join for grins, but I don't see myself leaving SL over it.

Okay, given the video and looking at the website, I'd have to say this might only affect the purely social types. The feel I am left with is that yes, it has stunning eye-candy, but it's dev-created and likely to stay that way. I think big corporations can buy into it, having either their own 'land' or space in one of their 'mall' atmospheres.

I also get the feeling that by "commerce" they mean more in the terms of companies getting 'page hits' or maybe even being able to do some RL business in these areas, but not something geared towards the average user. Nowhere in the trailer or on what little of the website exists the words, "user created content." I might be wrong, but given how LL touts SL, I'd assume any site trying to kill Second Life would have that as part of their sales pitch.

As it stands, I don't think this will be anymore an SL killer than There, IMVU or another other like it.

(For the record, I'm not likely to leave SL unless another platform comes along that has all the features of SL, only, with better customer support!)

This is going to be the case for any new virtual world, and SL is going that way. Even in a world with user-created content, there will be a top 10% of users who are most talented and whose creations will be reflected across 90% of the world. Ultimately, having this 10% be paid developers (instead of the top 10% of regular users) makes little difference to the end experience but saves many negative emotions and conflicts of interest.

The only way to keep user-generated content alive for a long period is to either make it expire (as with some older BBS systems, or with newer ones too; for example, Sony's littlebigplanet where the user generated content is game levels - because once you've played one, you've played it) or to foster the "long tail" of having huge content variety. SL did very well for a long while by the latter strategy, but it's started to fall apart because of the economic crunch running across both SL and the real world. When you need "your thing" to be popular in order to do it, you can't have a long tail.

Yes.