Did you get your invitation to try HipiHi ? I did

Yes, they do look good. This virtual world has real potential. Once they get the English language interface installed, the main barrier to me will have fallen. However, the fact that the Chinese government really runs this does bother me.

I'm sorry, but I wouldn't touch any kind of game run by the Chinese government. That is the biggest showstopper of all.

I agree. I wont even consider it. I'm not interested in a VR that's run by ANY government.

Agreed. SL is over run by Government as it is. Pass.

Is it really run by the Chinese government, or just likely to run into serious management and censorship issues because of them?

This quote from one of its creators makes me laugh out loud every time I read it:

http://www.mobinode.com/?p=161

How can anybody look at a screenshot of HiPiHi and not conclude that it is heavily based on Second Life? There are so many virtual worlds out there that we can see for ourselves that one platform tends not to look remotely like the next, even from a screenshot. If you took that screenshot of Steve and pasted it in the SL GUI, you'd probably think it _was_ SL. Paste an Entropia Universe or WoW screenshot in there and you'd know immediately that it was fabricated.

I now understand why Madonna didn't take her reinvention tour to China. She'd have probably arrived in Beijing only to find that somebody else had reinvented it before she got there.

I was exaggerating a tad. It is run by a small private company but it will have extensive Chinese government involvement in censoring out any anti-Chinese culture or anti-Chinese government content.

Info:

Customer Service:
[email=support@hipihi.com]support@hipihi.com[/email]
Tel: (8610) 58731100-810
Fax: (8610) 58732567
Address:
17B, Tower B, IN-DO Mansion, No.48 Jia, Zhichun Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100098

While I have no desire in my daily happenings to deride China or its government, I'll still pass thankyouverymuch. Who knows what else they will decide to censor out?

Understood your point. Nothing like this in China today would be run without heavy government involvement.

4. Censorship - Since HiPiHi originates from China this is a concern. The parameters here are very clear: sex in private is OK, discussing politics is not. Everything will be monitored through a keyword filtering system based on the Great Firewall of China. Apparently "beta users are already voluntarily watching what they say."

http://metaversed.com/27-aug-2007/five-hot-facts-abotu-hipihi

By contrast, HiPiHi will have to toe Beijing's authoritarian line, which forbids excessive anti-government criticism, public support for Taiwanese or Tibetan independence and any mention of the banned Falun Gong religious group. To enforce those limits, China has one of the world's most sophisticated Internet-monitoring systems, and enlists tens of thousands of snoops to stamp out "incorrect" speech. HiPiHi will be subject to all the same prying eyes, as well as strict government rules on smut. "There will need to be some HiPiHi nannies—it can't permit a lot of the things that Second Life permits," says David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based consultancy. "It will be Second Life with Chinese characteristics."

What's more, any virtual commerce that arises in HiPiHi will be subject to Beijing's unpredictable and at times heavy-handed policymaking. HiPiHi hopes to introduce virtual currency like Second Life's Linden dollars so residents can buy and sell virtual goods. But it's unclear whether Beijing will allow that. Earlier this year the government cracked down on the abuse of QQ coins, a virtual currency that's part of Chinese Internet giant Tencent's popular online services. Speculators were trading QQ coins for real Chinese renminbi, gamblers were using them to skirt government restrictions and sex-chat workers were reportedly accepting the coins as payment. Early this year the government stepped in, banning the trade of virtual currency for real money and warning Tencent and others to crack down on abuse. "The dispute demonstrated that the Chinese government can't ignore its control of currency systems in virtual worlds," says Han Jingkui, a Qingdao-based Internet analyst.
CONTINUED

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19887681/site/newsweek/

I haven't actually been able to play this yet because everytime I try to click a button it crashes out on me, but seeing as the build menu is exactly the same as SLs, I highly doubt that that it wasn't based off SL.

I had the same problem until I made my default fonts and language system Chinese PRC on XP Pro SP2. It went away, along with the no head problem.