Virtual Worlds

Virtual world Second Life has put in effect some new measures to keep adult content away from users who might not want to run into it. Or fly into it, as avatars might do.

Later this year, parent company Linden Lab will create a standalone "continent" for adult content, and members who don't purchase private "land" will be asked to migrate there if they wish to partake in adult-related activities. Second Life is an 18+ environment already, but stricter age verification policies will be put in place. You'll need a "verified" account, … Read more

Updated at 6:15 p.m. PDT with correct list of companies that have signed on to test the software.

After it made headlines last week for yet another executive leaving the company, you'd really think things couldn't get much worse for virtual world Second Life and its parent company Linden Lab.

The marketing hype--it's the next Internet!--bottomed out long ago. There was a wave of unflattering press, from virtual terrorism to technical problems to banking scandals. Even the NBC sitcom "The Office" jumped on board, lambasting Second Life with an episode in … Read more

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. … Read more

Marc Andreessen is adding venture capitalist to the growing list of titles he wears in the tech world, which includes serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and browser technology pioneer, according to a report in peHUB.

Andreessen is launching the venture fund with Ben Horowitz, a former Netscape veteran and co-founder of Opsware, two companies that Andreessen co-founded, the report states.

The venture fund is the latest evolution to the angel investment relationship Andreessen and Horowitz share. Last year, for example, the pair were angel investors in mobile video service Qik and virtual world company Metaplace.

And Thursday night, Andreessen made an … Read more

Microsoft hopes the acquisition of a virtual reality start-up will give it another trick up its sleeve in the game console wars, if one report proves true.

As anyone who has been following the video game industry over the last couple of years knows, Nintendo's Wii console has been the runaway sales leader.

In the early going of the so-called "next generation" of consoles, which began in late 2005 with the release of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and continued a year later with the launch of the Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3, each company tended to refer to the "console wars" as being a battle between the three.

But more recently, as the Wii has vaulted far ahead of either the Xbox or the PS3, Microsoft and Sony have recast the console wars as being just between the two of them; They argue, instead, that the Wii is a very different kind of machine and that, in fact, many Xbox or PS3 owners also own a Wii.

Semantics aside, it's clear that Microsoft and Sony have long since determined that their consoles might never catch up to the Wii in total sales, especially if they don't do something drastic to compete with the Wii's intuitive motion-sensitive controller, the Wiimote.

That might explain why Microsoft is in negotiations to spend around $35 million to buy Israeli start-up 3DV Systems, as is being reported by the Israeli daily Haaretz.

With its ZCam, a 3D camera that connects directly to a PC, 3DV was already hoping to be a player in the video game space, since the camera was designed to let players control games entirely with their hands. … Read more

On March 23, thousands of video game developers will stream into San Francisco's Moscone Center for the 2009 Game Developers Conference.

This annual gathering brings together the people who make the games that have been so entertaining to millions of people--the Rock Bands, Grand Theft Autos, World of Warcrafts and so on. But as the leading developers conference in the world, it doesn't just focus on $60 games for the Xbox, PlayStation 3, or Wii. It also has summits that delve deep into the issues involved in making games for mobile devices, in creating virtual worlds, casual games, … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Electronic Arts said Wednesday that it plans this summer to release an all-new, stand-alone version of Spore for kids.

The new game, which will allow multiple children to play together in a very Spore-like universe, will be called Creature Keeper, said Lucy Bradshaw, the general manager of EA's Emeryville, Calif.-based Maxis studio, which created Spore.

In addition, at its "State of the Universe" event here, EA also unveiled plans for Galactic Adventures, the first expansion to Spore. It is planned for a spring release and will feature a set of new tools for the massive … Read more

Linden Lab, the parent company of virtual world Second Life, has quietly snapped up two companies that had built e-commerce marketplaces on its platform. The two start-ups, Xstreet SL and OnRez, will be combined into the "Xstreet SL platform," a sort of Craigslist-eBay hybrid for the trade of Second Life virtual goods.

Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.

It's a revenue stream for Linden Lab, which will take a cut of each sale. And, the company says, virtual goods are a $1.5 billion industry. Though a vicious marketing hype-backlash cycle has painted Second Life … Read more

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 … Read more