Comments on: Evaluating Blue Mars — an open letter to Avatar Reality’s representatives

By: Toby1 Idler

Toby1 Idler — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:37:50 +0000

Very interesting and thought-provoking stuff. I got my first look at blue mars and
I have to say the experience was underwhelming and I don't think it's going to succeed.
The cryengine does not count for much if all you get to see is as inspiring as your local mall.
The landscape is nice – but I would swap some of that for a higher frame rate.
The bubble talk thing is ok for a few people – but in a group it becomes a liability – looks
like a balloon convention. And as for the rules of the place… big mistakes I think.
The whole point of SL and the reason it is so successful is the freedom that it gives you.
- the ability to create and then to sell is so vital that I cannot believe blue mars have not made it easier.
And the adult aspect is huge – it's childish to pretend that people won't exploit the sexual
aspect of these worlds – it's only natural that they would do so. Fixed underwear? God help us.
Well maybe people will queue up to invest. I don't think I will.

By: Toby1 Idler

Toby1 Idler — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:37:50 +0000

By: mci

mci — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:30:37 +0000

That's true - which makes them even less likely to succeed.

Kaneva has been trying to interest developers and corporations in building off their platform for years now, and nobody is interested. And that's with a platform that's much more mature. Lower tech in terms of graphics, but more mature, with all those social networking, web integration, user generated content (to some extent) and various other features that BM currently lacks.

There are a lot of advantages to a developer in building your own, closed world that doesn't integrate with a BM or a Kaneva. Principally, you own your own customers, rather than letting someone else own them. The only reason anyone would be interested in developing on BM or Kaneva's platform would be if either one had a huge number of users, which of course they don't. And the only way they'll get users is if some developers step up and create content on their platforms. It's a deadlock. A Catch-22.

Virtual worlds need lots of content, and the only two ways I know of getting it is to invest a huge amount of money to create it yourself, or to crowdsource it. Relying on third party developers to pick up your platform is not a model that has proven to work anywhere that I know about.

By: Gwyneth Llewelyn

Gwyneth Llewelyn — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:07:04 +0000

1. It's definitely a “gamers' world”, not a social world…

2. Oh, I actually liked the minimalist interface ))

3. Indeed. I suppose that City developers are going to provide the socialising through Flash-based HUDs. Then again, they might do the same in SL — Flash-based HUDs are literally around the corner in Snowglobe and should be possible on the next “stable” release.

4. Yuch, yes. I had the exact reaction No hair colour chages, not even eye colour changes… except, of course, if you're a Mighty Developer. Then you can change everything!

I'd say that Blue Mars is trying to become Sony Home for the PC

By: Gwyneth Llewelyn

Gwyneth Llewelyn — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:02:24 +0000

Oh well, you might be right, there are some conceptual similarities. Nevertheless, Blue Mars hasn't the focus on social networking that Kaneva has.

By: mci

mci — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:27:14 +0000

Blue Mars is Kaneva, with high-end graphics. Some basic business strategy of a limited number professional content creation partners (though Kaneva has yet to pull this off from a technology or business perspective — they just talk about it a lot from time to time). Same censored content. Same lack of a real economy. I don't see it going anywhere.

By: CronoCloud Creeggan

CronoCloud Creeggan — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:16:44 +0000

CronoCloud Creeggan here, I just tried out Blue Mars today, after an acquaintance suggested it. I'm not a developer, I'm not a scripter, but what I do best is socialize and shop which means:

1. Cryengine is total fail for a virtual world, socializers and shoppers don't own gamer-class hardware. Blue Mars runs worse for me on an nVidia 7150m than SL did in 2008 on an intel integrated GMA 852/855! Ouch! Pretty much unplayable.

2. WTF is up with the interface, or more accurately, the total lack of a usable one. It kind of reminds me of Sony's HOME for the PS3, only worse.

3. Where are the social tools? I expect more from a virtual world in 2009 with having SL around as an example I at least expected to find a 2006 SL style social experience. Didn't these guys ever try out SL? The social stuff is one of the things that makes it great!

4. WTF is up with avatar customization? It reminds me of Fallout 3's or Oblivion's face customization. I expected more, a lot more. And I can't even change my hair color to "my color"

Now some have said on the Blue Mars forums that we should be comparing BM to the SL of 2004 not the SL of today. Well bleep that. BM's developers have had years to study the King of Virtual Worlds and they didn't learn a thing, other than to decide to make corporate users happy by being Puritans as you said. Sure, Coca Cola might like BM style control over a CocaCola land, but that sort of sanitized, all-you-can-do is buy our sanctioned product is not fun over the long run. See the failure of Motorati and Armani in SL.

By: sotohax

sotohax — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:09:17 +0000

I just finished trying out the Blue Mars beta myself. This pretty much sums up all my first impressions. Excels technologically, but fails horribly everywhere else.

By: rikomatic

rikomatic — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:22:19 +0000

Any excellent review and critique. Thanks for sharing this!

By: Gwyneth Llewelyn

Gwyneth Llewelyn — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:44:41 +0000

We'll see, @Sitearm. Oh yes, replicating a 17-million-environment with a million active users, almost all “content creators” (even if they just shuffle around prims and don't do any real content creation), and making it work as a business model, is really quite hard to do. I don't think that Avatar Reality wants that. Their idea is more subtle. MMORPGs are almost all either completely free (their creators have to rely on ads to cover the costs) or have a monthly subscription model for play. Avatar Reality is providing some smaller game development houses a platform where they can use a mixed model, where the players can join a game, and, instead of paying a subscription fee, they simply buy content — which will go to the game developers to offset their running costs. With an extra bonus: you can keep your avatar across “cities” (e.g. different games). The model is interesting and it might even be appealing to some!

Now will this work? Wellllllll I have my doubts, but I won't underestimate the purchasing power of gamers — they're huge consumers of online entertainment, much more so than we “social” types. My doubts come from seeing people in SL trying to set up a similar model: launch cheap, high-quality content (not only prims and clothes, but paid access to venues) and try to offset the costs of tier that way. That's Rezzable's business model, AFAIK. Ironically, the reverse model is the only one known to work well: content creators selling content, and thus being able to pay monthly tier… however, in Blue Mars, that won't be easy, since all content will be pre-approved. But… we'll see how it works. In any case, Blue Mars' economy will look quite different than SL's!