Areae's Metaplace announced

[Tyen]

I see a few people mentioning that mechanics/development is more important than legality.

You have to understand that neither of them is more important. They both go hand in hand. If either one isn't up to par it can cost a company a world of trouble. From my perspective not having full legal framework can cost a company insane amounts of money that you are forced to pay back. Development affects future revenue and has the possibility of screwing you depending on your contract with the investors.

In conclusion, legality is important or even more important than development/production. But the way I see it, it goes hand in hand.

I'm sure metaplace has it all worked out but cuppy can't quite explain it. I have a tough time understanding it myself.

[TOOL]

Raph's blog was linked in the Uberworlds Dev forum a couple days ago, and he happened to say something (albeit extremely vaguely) about IP in user-created content. But that page is five years old and the the original context of that transcription isn't obvious to me, so I'm not going to read too much into that.

The lecture with Rich Vogel about How to Manage a Large-Scale Online Gaming Community had a slide about "Leveraging player-generated content" too, but it doesn't offer any substantial info on the subject either.

There's a couple bullets from slide #3 of that lecture that seem eerily appropriate right now though:

Forming the community, part I
•Steal it (Yes, we’re serious)
–
–Co-opt an existing aggregation of potential customers
–
–Don’t be blatant; informative, non-hype info will work if your product is solid
–
–Always be complimentary of the people you stole it from

[copernic]

I'm really interested to see the property system because this is the first big "social MMO" project to come after Second Life.

Now, if I'm looking at Second Life and I'm a lawyer, I'm thinking two things. One, Second Life's "property rights! For you!" system has gotten it a lot of good buzz and probably some revenue. Second, its actual EULA is a mess of contradictions, and it's about to get in a world of hurt based on any number of legal theories.

So, where do you go from there? You can either go full-forward and cede legal control over part of your project to these Youtube-esque content developers, or you can go the Warcraft route and deny them anything legally, but give a wink and a nod towards the grey market. Or I guess you can hash it like SL has.

Now, I'd love to see Option 1. I'm guessing that Raph and crew would love to see Option 1 from a philosophical standpoint. Did Option 1 survive the cold light of day? I'm thinking "no way." No way can anyone create a viable online game space that cedes legal control to third parties. It creates way too many unanswered questions.

[Big W Powah!]

Hey Cuppy--get me into alpha please. =P

[Raph]

We do have a legal framework worked out. But we're just not talking about it yet. The reason is only slightly sinister.

Basically, we have several months before most people will get to see anything. So we are planning on pacing the info release so that there's some new info released periodically. Stuff like the IP question, EULA structure, and the like is being saved for later (so are details on scripting, and lots of other stuff). Bluntly speaking, it's about keeping the interest up by trickling info out over time. If we revealed all then went quiet for months, that wouldn't serve our nefarious purposes.

Frankly, stuff like the EULA will probably evolve as a result of the testing process too... I am sure questions will come up that we haven't thought of -- they always do.

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

Oh god, Raph's here.

[Raph]

Originally Posted by GrobbeeTrull2.0

Oh god, Raph's here.

I've been lurking for years. Just never got approved for posting before.

Been a bit scared to post, honestly. You all seem to hate me.

[Twobit Whore]

Yeah... that's not what you want to say.

[Cuppycake]

Originally Posted by GrobbeeTrull2.0

Oh god, Raph's here.

Uh oh, time for me to start behaving.

/behave

[KharzaWHA?]

The biggest question I have for whether or not I try this out is what is the upper limit on what can be created?

Can I recreate the WoW engine 100%? Can I create a triple A first person shooter? I've seen it said somewhere that you plan to have this available through any web page, without any sort of client. I see that possibly being a problem for true 3d applications, will it be possible to create some sort of client program?

Note, neither of these is realistic for me to create myself. But realism is not what I use to decide whether or not I'll try it out. The decision happens in the realm of theoretical possibility.


Another question is what sort of group project support will you have? For a large game, I wouldn't be surprised to see teams forming. Have you anticipated this, and are building in the ability to have multiple people/accounts working on the same game world at the same time? In the more pipe-dream land, will you provide the option of forum hosting and the like?

As an aside, reading f13 and here at FoH, the reaction to this announcement seems to be lukewarm. I know at f13 you claimed that Metaplace is built for jaded old gamers to finally create something imaginative. But, almost all of the press I've seen on metaplace seems to be focused on a young teen casual games crowd. And I think that's quite capable of making you very rich. But please forgive us if we, the hardcore, have found little interesting in something that does not appear so far to be built with us in mind.

[Duppin]

Originally Posted by Raph

We do have a legal framework worked out. But we're just not talking about it yet. The reason is only slightly sinister.

Basically, we have several months before most people will get to see anything. So we are planning on pacing the info release so that there's some new info released periodically. Stuff like the IP question, EULA structure, and the like is being saved for later (so are details on scripting, and lots of other stuff). Bluntly speaking, it's about keeping the interest up by trickling info out over time. If we revealed all then went quiet for months, that wouldn't serve our nefarious purposes.

Frankly, stuff like the EULA will probably evolve as a result of the testing process too... I am sure questions will come up that we haven't thought of -- they always do.

Should've just instructed your minion to say that in the first place, then.

Although I still think that the legal/IP stuff should have been the first information you released. It's what everyone needs to know before they even get interested in creating content for this.

[Zehn - Vhex]

I'd sell my soul to see Brad and Raph get into a debate about MMO design and theory. Whoever wins, we lose.

Anyways....

On a side note, I've got my design docs for "Yiff/Vore Rape World" drawn up. The more people you rape, the better accessories you can unlock for your character like shitting dick nipples and tentacle penises.

I'm going to be rich.

[Quineloe]

This isn't Raph Koster I guess?

[Andric d'Regor]

I am cetainly interested in this, and want to see more. I have several ideas, and also a friend has a very diferent idea on how this could be used. Unfortuatly didn't follow through intime to get a chance of alpha :/

[Fammaden]

Its Raphael from TMNT.