Virtual World Metaplace Closes Doors

Yesterday saw the end of another virtual world, as proprietor and developer Raph Koster announced the closing of “Metaplace.com” on his blog just one short year after its launch date in 2008.  Originally positioned as a serious rival for Second Life™ it was the one of two virtual platforms that President Barrack Obama chose to officially simulcast his speech in Ghana, in July of 2008.

One of the innovative features that differentiated Metaplace™ was the ability to build your own virtual environment and imbed it into your own business or personal website or blog.  This was a feature that enabled users to build a customized community among privately hosted sites and opened the doors of access to not registered users of the platform.  This ability began to successfully address the need for virtual worlds to be “interoperable”, opening access to all internet users.   

Many business experts agree that real growth in virtual commerce and mainstream adoption will not occur until the “close-walled’ mentality of most online virtual communities is addressed.  Where items purchased in one virtual world can be accessed in all platforms, giving true personal ownership to goods purchased and offer a “portability of the goods” as users migrate from one interface to the next.  The creation of one avatar which could access many different worlds.

For business users who have invested time and money in establishing products in Metaplace™, the closing of the virtual space means the potential loss of creative content.  Metaplace, like Second Life™ is a proprietary owned server, which means that all assets are housed by the developer.  A warning and stark reminder for content creators on any proprietary grid.  To their credit, Metaplace announced that they were making efforts to have some of that content exported to their users.  

“It is a sad day for us here, and I know many users are going to be very disappointed by this turn of events” Raph Koster stated from his blog, but assured users that “Metaplace Inc isn’t going away – in fact, we have some pretty exciting plans. But those plans are best shared on a future day.” Source Web: December 22, 2009.