The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
killscreendaily.com
The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
1–10 of 44 posts
Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
#2I was never into Second Life, but it would be really cool if this sort of thing were to be maintained (perhaps read-only) by an archive.org-alike organisation... Especially with decreasing digital storage costs this should be feasible, and it would be really cool if a generation from now people could poke around in these way dated spaces, a bit like someone today dusting of an Apple II lying in a cupboard... :)
Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
#3Reminds me of this http://www.avclub.com/article/theres-hidden-beauty-abandoned...
Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
#4Reminds me of this http://www.avclub.com/article/theres-hidden-beauty-abandoned...
I remember another similar article, which wasn't specific to a particular service. I probably found the link on HN, but I can't find anything.
There's this, which I don't think is what I was thinking of:
The abandoned college campuses of Second Life
http://fusion.net/story/181901/we-took-a-tour-of-the-abandon...
Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
#5I signed up for Second Life, and jogged around it for an hour or two. An Oculus Rift version would be intriguing. I found my original experience to be aimless. I wandered off and found a sort of castle or something, and enjoyed rambling around it, but ultimately felt there was nothing to do.
Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
#6Does anyone remember something about a minecraft server which is never reset.. and turned into a desolate stripmined wasteland around the spawn point, where you have to hope to luck into a food cache just to survive..
Edit: it appears the server is called "2b2t" .. searching for it brings up a ton of interesting stuff:
Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
#7I thought the article was a bit brief. A better one that was recently posted on HN [1] describes exploring university campuses that were built in Second Life and subsequently abandoned.
Some thoughts:
Looking at the pictures in [1], I was reminded that people designed and built all this stuff. Spent months of their lives and used their creativity. I wonder how they feel? Maybe like the designers of the Athens [2] and Sochi [3] Olympic sites.
Also, back in 2003 Cyan Worlds (the developers of Myst) created an online world called Uru Live [4]. They closed it due to lack of demand and (IIRC) scaling problems, but at some point it seems to have been brought back to life by a community effort [5]. So, abandoned worlds don't have to stay that way and the work of their designers doesn't have to be wasted.
The first time I recall encountering the concept of virtual world architecture was in Greg Egan's book Permutation City [6]. Anyone know of anything earlier?
Finally, it would be cool if virtual worlds could be linked by gateways, with some way for player metadata to migrate across the gateways.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10079400
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2014/aug/13/abandon...
[3] http://weburbanist.com/2014/09/09/post-olympic-abandonment-s...
Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
#8Does anyone remember something about a minecraft server which is never reset.. and turned into a desolate stripmined wasteland around the spawn point, where you have to hope to luck into a food cache just to survive.. Edit: it appears the server is called "2b2t" .. searching for it brings up a ton of interesting stuff: https://imgur.com/a/bt3zi
Don't you have to spawn at the coordinates 0,0, or at the so called "spawn point". How did you start at 5000+?
I'm assuming you used an offline version.
Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
#9I thought the article was a bit brief. A better one that was recently posted on HN [1] describes exploring university campuses that were built in Second Life and subsequently abandoned. Some thoughts: Looking at the pictures in [1], I was reminded that people designed and built all this stuff . Spent months of their lives and used their creativity. I wonder how they feel? Maybe like the designers of the Athens [2] an…
> people designed and built all this stuff. Spent months of their lives and used their creativity. I wonder how they feel? Maybe like the designers of the Athens [2] and Sochi [3] Olympic sites.
i think it depends on what was actually spent - time of the lives and creativity or corporate/government money. Don't know about universities or Athens, while the recipients of $50B spent on Sochi do seem to feel very good.
Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds
#10In the late 90's there was also Active Worlds[1][2]. It was one of the first online communities I frequented.
It seemed to follow exactly the path second life went, except with the diminished number of people that were on the internet at the time: very high initial interested (the "wow - 3d internet factor") and very little engagement after that.
I really thought 3d web would be a thing. :)
[2] https://osantana.me/vintage/borolandia/artigo03/index.html (article in portuguese, pics of a brazilian AW server back from 2000)