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The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

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Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

#21

Post by [deleted] »

sp332 wrote: post #13
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #7

I 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…

Sure, William Gibson's Neuromancer was written a decade earlier and popularized the term "cyberspace". His trilogies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprawl_trilogy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_trilogy have descriptions of virtual spaces designed for various reasons. Snow Crash was published in 1992 and popularized the term "avatar". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash Its virtual spaces were pretty ela…

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Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

#22

Post by jccalhoun »

In the original story http://fusion.net/story/181901/we-took-a-tour-of-the-abandon... there are people defending Second Life and its educational usage. I didn't see any students offering their perspective, though. I wonder if students who take these courses actually find them useful.

Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

#23

Post by soylentcola »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #19

You can see lots more if you're willing to go text-based. Like LambdaMOO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO (telnet: lambda.moo.mud.org 8888) - not the oldest but one of the oldest that's substantially community-built (it doesn't take much to get permission to make things) and still running.

MUDs and the like were my first thought as well. I guess they don't have the immediate visual effect of the later graphical worlds but over the years I occasionally log back on to some of the old MUDs I used to frequent if they're still up and running. Always weird to see a place that used to be filled with at least 20-40 people now only populated by maybe the sysop's character idling for months in the public channel.

Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

#24

Post by andyjohnson0 »

pierrec wrote: post #14
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #7

I 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…

It's difficult to pinpoint the earliest description of virtual architecture. Maybe in Stanley G. Weinbaum's wonderfully foresighted Pygmalion's Spectacles (1935). Then there's also The Trouble with Bubbles (1953) by Philip K. Dick. http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=4543

Thank you! I wasn't familiar with either work. Have saved Pygmalion's Spectacles for holiday reading.

Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

#25

Post by jcurbo »

minikomi wrote: post #6

Does 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

Yes, there are these two completely fascinating posts from a guy wandering around on one of these servers. The original posts are on imgur but there's good context in the reddit comments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/xcpit/exploring_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/xodzv/exploring_...

Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

#26

Post by sp332 »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #20
sp332 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, William Gibson's Neuromancer was written a decade earlier and popularized the term "cyberspace". His trilogies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprawl_trilogy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_trilogy have descriptions of virtual spaces designed for various reasons. Snow Crash was published in 1992 and popularized the term "avatar". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash Its virtual spaces were pretty ela…

I wasn't being very clear, but by "virtual architecture" I meant something like a design practice that extends conventional built architecture to exploit the novel properties of virtual spaces. Like physically or topologically impossible buildings. Gibson's cyberspace (at least in Neuromancer) is just a 3D grid containing basic shapes. His later works do describe more elaborate worlds, but as far as I remember they a…

There is a beach at the end of Neromancer that seems to have a city in the distance, but if you walk toward it, you just end up where you started. It's a bit sparse though, I see your point.

Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

#27

Post by [deleted] »

matheusd wrote: post #10

In 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. :) [1] http://activeworlds.co…

[deleted]

Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

#29

Post by amatus »

matheusd wrote: post #10

In 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. :) [1] http://activeworlds.co…

I had joined Active Worlds back when it was called AlphaWorlds[1] and before that I enjoyed Worlds Chat[2]. It was an interesting universe to explore. I didn't build much since their library of pre-made objects didn't have enough variety and you saw the same objects everywhere. You could model your own objects but I had trouble finding free software I could use for that. I hadn't logged in to Active/AlphaWorlds for a while and when I came back to see how things had changed they started charging for accounts. I had forgotten my login info and I wasn't willing to pay for a new account, so that was the end of that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds#History

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_chat

Re: The Weird Abandoned Spaces of Virtual Worlds

#30

Post by angersock »

matheusd wrote: post #10

In 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. :) [1] http://activeworlds.co…

Active Worlds was the coolest thing I ever goofed around in, at least at the time. The COFMeta (metaverse) and Mars worlds were my favorite.

It was basically the 3D equivalent of Geocities. You could wander for hours, looking at the cool little houses and weird displays people had built. You could even do simple scripting with keyframes for animating objects by toggling their visibility. :)

It was so cool, and I even ended up buying a little AWLD stock. The market imploded of course, and the people running it apparently did some scummy things (see Shamus Young's accounting here: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=13720 ).

The only thing really missing was modeling; to solve this, you'd run across giant prefab yards, and then write down model names. Mars had a sort of boneyard for this purpose.

They also did kinda-cool tie-ins with other media, like a world for The 13th Floor and the X-Files movie. I miss that sense of "Oh man, this is the future!".

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