Metaplace: Virtual world for everyone

Thanh Van

A free tool that allows anyone to create a virtual world has been successfully developed. It is known that Metaplace users can create 3D online worlds for personal computers or even for mobile phones without having the knowledge of complex computer languages.

Metaplace demo: tools can be integrated into blogs as well as in gaming.(Photo: BBC)

This web-based program is the brainchild of Raph Koster, one of the developers of massive massively multiplayer online games like Ultima Online. Users create virtual spaces from simple buildings.

The results generated can be used to play games or in e-commerce and can be integrated into the website, in the facebook profile or in the blog.'You can access the website, press the button and have a virtual world that can support multiple users in just about 30 seconds.'

There have been many popular virtual worlds such as Second Lide, There and Entropia Universe. In addition, there are game worlds like World of Warcraft (WOW). Most of these games require players to download specialized software or buy games and have no connection between different worlds.

'They're high-rise gardens,' said Mr. Koster. In contrast, Metaplace is completely web-based and makes connections between all these different worlds.

'We modeled this on the web,' said Mr. Koster. 'You can think of each world as a website and every object in it is a connection.'

Raph Koster introduced Metaplace (Photo: BBC)

Users can create the world with different methods. People with no programming knowledge can use the graphical interface and choose the world from templates, such as shops or puzzle games. They can also imitate the worlds developed by other Metaplace users. The more knowledgeable people can create a world from scratch using this tool's own programming language is the metamarkup.

This language will be used to create a world capable of running on anything from a personal computer to a mobile handset. Mr. Koster believes that the tool will be able to create different types of virtual worlds including chatrooms, similar games like WOW or teaching environments.

Second Life is one of the most popular virtual worlds (Photo: BBC)

'Others who want to create a book club linked to Amazon and people can focus on chatting on every Thursday night on a book, but they can see pictures of the books completely. On that picture, click and buy them, ' said Koster.

'Apps are quite open.' When completed, each virtual world will be given a separate page on Metaplace's website 'You can mail that page to someone, they click on it and they will log in right into your world.'

Visitors can also find forums, user reviews and other ' community tools ' related to each page.

Because each world is based on standard web technology, they can be integrated into blogs, facebook profiles, myspace pages or websites.'It becomes like a part of the website - another way to display content and information,' he said.

Mr. Koster said he developed Metaplace partly as a response to some of the virtual worlds that were created. He believes that this medium has great potential but because the cost of building them is so great, developers never push that boundary back.

'There are a lot of ideas about what virtual worlds can become because it requires a huge investment,' he hopes that his free tool can solve this. The program is currently being tested and the final version will be available to the public in the fall of 2008.

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