While media contemplates the closure of car giant Saab, my heart is saddened by the end of a completely different venture.
It was in mid 2007 that I first heard about the Metaplace platform, like so many others through the Boing Boing website. I was instantly struck by the idea of creating your very own small virtual world so I signed up, but soon forgot about it. Half a year later the invite came.
For quite some time after that, Metaplace was my haven of creativity and learning. It challenged my intellect as well as my fantasy. It was a creative playground, an opportunity to use whatever skills I could muster up in design, graphics, coding, writing, sounds and music without any risk of being harshly critized or judged.
It empowered me to dream up ideas (yes, very silly ideas mostly) and seing them come to fruition after some time of gathering resources, scripting, tweaking and building. Furthermore, it was also the most social and warm community I’ve ever been a part of online. From the insane amount of help you’d get by people in the forum to the banter in Metaplace Central, these people were golden. One reason for this prosperous community culture was the wonderful staff, always willing to lend a helping hand.
The fact that Metaplace founder and gamedesign-legend Raph Koster was very active both as a builder and socializer helped too. Oh, and also the fact he’s a wicked folk-guitarist.
Which leads me to the music. My biggest failiure when it comes to Metaplace is that I never managed to play live in-world. The technology for live concerts where there and lots of concerts was played, but I never got around to it for practical reasons. My laptop isn’t fit to play music through and if I used my stationary PC it would wake my son up if we played at night. We had started some preparations to be able to use the computer in our studio, and was set on making the release concert for my duo Pettersson & Fredriksson in Metaplace. But now, that won’t happen. I did however play a small part in the live music scene of Metaplace. The very first concert in Metaplace, played by Grace McDonnough, was in my Folk N Coffée world which I had set up like an outdoor, hippie-esque folk café. Sadly I couldn’t attend since it was in the middle of the night for me, but it is said to have been a lovely gathering. Another great music party was the cross world tour ”Rocking the metaverse” for which the staff built a custom concert area called ”The Lotus”. It was a beautiful creation, and a wonderful concert.
As I now think about Metaplace, it becomes abundantly clear to me how it has affected my life in a very direct way. Not only was it a huge boost in my interest for the web, digital culture and gaming, but it was also my first, and very unexpected, foray into scripting languages. In turn, this gave me the courage to take a year long course in ”web technology and databases” and thus affecting my overall education and possibly my future profession.
I have no idea why Metaplace didn’t attract a lot of people. But it was apparent to me that whenever I made efforts to invite friends to try it out, I had very little luck. I’ve blogged about Metaplace – on my own blog, my bands blogs and even as guest writer on a widely spread blog run by the cultural department in my city. I’ve invited people on different forums, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and so on. But few came. I think this is also the reason to why I didn’t spend alot of time there towards the end – I think I was so sure that it would get huge once it opened to the public, that when it didn’t I just lost interest for a while. But I always believed it would catch on, and I logged in almost daily checking my meeps and comment. Sometimes I’d go visiting the Metaplace Central or check out worlds on random. It is a sad thought that we never will get to know how time would have treated Metaplace.
Perhaps it was just a child born in the wrong age. Everything today is all ”micro” and ”mobile”. Low effort, casual experiences made to be taken in small doses daily. Metaplace was not. It presented itself as a casual ”game”, but to get anything real and lasting out of it you had to plunge in head first.
And oh, how awesome it was when you did. Metaplace might be over, but as is stated, the company behind it will continue. I wish them the best of luck, and hope that we will cross paths again. I am sure wonderful, creative things will come from this. Thanks for a wonderful time and the best online experience I’ve ever had. It will be sincerily missed.
UPDATE: Saab got another chance in the eleventh hour thanks to Spyker. Alas, Metaplace.com had no such luck. The company Metaplace still exists and uses the technology to make casual Facebook games. While I sometimes play and sort of enjoy the games, I truly miss the old metaplace. I must admit to holding a small, vain hope that they will come back to UGC in the future.
though, one special condition for the artwork: The record will be a six-side digipack, with a 50X50 square hole in the front page. Your artwork will be on the fold-in page which lies behind the front page.
