Exclusive: Meez Finally Launches Virtual World

Exclusive: Meez Finally Launches Virtual World

http://mashable.com/2008/06/18/meez-virtal-worl/

I'm not surprised. Second Life couldn't have the market share all of the time ... and it's nice to know that it's going to be more than hands typing on an invisible keyboard ...

"Meez users have been requesting a virtual world in which their custom avatars can roam around and become more social with each other for some time, and now they finally have what they’ve always wanted. Meez Nation is the brand new virtual world made just for Meez avatars. [...] Unlike most other virtual worlds that have grown out of an avatar-creation and sharing site, Meez has layered in a good deal of functionality, activity and interaction for the avatars. For instance, there’s chat capabilities in every virtual room, and similar to an IM chat client that converts the characters “;” and “)” into Meez avatars will act out certain commands that you type into the chat window. Type in “rofl” and your Meez avatar will roll on the floor laughing."

When and If Virtual Worlds Collide

http://www.massively.com/2008/06/14/the-daily-grind-should-mmogs-and-virtual-worlds-be-separate/

The Daily Grind: Should MMOGs and virtual worlds be separate?
Friday held the Social Gaming Summit, a meeting of the luminaries of the various virtual worlds -- Gaia Online, Neopets, and IMVU to name a very few -- in San Francisco. This blogger was on hand for several of the panels, and came away with a deeper understanding of where the demarcation between massively multiplayer online game and virtual world was drawn. On the virtual world side, developers are beginning to incorporate more and more elements of what would normally be considered MMO-only features, like quests and leveling up ...

20 Tools For Creating Your Own Games

20 Tools For Creating Your Own Games

This is AWESOME! Forget Second Life! Make your own RPG or Flash-based game without any knowledge of programming necessary. I think I'm going to try to add this as an FDI workshop to the Spring/Summer roster.

The best part? The storyboarding and writing (because everyone knows that good games come from good writing).

How fun!