Alternatives To Second Life - Uber Edition

by Onder Skall

What follows is a measurement of comparability with Second Life. By naming these priorities “Onder’s Big Three”, I’m taking ownership of the fact that what follows is purely my opinion. The big three pivotal points of SL-likeness:

1. Real money must move in and out of the “virtual” economy freely. RMT (Real-Money Trading) is designed in, not forbidden by TOS.
2. Users must be able to create unique content and retain ownership over it. Things like scripting and accepting uploads are important here. Multimedia is a bonus. We must be able to control the rights to our content.
3. The world must be persistent, and the users able to change it. Residents like being able to build the world themselves, and don’t need somebody stepping in and erasing their work.

I’m going to do something extremely boring after the list and actually rationalize these three points. Apologies to those of you with the good sense to not care about that sort of thing and just take all of this for what it’s worth.

Also, I’ve included active links, videos and descriptions for everything here so that you can absolutely make up your own mind about these things.

A special thanks goes to the dozens of bloggers and luminaries that have brought these worlds to my attention. I’m a terrible, terrible person for not keeping track of your names properly and giving you individual credit. Feel free to hate me, I’m cool with that.

Alright, let’s get to it.

The Contenders

AlphaWorld - “SW City Revolution”:

This is the grand-daddy of user-created worlds. The Activeworlds platform was born from this. From the website:

AlphaWorld, is the oldest collaborative virtual world on the Internet, and home to millions of people from all over the world. Since it’s birth in 1995 AlphaWorld has rapidly grown in size and is roughly as large as the state of California, and now exceeds 60 million virtual objects!

There’s a long and rich history to this world that I couldn’t possibly sum up here. A quick search for articles on AlphaWorld will yield a plethora of information.

1. No money moves in or out here.
2. Build, script, do as you please… but remember that everything can be copied.
3. Land is free, and you can even modify things on others’ properties, although that’s impolite.

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Furcadia - “Nube tube on furcadia 2”:

This has been open since 1996, and was patched just recently to keep it compatible with Windows Vista. Players are furries inhabiting a fantasy environment. The client comes bundled with an art editor and map creator, and players are encouraged to create their own worlds (called “dreams”).

1. Free to play, and you pay for avatar upgrades. A currency called “Dragonscales” was introduced last year, but as yet isn’t easily tradable and can only be used to purchase avatar upgrades.
2. In your “dream” only. Scripting is reasonably sophisticated as well.
3. Yes, you can create entire worlds. RPGs of every type exist, as well as casual meeting places. These are all player-built.

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Entropia Universe (aka “Project Entropia”) - “Project-Entropia Commercial (Heltek Media Contest Entry)”

Entropia’s entire claim to fame is that it’s an MMORPG with RMT. They make money by, on average, making it more expensive to buy equipment than the rewards you’ll reap. Land speculation in Entropia frequently makes headlines, with many claiming that they’ve made a profit. From BBC (via Wikipedia):

On 24 October 2005, a virtual ‘Asteroid Space Resort’ was bought by Jon “NEVERDIE” Jacobs for a sum of 1,000,000 PED ($100,000 US Dollars), greatly surpassing the sale of Treasure Island. Jon Jacobs is also the writer and producer of a song played within the Entropia Universe called “Gamer Chick”. The Asteroid was named Club NEVERDIE after Jacobs’s own in game Avatar and has made headlines around the world for the high price of the purchase and his own ambitious plans to turn the resort into a venue for “Live Entertainment in Virtual Reality”.

They’ve also boasted real-world purchasable items, but if it’s so hard to earn money in-world it calls into question why anybody would want to bother using PED to buy something instead of US$.

1. The RMT system is fully integrated.
2. Item construction in Entropia is strictly controlled to keep the game in balance (and to keep a positive cash flow for MindArk). The average player shouldn’t expect to be able to create anything like clothes from scratch.
3. There are limited resources in Entropia, but unless you have a few thousand US$ to spend on buying a plot of land, don’t expect to build here.

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The Sims Online - “”Sims Online” - game commercial”

The online version of The Sims runs smoothly, has nice bright graphics, and lots of fun things to do. Long-term, nobody is really certain about the future of this game for economic reasons (see below), but it’s a nice shiny social space for now.

1. $9.99 per month fee, no RMT according to the TOS… which might be a good thing considering a past exploit made some players multi-billionaires.
2. You get to use what Maxis gives you.
3. Apart from skill-building your avatar, house construction and furnishing are the major activities in TSO and among the primary reasons that people like it.

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PlayStation Home - “GDC ‘07: Playstation Home Debut Trailer”

Sony has officially and vehemently disqualified PlayStation Home as an alternative to Second Life. Here’s a quote from a recent Phil Harrison interview on the flog:

PH: I think you’re way oversimplifying by suggesting Second Life and Home are the same. In Home, you get a character and a 3D world, and that’s where the similarity ends. Second Life does some brilliant things but with Home, we’re providing a service. Therefore, the tone of voice is what will differentiate it – Home is about entertainment, it has a game focus, and it’s about sharing with a like-minded community. We don’t give users the level of influence over the environment, behaviour and object definitions that Second Life does – it’s as secure as any other PS3 game. With some of the operating system protocols that are built into the Cell chip, it’s about as secure as you can be on a consumer device.

So, to paraphrase: “we’ve decided that a crippled environment is more secure, and security is more important to everybody than anything else imaginable.” Hmmm. Guess I don’t need to buy a PS3 any time soon. Forget Onder’s Big Three on this one… moving on…

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Kaneva - “Kaneva - A Worldly Vision”

They’re still in beta, which means that in order to get in you have to get as many people to click widgets on your profile as you can so that you can get an “invite”. Basically, you’re not in unless the powers-that-be say you’re in, and you’ll have to be really irritating to rank high enough to win favor. Sounds fun, right?

Their forums reveal as many technical issues as Second Life has, but we’ll see what it’s like once they’re out of beta. If they take down the “attention whores only” restriction and get it stable before making a move to encourage a big rush, they might come out on top here as a 3D version of Web 2.0 social apps. As far as the Big Three goes…

1. Details are sketchy, but in a world this young the economy barely exists anyhow. We’ll have to sit back and wait a bit to see what unfolds.
2. Actually, you can upload a ton of media and Kaneva is really good about giving you the tools to display it. Photos, video, and “other content” (audio is in the works) are well-supported. Just forget about building anything from prims, or scripting, or custom… well, custom anything. There may be facility to do textures, but as far as actual in-world items go, you get what they give you.
3. You get an apartment, and can get various hangouts as well. The level of interaction with the world here is similar to that of TSO.

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There - There.com First Virtual Steps

This is a nice, PG-rated world that hosts other worlds like Virtual Laguna Beach. The physics work, voice chat is integrated, and invariably everybody seems so damned HAPPY here. I’ve learned a lot about the place since I last attempted this list and I have to admit, I really under-estimated them. A PG environment makes everything seem a little… well… PG. To many, PG = ridiculously boring. Set that aside, though, we’re looking at a pretty well-built world here.

1. The TOS forbid it RMT, but that’s not stopping anybody. Private trades are common, and people arrange for them in the public forums with no real fear of being punished for it. Some claim to make a living here.
2. You can make clothes and build 3D objects, although scripting is limited. Ownership privileges are very controlled as well, although the integrated auction system makes selling your stuff easy.
3. You can absolutely own property and houses in There.

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HiPiHi - “hipihi Newest test video frequency”

There’s no Chinese port of Second Life, but somebody decided to build something just like it. (The claim here is that they didn’t even know about SL when they started.) The YouTube demo reel shows very many SL-like things like custom avatars and building. There’s a promise of flash and mobile device integration as well.

Their website has expanded quite a bit over the last month or so, but my Mandarin is a bit rusty so I can only go with what they’ve translated in the English portion. They have a lot of resident-created videos already posted, which makes me wonder if they have machinima tools embedded in the client. I wrote to HiPiHi to get more details but never heard back.

They’re currently in closed beta.

1. A “fully functioning economy” is promised, but they’ve publicly stated that even they don’t know what form it will take. It could be in-world only, RMT-allowed, or even based on QQ (I’m just making that last part up but it would be amazing). Still waiting for details.
2. Building is absolutely part of this, and from what I’m gleaning in the blogs you need to own land in order to make anything so ownership is implied here.
3. It seems to be the case that you can claim land and build on it. At the moment this doesn’t cost anything.

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Pre-Beta

Areae Inc. - They’re being very secretive, but seem determined to create a space that marries Web 2.0 (social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube) with immersive user-created environments like Second Life. They have an all-star cast of advisers, but so far we know very little else. Check out their press page for interviews with Raph Koster. Raph’s turned me down in my request for further details so I’ll refuse to link to his most excellent blog. Oh hell, here. Good reading, that.

Outback Online - Promises to be just like SL but also with multiple planets. They claim being able to get 10,000 users in one area, console based clients as well as PC and Mac, and some kind of distributed networking scheme to run the whole thing. No other info is available really, but they’re accepting beta applications. There’s a pretty decent blog from the creator of this one too.

Real Time Worlds unnamed project – according to this they’ve licensed the Unreal 3 engine, and according to this they’re world-building, but we know nothing else. They’re one of many companies out of Korea building worlds, and Korea is the birthplace of a lot of really amazing things online. I wouldn’t be surprised if something completely mind-blowing came from there completely out of the blue, but we’re in wait-and-see mode here. I’ll continue to keep my ear to the ground.

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Other Neat Worlds

These are some great virtual worlds I found while searching for SL alternatives that are cool social spaces, but far enough away from being anything like Second Life to really be considered as replacements of any kind.

Whyville - A 2D world for 8-15 year olds. It’s been around since 1999 as a safe and educational social environment. Players interact in environments where they learn about science, math, art, civics, and economics.

Cyworld - A huge hit in South Korea and a newer phenomenon in the west, Cyworld is something you just don’t ignore. In concept, this is similar to a scaled back Kaneva – you get a Myspace-type interface, and a 2D room with 2D avatars. It also has a nice integration with an instant-message client called NateOn that has overtaken MSN Messenger in popularity in South Korea.

Check out this quote from Wikipedia:

Korea’s Internet culture has embraced the Cyworld model, which differs from the blog culture of the United States. The simplicity of buying items to decorate one’s minihompy, without needing to learn HTML or Photoshop, has attracted many young women who had not previously used the Internet. This item-based business model has also bolstered Internet community sites that had previously struggled as free services. Many renowned Korean socialites and celebrities have been known to possess a cyworld account in which details of their upcoming tours and works are posted, such is the case with korean icons such as Duk-In Joo, poet and author of the bestselling meaning of meanings novel.

The corporate world has also embraced Cyworld, with examples of companies creating minihompies to accompany product launches. Celebrities and politicians have also increasingly opted for minihompies, rather than homepages, to gain closer contact with the population.

It’s like Myspace meets Habbo Hotel. The only issue here: all purchasable content comes directly from SK Communications, you can’t make any content to give to others, and you can only affect your own minihompy. So, no to all of the Big Three.

Worlds.com - A collection of themed worlds commercially created. Free to play (although there is a premium account option), insanely low system requirements, and lots of music-band themed worlds. They just launched Aerosmith World, but I’ll probably check out Blair Witch World first.

There are others I could put here but I can’t list everything. See Habbo Hotel, Webkinz and Club Penguin for three more fun and monstrously popular social spaces… but I’ve got to stop somewhere here.

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World Building Tools

Feel like building your own Second Life world? Here are a few tools (there are dozens out there, this is just a cross-section):

Croquet - Open-source genius. Feature-rich, graphically sophisticated, and with an amazing extra where you can open a 3D window pane into a separate 3D space.

Multiverse - More open-source genius, with lots of corporate sponsors and lots of user-friendly interfaces for setting things up. You’ll see them at a lot of GDCs.

Project DarkStar - This is just a server platform, but then again, that’s how Second Life started out. Created by Sun Microsystems, this is a series of specialized servers meant to accommodate MMO environments. Rumors float about that Second Life may migrate over to a system like this, but as with everything with Linden Labs, we have no idea what the thinking truly is.

Virtual Object System - They share the dream of creating “The Metaverse”. You can download it and compile it, but don’t expect it to be all that user-friendly yet. They’re taking a very “from the ground up” approach. IF this ever launches, it will end up being fast and reliable. Their wiki is active, so it’s worth keeping an eye on. They’re looking for VC funding now, apparently.

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Other

QQ – This is an instant messenger client popular in Asia that has exploded in popularity. The currency it uses, called “QQ coin”, was originally meant to be for avatars and blogs. Soon third parties started RMT, and the value went way up. At this point there are concerns that it has too strong an influence over the Yuan. There is no virtual world here per se, but it’s an interesting mix of real/virtual currencies for real/virtual goods.

Weblo – No environment here either, nor is there any currency or tool associated at all. This is a “virtual real-estate” scheme that exists entirely through a website… nothing to do there but try to play the market. You won’t run into people here and chat, it’s just straight commerce of pretend things that have a webpage created about them. Most people don’t understand what it is and just namedrop it next to “Second Life” in the hopes of being among the first to find “the new thing”, so I mention it here to clear that up.

That’s The List!

Those of you who just wanted the skinny on Second Life compatibility, that’s the long and short of it. I even proof-read it this time! I think I might have even fact-checked something!

This next part is where I define why I think “Onder’s Big Three” are the big three reasons that we all put up with SL’s lagginess. Seriously, this part is going to be a terribly boring bit of navel-gazing, so if it’s not super-critical to your sense of self that I justify all of this it’s probably a good idea to move on at this point. Thanks for coming out, and check back often for updates!

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Pandering To Debate Addicts

Let me start off by clarifying something that seems to have mystified certain individuals: this is about alternatives to SL, and is not meant to be a list of “great places to do business” or “social spaces” or “definitive virtual worlds” or anything like that. It is what the title says it is. Seriously. I’m not kidding.

I’ve hired a team of specialists to determine how I might make it more obvious that this was the opposite of a generalization. By the title, by the name of the blog, the fact that I wasn’t involving any wildly popular MMORPGs several times the size of SL, by the fact that no Web 2.0 apps were listed as virtual worlds … somehow it was still too hard to glean that Second Life residents care about Second Life and that this was probably … y’know… about Second Life… about how different Second Life is from most virtual worlds and how we want an alternative specifically to Second Life… like in the title there.

When I posted the original “Alternatives To Second Life” I had to put up with this hyperventilating freak-out session about it by somebody who had been in a bad mood for an entire month . (You really should take something for that, you know.) It seems odd that for some reason he thought I was defining requirements for all virtual worlds. No man, this is about Second Life. It’s made by Linden Lab, and it’s free! Download the client and try it sometime; it’s pretty unique.

How unique is it? Well, actually, it’s so unique that it’s the ONLY virtual world that completely complies with “Onder’s Big Three”! I kid you not! One would think I used Second Life to define “Onder’s Big Three” or something!

Moving on…

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The Rationale

“Onder’s Big Three” came about when I asked myself what set Second Life apart from other virtual worlds. Basically, the only reason any of these rules exist is because the combination of the three of them exists only in Second Life. That’s the entire thing. If you understand that, you can skip the rest of this.

We suffer here in SL, we really do, and yet we keep coming back. Terrible lag, lost inventories, constant outages, disintegrating physics engines, vehicles that become more and more crippled, and yet… we’re all still here. Any other MMO (or “virtual world”… at least that’s the trendiest term of the moment) and we’d be gone ages ago, but we’re sticking this one out. Why?

I’d love to say it was the community, which does rule, but nobody sticks around because we have celebrities. (Do we have celebrities?) Second Life has a terrible chat interface and the Groups system feels tacked-on. It sure isn’t the graphics level (people who aren’t residents often think of SL as low-res), and it was already getting popular before it became “free” and exploded. Second Life must have things about it that exist nowhere else, or we’d all have already left. These three reasons are my best guesses as to what those things are.

• 1. Real money must move in and out of the “virtual” economy freely.

I love money. Seriously, it totally rules. Nothing buys milk and eggs like money does… not smiles, not creativity, not even kindness. Money really does the trick when I want to get some ingredients from the store to make pancakes.

You get a choice when you define a world: design RMT in, or outlaw it. I’m not arguing that one is better than the other, just that Second Life chose the former and that’s what works for us. MMORPGs can work well either way. (Example: Everquest has it, World of Warcraft doesn’t.)

The dream of the Metaverse - of a place where we can go and work and then come “home” (log out) and continue life fluidly - it can’t really exist if we won’t let money flow through it. As soon as you isolate the system’s economy, then it’s just a toy. I want more than a toy. I want a place to live.

When people in RL ask me to explain what we do in SL, I often tell them that it’s like a city. When you go to a city, you’re not told what you’re supposed to do there… you just go out and find something to do. That’s Second Life.

Now, imagine visiting a city with a proprietary currency that you’re not allowed to buy or sell.

• 2. Users must be able to create unique content and retain ownership over it.

From the comments on the last iteration of the list: “The necessity of real life cash to get your avatar clothes and other items is bunk. I don’t want to worry about money when I am playing a game.”

It’s like these people have never logged into Second Life…

Take a single US dollar’s worth of L$ and swing by Yadni’s Junkyard sometime. If you’re religious about the free thing, stay broke and go to the Shelter. You’ll be rolling in items, many of good quality, in no time.

Now, try logging into WoW and see how much fun you have without selling anything or using in-world currency to buy anything. You’ll have more trouble clothing yourself for free in pretty much any other MMO than you will in Second Life.

The fancy stuff that somebody employed time, energy and expertise in order to create, often costs money in Second Life. Nobody feels bad about that. This, combined with the ability for RMT, attracts the best and brightest talents to make the world that much better.

In a way this says the same thing that the first point does. We need to bring our stuff from this world into that one, and vice versa. That’s one of the big, pivotal essentials of Second Life.

Bottom line, though: Copybot proved point number two. Second Life residents abhor the idea of a lack of control over ownership of their creations, and (not to beat a dead horse here but…) this is a list about alternatives to Second Life. This is what we want and, all theorizing aside, what we want is the real issue here.

• 3. The world must be persistent, and the users able to change it.

This is probably a given. Every person who owns land would completely freak out if they logged out and came back to see an empty lot every time, and owning land rules. Seriously, ask any land owner.

Most virtual worlds aren’t like that, however. You leave, come back, and anything you might have done has been wiped clean. It makes you feel completely irrelevant, doesn’t it? There’s some narrator somewhere telling you how epic you are and how great your accomplishments were, but when you’re logged out there isn’t exactly any evidence of that, is there?

Shards do not satisfy Second Life dwellers. We want the world to know we were here. Why do you think that, in RL, kids spray graffiti? Check any public washroom and you’ll see at least one X WAS HERE.

Owning land, or at least being able to leave your mark on it, gives the world a sense of tangibility. It’s more than that, though. Being able to leave your mark makes you relevant to the world. That’s a powerful thing.

Of course, all of that was just a bunch of philosophical mumbo-jumbo. The real issue is this: Second Life residents like owning land and building on it, as evidenced by the number of plots of land owned and built upon in Second Life. That is the beginning and the end of the debate on this point.

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So, what did you think? What did I miss? Leave a comment, I want to hear it!