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Second Life competitor Blue Mars drops PC development for Apple's iOS
If you were hoping that Blue Mars was going to rise to directly challenge Second Life's virtual world dominance, you may be in for disappointment today. In a letter to Avatar Reality's fans, CEO Jim Sink announced that the company is restructuring and dropping Blue Mars' PC development to focus solely on Apple's iOS. As a result, Blue Mars is now Blue Mars Mobile. "With over 50 million new tablet devices projected to reach consumers this year along with tens of millions of iPhones and iPod Touch devices, the market for Blue Mars Mobile is a massive opportunity for our company and our customers. We already have a functioning alpha in house and we aim to release the first builds of Blue Mars on iOS next month," Sink said. Sink also announced that a number of Avatar Reality employees, including himself, have been let go from the company. Unfortunately for PC users, Avatar Reality is limiting development to mere bug fixes for the forseeable future. While the company will not charge users of the PC client, there will also be no technical support for the user client.
The Virtual Whirl: Is one hour enough to be considered an active user?
It has long been a matter of considerable debate among virtual-environment pundits about what constitutes an 'active user'. In some ways, subscription MMOGs have it a lot easier than many other kinds of virtual environment. You can always count paying subscribers, and that's all that matters. In a general-purpose virtual environment, free-to-play or 'freemium' model, though, counting active users is important. Trends in active users measure the health of your user communities, as well as allowing you to credibly measure your virtual-world's e-peen compared to that of the competition.
Blue Mars experiencing slow but steady growth
Blue Mars entered a scaled open beta back in September, and we've not heard a lot from that quarter since then. It's still there, though, quietly doing its thing and keeping its fans happy. Jim Sink, the CEO of Honolulu-based Avatar Reality, spoke recently with Honolulu Weekly about where Blue Mars stands today. Blue Mars has a fairly small audience of around 100,000 and adds roughly 10% to that figure every month. Part of the reason for the small audience is the limitations given by the game itself, but Sink hopes to change that in the near future: "The current version of the game is slow on older PCs. We're adopting a new technology called the Cloud Fusion Server this summer though that will allow anyone to play Blue Mars online." The team behind Blue Mars hopes that this will open the doors for a much larger player base. Plans for things such as a switch to browser based play and Facebook applications give Sink hopes for a bright future for the game. Honolulu Weekly has the full interview with Sink, and it's well worth a read for anyone interested in the genre. [via Worlds in Motion]
Blue Mars limited-term pioneer pricing plans announcement
Avatar Reality Inc, the operators of Blue Mars, are today announcing limited time "pioneer" pricing for developers, digital entrepreneurs, educators, and businesses for space on the Blue Mars virtual environment platform. Space on Blue Mars is allocated in "cities". A Blue Mars city can be any size up to 16 kilometres on a side (a total of 256 million square metres). A city is more or less a discrete environment, or pocket "world" (if you prefer the term) with its own custom terrain, interface, rules, controls, items, themes, dominant language, and activities.
Blue Mars: An interview with Avatar Reality's CEO, Jim Sink
As Blue Mars goes into a scaled, open beta, interest has been rising in Avatar Reality's virtual environment. Inevitably, it's compared to Linden Lab's Second Life and – rightly or wrongly – will probably be wearing that comparison for some years to come. Certainly, Second Life users have found the environment intriguing so far. It seemed only proper that we sit down with Jim Sink, Avatar Reality's CEO and find out a little bit more about Blue Mars.
Rumor: Blue Mars to go into open beta on September 2nd?
According to an anonymous source, the new virtual world game on the block, Blue Mars, might be entering into open beta on September 2nd. What does this mean for you? Well, it means that another CryEngine 2 MMO might be making an appearance soon to do battle with Planet Calypso.Currently we are unable to confirm the exact time of the opening of the Blue Mars open beta, but we can confirm that the game has been shut down and is being prepared for the "public beta" according to posts on the forums.Blue Mars is the middle ground between Second Life and Planet Calypso. Where Planet Calypso acts as a game with a real money economy and Second Life allows all users to create content and change the world to their preferences, Blue Mars signs up and approves select developers to create content for their world. Standard users will have the ability to open up small shops and/or purchase living quarters (at the developer's preference) as well as interact with the games and events the ruling developer sets up for their players.
Blue Mars beta and launch dates disclosed
When it comes to virtual worlds, Massively's main focus to date has clearly been on Second Life, but we're also interested in some of the other choices that are becoming available to residents in virtual spaces. Blue Mars from Avatar Reality is one that's caught our eye -- it's a sci-fi themed virtual world, set on a terraformed Mars in the year 2177 AD. The potential is there to have some stunning visuals, as Blue Mars is built on CryEngine2, best known for giving Crysis its look. The official Avatar Reality site lists a beta release for the end of 2008, but they've told Eurogamer that Blue Mars enters beta in January 2009. "The first-time developer expects this to last for around three months, before the full game launches in April," Eurogamer's Rob Purchese reports.
Blue Mars developer too good at replicating reality
See if you can follow our reasoning on this one. Avatar Reality, the creators of the Blue Mars project, which is aimed at delivering a next-gen graphical Second Life-like MMO, are outsourcing the actual content of the game, while they work on the engine. Given the screenshots, and what we've been told by the studio, there will likely be many replicas of real-life objects -- golf equipment, for example, for the golf game that's said to be in development. However, one of Blue Mars' third-party developers, Virtual Space Entertainment, sports a company logo that's eerily similar to that of mountain bike-makers Specialized. Is VSE so into their role as replicators of real things that the mandate has seeped into every aspect of the company? Someone's in trouble here, and it's not Specialized.[Thanks, Peter!]
Blue Mars focusing solely on third-party content
Whenever we see Blue Mars in the news, our computers usually start making this very worrying metal-on-metal grinding noise. Maybe it's because our computers have seen too many cheesy horror movies set on Mars, or maybe it's because Blue Mars is going to be using the CryEngine2 for its graphics rendering. We just hope that it doesn't kill the game early on, since we're pretty interested in seeing how it develops.
Blue Mars sneak preview
We had a chance to sit down with Avatar Reality's VP of Development, Li-han Chen, at E for All to get some details about their recently announced title, Blue Mars. Set on a futuristic, terraformed Mars circa 2177 AD, the world will be far more akin to something like Second Life than like other more typical MMOs; in fact, the company is calling Blue Mars a "massively multiplayer virtual world," or MMVW, in lieu of labeling it specifically as a game world. Two main mechanics will separate Blue Mars from SL: a suite of pre-programmed in-game activities (minigames, essentially) to provide a framework for socialization, and no user-generated content -- all environments and objects in the world will be coded by third party developers. By the time Blue Mars enters closed beta at the end of 2008, Honolulu-based Avatar Reality hopes to have at least 3 of these minigames developed and ready for testing. With golf and vehicle racing listed as two of the activities, it seems clear that Blue Mars is going to cater to the more casual side of the gaming audience. If combat exists at all in the world, it will be relegated to specifically designated areas -- the core mechanic is casual socialization. Perhaps paradoxically, the game is going to be aimed at users with high-end machines and graphics cards (Quad Core CPU and GeForce 8800 or better) in order to feature the CryENGINE2-rendered "breathtaking graphics."%Gallery-9463%
E for All galleries
We had a chance to hit up the inaugural year for E for All in Los Angeles, and while turnout wasn't so hot, there were a few goodies we were able to get our hands on. We collated the MMO-related shots for a Massively-flavored E for All gallery: %Gallery-9572% We also offer a screenshot gallery from the time we got to spend with Warhammer Online: %Gallery-9466% And some initial screenshots from the upcoming title from Avatar Reality, Blue Mars: %Gallery-9463% For the full mega-gallery featuring your required dosage of cosplay and Rock Band almost-stars, check out the complete Joystiq E for All gallery: Gallery: E for All 2007
Crytek engine licensed to Avatar Reality, Inc. for online virtual world
Crytek's latest engine, CryENGINE2, will be licensed to upstart developer Avatar Reality, Inc. for use in a massively multiplayer virtual world, according to a press release from today. The game, currently untitled, is best described as a Second Life on Mars. From the PR: "Set in Terraformed Mars, Avatar Reality's MMVW will allow players to live their fantasy lives by creating personalized characters, or avatars, in a beautiful environment." According to a brief chat we had with Crytek's Avatar Reality, Inc., whose advisory panel it notes features Father of Tetris Alexey Pajitnov and former Nintendo of America President Minoru Arakawa, was formed by "Mastermind" Henk Rogers, chairman of Tetris Online, Inc. It is based out of the oh-so desolate city of Honolulu and will be managed by industry vets Kazuyuki Hashimoto and Li-han Chen. More information can be found at their website.The first public presentation of CryENGINE 2 is expected today at GDC.
