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Rise and Shiny: There
I remember years ago staying up very late, usually on the weekends, chatting about politics or religion in a wonderful social MMO called There. My wife and I would join a bunch of online friends to haunt parties and other gatherings, often getting booted out because we would bring up sensitive topics or would act too silly. There was a great world to cut my social MMO teeth on. I had already been playing Ultima Online and EverQuest starting around '99, but There was a brand-new experience. I loved it. Social MMOs are a rare thing, often ruled by half-naked people and driven by mature themes. While There did have its "private parties" (if you know what I mean), it was generally a friendly place with a better creeps-to-normal-people ratio than other social MMOs. The game shut down in 2010, and I honestly thought it was gone forever. Somehow I missed the fact that it relaunched not so long ago, and this past week I was able to not only log in to the game but resurrect my avatar from all those years ago. Unfortunately, the game seems largely empty, but I do normally visit MMOs during the day. Still, I took a few screenshots and compared them to older ones just to show how things have changed. What a week. What a nostalgic, wonderful week.
Scion car prototypes to be drivable in There
Toyota-owned car manufacturer Scion has enjoyed a fruitful partnership with virtual world There. The company operates a virtual nightclub shaped like existing Scion car models. According to virtual worlds blog Worlds in Motion, the company has now decided it likes this kind of marketing so much that it is introducing three concept cars -- the Hako Coupe, the FUSE, and t2b -- into the game as drivable player vehicles. There has always placed a fair amount of emphasis on vehicles, so this seems to fit.At GDC earlier this year, we performed in-depth analysis of Scion's There campaign (and hosted some images depicting its plans) and came to the conclusion that it was pretty novel. At the time, we reported that There users had spent a total of 1,915 hours in Club Scion. Since then, that number has risen to 3,000. Whatever your feelings on in-game advertising are, it seems be working in this case.
