Massively has spoken before about the Metaplace property – an ambitious project to make everyone an online game designer. As they just announced earlier today, the company is now moving into a new phase of development! They've got a new name, are inviting in hundreds of users to try out their in-development product, and have a whole new round of funding to see them through! In honor of the occasion Massively is thrilled to sit down with Mr. Raph Koster, one of the founders of the company.
Raph has been a friend of Massively since they launched and, indeed, is well known to MMO gamers for his work on a number of high profile titles. Mr. Koster and the folks at Metaplace are working to put you in the developer's seat now, though, and it was an interesting experience being able to explore the outline of their ambitious project.
Acquisition-happy social games studio Playdom has purchased Metaplace (formerly Areae), the virtual world platform developer co-founded by game industry veteran Raph Koster, gaining access to the firm's tech and expertise.
Eurogamer writes: "Editor's note: This interview was conducted in mid-December last year. Shortly after we spoke to Raph Koster, it was announced that Metaplace, which much of the interview is about, would shut down on 1st January. However, we thought that Koster's comments were still interesting in light of that news - perhaps even more so - so we decided to run the interview in its original form. We also contacted Koster for a comment on Metaplace's demise, and he had this to say."
The Metaplace development team made the announcement today that no fan of a game likes to hear: "Today we have unfortunate news to share with the Metaplace community. We will be closing down our service on January 1, 2010 at 11:59pm Pacific." The bottom line to the reasoning behind the decision is that Metaplace simply is not making enough headway to be a viable (read: profitable) product.
Wow. This is unfortunate... There was a lot of star power behind the development of this, so I wonder why they just didn't find a way to keep the lights one and let the community grow over time.
