Well, the day finally came: Raph Koster made his Areae announcement, and every blog I read now has covered Metaplace. I had been betting all along that what they were working on was very, very similar to what we’re working on, and in part I am right. I don’t think they’re doing proper 3D, the screenshots look more like a kind of top-down 2.5D, but the concept is the same. User-created spaces that connect to each other like webpages do. Being able to drop multiuser content easily into any page.
Meh. That’s all I can say…meh. Even though our areas will someday be much more effective (imho), we’re too small a team, with too few resources. And so, in the eyes of the world, we will not be first, or best, and that disappoints me.
But I suppose a dream is still a good dream, even if you aren’t first. And the concept is a very important one: giving users the tools to create, and share, and connect. That in itself is one of the best dreams in the world.