Video: Goodbye There.com
There are dozens of videos on YouTube entitled “Goodbye There.com” right now, and well over a hundred “There.com” videos posted just this week. I thought this one from Osprey Therian was worth a look for people who never actually used the There.com platform. It includes a good look at the pet AI, some of the vehicle physics, and a few of the more beautiful scenery that could be found.
What really strikes me about this is that she was able to find many big open featureless areas. Large deserts with a small oasis in the middle should be the exception, not the rule. Having said that just look how smoothly this platform runs. This is an entrepreneur’s dream project, if someone out there can find the funding to pick it up. With proper marketing there’s no reason this world couldn’t own the teen and tween demographic, even in the face of vSide and IMVU.
Here are a couple of other fan-made videos from the world to illustrate the point: a Prom in There.com Prom and an exploration of just one of the dozens of fun things to discover, in this case an ancient tomb.
March 20th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Oh, thanks, Caleb
The vehicles of There were great, and included more than I showed – I loved hoverboarding, which is what I did most of the time (although my ‘boarding skills were a lot better when I left in June ‘04). There were lots of features, including hidden places, many temples, and jungles, a giant plug in the ocean, etc., etc. – so don’t think my vid shows much more than a few hastily shot minutes taken on the last day, and certainly not any defining slice of the There experience.
Because There was a globe you could even fly or drive or hoverboard around it, however that took absolutely ages.
I had great hopes when JJ Ventrella landed at SL, and we DID get floopy prims out of it, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped. Some of the original There people are responsible for IMVU.
There was first set to be switched off in 2004 but was allowed to continue; it’s amazing it lasted so long, especially since the original visionaries had to leave before they had a chance to realise their ideas. The strengths of There were many; the weaknesses were, at first, to do with that initial slowdown in 2004 or 2003. For me it was great fun exploring, but once I had done that it grew stale. More vibrant development might’ve changed that somewhat, but There was set up to be a fun vacation land, and creative opportunities were limited. For a creative person SL won hands down.
SL has incorporated a few of the good things There had from its start: voice, lipsync, taptaprun, a shopping website, currency, and probably more I can’t think of at the moment. If we could have more of the best There qualities in SL – better vehicles, fluid movement, ai – it would be a dream come true.
March 20th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
I should add that the Olive platform is a branch from from There.