The Electric Sheep Company, friends of Peregrine Salon, recently announced what they’ve been working on recently while maintaining relative radio silence in Second Life and other virtual worlds. It is called WebFlock, and it appears to be the first Flash based virtual world I could actually see using. After the disappointing and PC-only release of Lively by Google – something found by many to be so lacking people even conjured up conspiracy theories about it being intentionally bad by Google – this is defintely a welcome development.
While there doesn’t seem to be user generated content, the interface appears nice, clean, and simple. There are two paradigms at play here: sharded worlds that appear within the context of the web (WebFlock) versus trying to get the web to appear within the context of one large virtual world (Second Life). Both will appeal to very different markets. When I first joined Second Life in 2003, about 99% of the people created content in one form or another. Today, I’d wager that less than 1% of the population actively creates content… yet the interface remains largely unchanged from the last major overhaul in December, 2003 (version 1.2). This is a majorly steep learning curve for new users to encounter, and the interface is still geared towards a world where 99% of the people are enthusiastic content creators!
I’ll be curious to play with WebFlock once a public facing world is available. The avatars and environment look great, no doubt to using professional content creators only, while not looking too ultra-realistic and avoiding the uncanny valley. I’m curious to see what performance will be like in a Flash environment, as all we have here are screen shots. Be sure to check out the high heels without invisiprims!
This is a major development to keep our eyes on. If Google were smart (and we all know they are), they’ll roll something like WebFlock out and quickly admit Lively to be a blunder, as they have done in the past with their failures.
(Disclosure: author is a friend, fan, and past consultant with The Electric Sheep Company)