Not talking about mission/end goal oriented games though

No idea, they all died, I think.

Sine Space is still moving right along with a decent little community. But Blue Mars, Twinity, Cloud Party, they all fizzled right the heck out. Although I think there are still a few milling around Twinity.

There was quite some hype around Blue Mars, some creators also betatested over there. maxwell_graf too, I think.

Check out sine.space , which used the unity engine for development (V5.7 I think?) and supports at about 90% parity or something similar. They are still in beta I think, so there is not a large concurrent population but it is already doing a lot of things right.

Theres a ton of reasons why bluemars and cloud party failed. IMHO, the refusal to allow adult content is a world killer. Beyond that primary reason, there are any number of additional ones: Incomplete plan, lack of solid direction, lack of vision, lack of understanding, not listening to beta testers or feedback, hacking the cryengine to death, etc.

Sansar is a good solid foundation for a platform, but again, if they don't allow adult content, I cannot imagine it will grow very large, short of closing SL and forcing migration. There has been bad implementation, bad direction, lack of listening to feedback and beta testers, misplaced priorities, etc. and there are a lot of things missing that should

damn well be in it already, like basic motor skills (jump, duck/crouch, run) and plenty of more advanced features not present, like reposition camera angle and AO...but what they have done is mostly done very well.

The avatars are...slightly pre-hominid, but would/could seriously be amazing if a good skin designer got ahold of it, and then someone made a working AO that made it look like a walking human when it walks.

Of them all, so far I see sine.space being slightly ahead of the others in terms of how far along they are to making a next generation virtual world platform. Now if only someone would allow hard core doggy style, then a bunch of damn people would show up and we could get on with the business of world building with a population.

IMVU is actually doing much better than Second Life with PG-13 content, now with 4 million monthlies versus SL's 500K. IMVU: The Leading Avatar-Based 3D Social Network Acq...

and its a glorified chat room, but I understand your point.

Im not saying its not possible to have any kind of platform without it, but if we are trying to build a large scale, adult, open platform that lets everyone do pretty much anything, then it has to go beyond the limits of PG 13. Why are we still debating this? lol

Adult content is really a double edged sword -- really has helped SL monetize well but then it scares away a larger audience especially teens. Roblox is insanely successful (over 100M users I believe) and it's all LEGO-type characters/no sex.

Sorry, 50 million users, i.e. 100X bigger than SL. Roblox draws more than 50 million players a month to...

No official sex in Roblox, but trust, those kids are getting dirty af in there.

My point is this, what do people DO with it? There is a limited scope in both IMVU and Roblox (even if it is 100x bigger) compared to the broad scope of what people do in SL. There are plenty of games bigger than SL as well.

Im not going to hear the Dahlai Llama speak in IMVU, right? Or listen to live music, or go to an award ceremony, or an art gallery exibit, or to fight orcs or take slaves...

Those possibilities have to exist. Know anyone in IMVU or Roblox who have been there for over a decade for 20-40 hours a week?

(also, sorry Rogan, I got away from your post but hope I answered your questions)

maxwell_graf: That's a good point, no doubt IMVU, Roblox etc are going to skew to less sophisticated content. Just not convinced adding virtual peen is what gets us the Dalai Lama.

everyone knows thats how you get him to show up, cmon! his holiness totally gets his freak on!

!!!