I've been a part of the Metaplace alpha/beta test coming up on 16 months now, and I've been having a look back over the various worlds and modules I've made in that time. Since I was a member in the time before Open Beta, when you could create as many worlds as you wanted, there is a lot of stuff to look through. I currently have 100 worlds to my name, which I think could be the most any single tester has (excluding MP staff that is). Of course that is not to say that I've made 100 engaging worlds bursting at the seams with content, in fact the vast majority are empty with names like chat_local_xw_echo, data_template_test and where_does_UI_live! There are a lot of worlds whose sole purpose was to test a single feature or to try and find the source of a bug.

But there are worlds where I did make a genuine attempt at creating something that would be worth visiting (I must stress attempt). There are also a number of modules I've made in that time; some useful, some broken, some unfinished. So I thought I'd perhaps take some time to chronicle my experiences in creating content in Metaplace. This will probably be a series of posts as there is a lot of stuff to get through.

So where best to start than the beginning.

I first heard about Metaplace from following the blog of its creator, Raph Koster. I've had an interest in Raph's musings on game design since my days playing Star Wars Galaxies, which Raph was creative director on. When it comes to massively multi-player games I much prefer the more open 'worldy' games that Raph was mostly known for, rather the the more on-rails 'gamey' games. So when he left Sony to start up a new studio I was eager to see what he would do.
Metaplace was not announced right away, but there were hints dropped that it may not be what everyone might have expected - not just another MMO. When it was finally announced, as a platform to allow people to make their own networked games, as someone interested in making games myself I was excited to see how it would turn out.
Like 10,000 others I applied for the closed alpha testing at the first chance, and as each wave of accepted testers passed me by I kept hoping that perhaps I'd be in the next wave of invites.

At the beginning of 2008 those like me not already in the alpha test got their first chance to have a look at what MP could do as there were a number of public developer chats and stress tests using some early worlds. But these were one off events that lasted just an hour or two. It wasn't until March that the public could see something a bit more permanent with Metachat. This was a simple chat room with icons for avatars that could move about the screen, a piano to play, a football to kick about etc.; kinda gimmicky but it gave hints at what MP could do. It was initially released as an application on MySpace, Facebook and the public Metaplace forums so that people could log in from those sites and all interact in the one space.

Another aspect to Metachat was that it was going to be the first time that people would be allowed to embed the Metaplace client on their own site. There was a request put out for sites with a forum community to help out with this test. I just so happened to be in a position to do just that, so while sitting in the Metachat world when this embedding test was announced I mentioned I'd be able to help out. And with that I was finally in Alpha!

So my first world was a Metachat world...


This world didn't change much from the stylesheet it was created from (similar to the one used with MySpace and Facebook, but not connected to that hub world). Not only was I new to the workings of Metaplace, I was also new to the programming language it based its scripting on, Lua. Typically if you know one programming language then it isn't too much work to pick up another; you just need to account for the little differences. Lua has more than its fair share of idiosyncratic differences, almost to the point that it looks like it is being different for the sake of being different. MetaScript itself too has its own little quirks to get used to.

So I wasn't going to try to make too many changes to my Metachat world; after all it wouldn't do much good in testing remote embedding if I broke the world with my fumbling through the learning process of making things work in Metaplace. I did make one change though, in order to make the world more personal to the site it was embedded on.
That site (which I created and maintained) allowed its users to uploaded screenshots from games that they played together, which were then displayed on the front page. I wrote a simple metaplace script that would grab one of these screenshots every minute and use it for the background image of the chat world. So when the users were in the world they could see their own screenshots cycling away in the background -- at least they could have if they had used it.

Other than a few curious glances, mainly due to my prodding as part of the testing was getting feedback, the world went mainly unused. There could be many reasons why that was, but I had my theories.
This was a group that formed to play Star Wars Galaxies together, a game whose execution perhaps did not live up to expectation (and such high expectations they were). So many had left that game disappointed or disgruntled or a whole slew of other emotions based on different circumstances. For most in this group, that now worshipped at the alter of Blizzard, Sony (the creators of SWG) now because public enemy number one for its failure. And some extended that blame to certain individuals, whether warranted or not, including the most vocal during SWG's development, Raph. Perhaps I am wrong but it is my suspicion that some just wanted nothing to do with what Raph was now making and therefore never gave it a chance. This is perhaps supported by the fact that to this day whenever the subject of Metaplace is brought up, with the exception of a couple who show some interest, it is meet with deafening silence. And I think that is a shame, as although MP is still in its early days there has been some great content created by its users that people would actually enjoy.
But I digress. I shall stop before this becomes a /rant.

Actually in some ways I was glad that the Metachat world didn't get used, as it meant I could focus my efforts on things I wanted to create for myself. In fact the Metachat world was not actually the first world I created. When I registered my account the first thing I did was to make a world that would be my attempt to recreate in Metaplace a game I had already been making elsewhere. That game was called Tile Tactics, and that will have to be the subject of another post.