On 7/30/2020 2:19 PM, Paul Wouters wrote:
On Thu, 30 Jul 2020, John Scudder wrote:
I consider myself reasonably social, by local standards :-), but by that I mean in meatspace. Back when
MUDs were a thing, I took a look once and didn’t see the appeal. I just dipped in to the gather.town space
and, quite apart from the tumbleweeds blowing through, I also don’t feel drawn to the simple pleasures of
navigating a chunky-pixel avatar around gamespace, when I could be doing something else. It’s not like we
lack for ways of connecting with one another when we want to, so hanging out in a rerun of Ultima II
doesn’t seem like it brings a lot to the table.
Are you suggesting we should meet in Red Dead Redemption 2 ? We would
have virtual food, a campfire, wolfs howling in the background while
we humm. And a rather effective dispute resolution process :)
We do not actually use a virtual world metaphor. What we need is the possibility to have an impromptu chat, and simulate interactions like "do you have a minute", "may I join you" or "may I interrupt". That last part was actually rather well done in Gather. The avatar and the 2D Pacman style grid on the other hand was less attractive.
-- Christian Huitema
