BBC announces launch of new virtual world
The BBC announces that it plans to open a CBBC world on a platform not a million miles away from Second Life.
They don’t say it’s Second Life, but the illustration is from Second Life, and the Director-General of the BBC popped in to see Linden Lab when he was in the states last year.
What will be interesting will be to see how they manage to scale their CBBC platform. The CBBC website is wildly popular, and they count their child fans in millions, not thousands. How they will overcome the problem of only being able to have 30 people in a sim is interesting to consider.
If there will be no economy, and one assume, no selling and buying of land, then it would be possible to have one large sim per server, instead of two or four, and potentially, I assume, to allow 60 or 120 avatars in one place. I do wonder how many of the constraints that we are used to would go away if we had a similar freedom to adapt.
It’s one of those things that keeps my brain turning while I wash up. How could the plarform be improved? Would it help if all empty sims were switched off until wanted? Would “fixing” your sim at a certain point in development offer any advantages? Are there better ways of doing things?
Maybe the new worlds opening up will be able to help us to answer some of those questions.
January 23rd, 2007 • 
Caliandris Pendragon • 
comment | January 23, 2007 at 09:54 | individual comment-link
Have a look at this and the associated Segments & Lifestyles report to get a gauge of the segment and its other activities.
pingback | January 23, 2007 at 12:25 | individual pingback-link
[...] blogosphere’s already buzzing with interest and making comparisons to SecondLife and it’s sister service [...]
comment | January 23, 2007 at 12:45 | individual comment-link
If it’s anything like the Teen Grid at SL it’s not going to go many places.
comment | January 28, 2007 at 08:06 | individual comment-link
Turns out it’s going to be single player only, Caliandris, did you see this:
http://www.3pointd.com/20070125/bbcs-virtual-world-for-kids-single-player-only/
comment | September 4, 2007 at 04:46 | individual comment-link
It’s actually a downloadable application. In the first instance, you can only play by yourself. I think other players may be visible, but you mainly play games with them, and there certainly isn’t free chat.