Metaplace - What are your favorite games?

Metaplace! That's what!

Build a virtual apartment and put it on your website. Work with friends to make a huge MMORPG. Share your puzzle game with friends. We have a vision: to let you build anything, and play everything, from anywhere. Eventually, anyway. We have to finish first.

robh on ESRB Rating?

August 28th, 2008 at 3:38 PM PDT

5 Replies, 89 Views

Delvie on August Update

August 28th, 2008 at 1:51 PM PDT

1 Replies, 26 Views

Monkey Rogue on my game ideas- vertical shooter

August 28th, 2008 at 12:27 PM PDT

1 Replies, 9 Views

Feel like writing about Metaplace.com on your own site? Maybe you're a journalist? Here you'll find all sorts of materials that might make that easier: fact sheets, screenshots, logos and other artwork, and all the other handy stuff that goes in a Media Kit. Go nuts -- you've got blanket permission to use any of this stuff!

www.areae.net

Areae, Inc.

11770 Bernardo Plaza Court
Suite 101

San Diego, CA 92128

USA

Phone: 858-451-2700 Fax: 858-451-2722

For press enquiries, please email: metaplace@consortpartners.com

What is Metaplace?

Our motto is: build anything, play everything, from anywhere. Until now, virtual worlds have all worked like the closed online services from before the internet took off. They had custom clients talking to custom servers, and users couldn't do much of anything to change their experience. We're out to change all of that.

Metaplace is a next-generation virtual worlds platform designed to work the way the Web does. Instead of giant custom clients and huge downloads, Metaplace lets you play the same game on any platform that reads our open client standard. We supply a suite of tools so you can make worlds, and we host servers for you so that anyone can connect and play. And the client could be anywhere on the Web.

We hope there will be millions of worlds made with Metaplace. It could get hard to find stuff if we're right, so the portal lets you easily search, rate, review, and tag worlds and games of all sorts. You also get a user profile so you can find each other.

Can I make my own world?

That's sort of the whole point. You should be able to stage up a massively multiplayer world with basic chat and a map you can build on in less than five minutes. It's that easy. Inherit a stylesheet -- puzzle game, or shooter, or chat world -- and off you go! Building maps and places is as easy as pasting in links from the Web, and dragging and dropping the pictures into your world.

What's more, you can link your world to someone else's world. Put a doorway in your virtual apartment that leads to Pirate Vs Ninja-land! Stick your world in a widget on your Facebook or MySpace profile. Mail it to a friend and they can log in with one click.

What sorts of worlds can I make?

You can make pretty much any sort of game or world you want. You can decide whether it's massively multiplayer or not (it's MMO out of the box, but you can set it to a lower size if you want). You can decide whether to have physics or not, you can change the keymappings and the interface, the sort of stuff there is in the world, the maps... basically, it's all up to you. Game logic is written in MetaScript, which is based on Lua. So it's easy to make whatever kind of game or world that you want.

Metaplace will support everything from 2d overhead grids through first-person 3d. However, right now we only have clients that do 2d of various sorts, including grid view, 2d isometric, 2.5d heightfields, and so on. We expect to keep working on the 3d client support.

How does it interact with the web?

We speak Web fluently. Every world is a web server, and every object has a URL. You can script an object so that it feeds RSS, XML, or HTML to a browser. This lets you do things like high score tables, objects that email you, player profile pages right on the player -- whatever you want. Every object can also browse the Web: a chat bot can chatter headlines from an RSS feed, a newspaper with real headlines can sit on your virtual desk, game data could come from real world data... you get the idea. No more walled garden.

Who makes it?

Metaplace is made by Areae, Inc. We're a team of veterans of the game and Web industries who thought that the current way of doing things was kinda slow and didn't give users like you enough control. Check out the company website to learn more about us!

Also, feel free to sign up for . Our newsletter will keep you in the loop. ;)

What are your favorite games?

To begin this week's blog post, I'd like to direct everyone to a mini-contest that is being held in our forums. One forum poster, The Aether Knight, has put together a competition to see who can make the best web page banner advertisement for Metaplace. There are no specific size restrictions, but it should be designed to fit either on a sidebar or the top or bottom of a web page. Any of the art in our media kit or elsewhere on the web is available for your use in creating banner ads. Show off your art skills and post your submission in this thread!

Here at Metaplace, the majority of us are gamers. We are passionate about games - everything from console games to PC, to board and card games, to tabletop roleplaying and strategy games. I asked our team members last week what their favorite game genre is and if they can give a couple examples of titles they love to play. Here are some responses:

"My favorite game of all time is Final Fantasy VI. Intriguing characters and believable character development are my favorite element of storytelling, and FF6 had my favorite cast of 14 characters." -- Adam "sunetos" Smith, Software Engineer

"I’m a longtime hardcore shooter style game player, playing mostly the Rainbow 6 series. Being that I was playing them before the dual analog sticks became the “cool” thing, I’m a solid believer in using a mouse to play FPS’s. BOOM HEADSHOT!" - Tristan "Actionsketch" Michael, Intern/"Art Ninja"

"I’m a dedicated tabletop RPG’er, but I’ve never been able to get into RPG-style video games. I think I played WoW for about forty-five minutes before shrugging and going back to working on my Exalted character. I do love all of the music-and-rhythm based video games, though. I’m finally mature enough to proudly play DDR in public, and I will rock out on Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and Karaoke Revolution any day of the week!" - Claire Vannette, Office Manager/'Nerd Wrangler'

"I like a lot of sorts of games. Puzzle games, FPSes, platformers, and of course MMOs." - Raph Koster, President

"My favorite genre is RTS. I got hooked on Red Alert and the whole C&C series, though my favorite game of all time is Age of Empires II. There’s nothing quite like watching a friends reaction as their city burns after a perfectly matched 3 hour game." - Andy Whelan, Web Developer

"Diablo 2. as weird as it is, these days i’m a huge fan of the incrementally-time-digestible grind. reward systems broken down into the smallest parts possible and immediately accessible. xp, xp, drop, xp, drop, sell for cash, item upgrade, xp, xp, ding! woot!" - Christopher "m3mnoch" Chapman, Senior Software Engineer

"Grand Prix Legends. It is a PC game that most accurately simulates the physics and dynamics of a real 1967 Formula One season." - Andy Ault, Web Developer

"I’ve traditionally been a PC gamer, although lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in front of an Xbox 360. I typically enjoy RPGs, shooters and racers." - Rob Hauch, Senior Artist

"I’ve spent countless hours slinking in the shadows in Thief II, knocking out hapless guards with my trusty blackjack. Outwitting the enemy is so much more satisfying than outgunning the enemy. Best game ever." - Mike Caloud, Software Engineer

"For me it’s definitely any dungeon crawler or adventure with a quest. I started back with the original Adventure, Scott Adams and Infocom games. And over the past 30 years, I’ve played almost everything with a storyline that’s been released, from ‘King’s Quest’ to ‘Eye of the Beholder’ to ‘Oblivion’. I absolutely devour anything with a puzzle." - Johnny Waitt, Content Developer

"I enjoy all kinds of games, from simple side scrollers to advanced multi-month MMORPGs. Whatever the game, multiplayer is really a necessity these days. I love games that make you think and strategize to beat the enemy, either alone or with a team. I am very opinionated against games that are purely ‘item based’. It is so much more respectable when a players cunning, timing, coordination, and creativity determine the outcome of the game." - Ben Taller, Software Developer

"I'm a huge JRPG fan, preferably turn-based. I also enjoy action RPG's, board/card games (like Munchkin!), tabletop roleplaying, and games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Singstar. Hopelessly addicted to playing and reading about MMOs, and quite infatuated with the 360 in all its glory." - Tami "Cuppycake" Baribeau, Community Manager

"I think of all game genres, I enjoy Board Games the most. Some people have an aversion to video games, but are willing to play board games. It's always nice to sit down with a group of friends or family members and play." - Jeff "The Intern" McNab, Content Developer

"My favorite genre of game is JRPG. Turn-based combat is my preferred style, but I enjoy other combat systems as well. I’m currently playing Brave Story: New Traveler for PSP. Before that, I played Lost Odyssey for Xbox 360. Most of these games follow very similar design, but I still love to play them all. :)" - Kia Jessen, Associate Producer

"My favorite genre of game is the “building” type – Alpha Centauri, Master of Magic, Civilization, Master of Orion, and similar. It’s incredibly satisfying to watch a powerful empire build up from nothing, learn advanced secrets, explore the (world / galaxy / etc), and smash enemy armies! My favorite in this genre is probably Alpha Centauri (+ expansion), as it allowed so many variations in playstyle and gave a ton of options for customizing your empire." - Patrick "Tachevert" Ferland, Content Developer

"I started to answer this question many different ways (AC Darktide, TradeWars 2k2, AOE2, DragonRealms..) and I can’t pick a favorite game, or even a favorite genre. But I think looking at my top few the theme is mystery and depth, In AC you didn’t always know the level of who you were fighting, trade wars was huge and you had to keep notes, AOE2 took years to master and in Dragonrealms every aspect of the game had a trick to it." - James Gauthier, Senior Software Engineer.

What are your favorite kinds of games? Come post in our forums and let us know!

Tami "Cuppycake" Baribeau
Community Manager