What Happens When a Virtual World Shuts Down?
For all of the success stories with virtual worlds, there are many more failures. Typically, when a virtual world fails, the servers are shut down and those (typically few) fans of the world are left to look for a new world.
But what happens when those fans are truly passionate about the virtual world in which they resided? In some cases, those fans resurrect the world on their own.
Google shut down their virtual world, Google Lively, a few months ago. While there was not enough interest for Google to continue on with the project, those that were interested have started NewLively – a virtual world based on Google’s Lively. This world looks and acts much the same way as the original Lively. Based in Beijing, China NewLively can’t do everything that Lively could do (such as work within Facebook) but it duplicates a lot of the other features.
This isn’t the first time fans of a VW have decided to relaunch something similar in order to keep enjoying what they had with this original world. When Disney closed their Virtual Magic Kingdom, a group of fans quickly put together a new version called Virtual Family Kingdom. It has many of the same features, just with any Disney references removed. Otherwise it is very similar to the original game.
It isn’t always the case, however, where fans recreate the world from scratch. Sometimes they are helped along by the developers.
MystOnline: UruLive was shut down in 2008. The small group of very loyal fans were quite upset by this announcement. However, a few short months later the developer, Cyan Worlds, has announced they would release the source code to the virtual world to the public. By making it open source, the fans can easily create their own worlds based on Myst. No need to reinvent the wheel. The developers had initially thought that they would try and restore it themselves at a future date, however the downturn in the economy got them thinking that perhaps there was another way: Just let the fans control and create the virtual worlds themselves.
So, if your favorite virtual world shuts down, have some hope. A group of fans just might bring it back for a second chance.
Note: This post was originally written by me and appeared on the Rising Tide blog.
