Comments on: Toyota Metapolis - Toyota’s very own virtual continent

By: Toyota inicia una carrera al lanzar su Metapolis Tecnolives

Toyota inicia una carrera al lanzar su Metapolis Tecnolives — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:27:56 +0000

[…] en: Vintfalken, Virtual Worlds, […]

By: Vint Falken

Vint Falken — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:15:16 +0000

… and last I heard they’d wandered off to Sony’s ‘Home’ platform.

Aha. Did that finally officially launch?

By: AmandaShinji

AmandaShinji — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:07:29 +0000

Nexeus wrote: “This looks really really nice, but I’m not sure how this helps Toyota at all! More and more companies are creating their own virtual world for their own brand in hopes of obtaining the same numbers that WoW or Second Life has, even a bit of it, but you know it’s not going to happen. They had it right by first trying out with Second Life, but there are other Virtual Worlds they can invest in and come very very close if they feel unhappy with SL.”

This is exactly what happened to Pontiac. They experimented with SL and as some would say, pretty successfully, but they didn’t get what they wanted out of the experiment and last I heard they’d wandered off to Sony’s ‘Home’ platform.

By: Veyron Supercharge

Veyron Supercharge — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:16:02 +0000

Yes, this is all nice, but I can I keep Vint for a few months?

By: Nexeus Fatale

Nexeus Fatale — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:29:05 +0000

This looks really really nice, but I’m not sure how this helps Toyota at all! More and more companies are creating their own virtual world for their own brand in hopes of obtaining the same numbers that WoW or Second Life has, even a bit of it, but you know it’s not going to happen. They had it right by first trying out with Second Life, but there are other Virtual Worlds they can invest in and come very very close if they feel unhappy with SL.

By: Tao Takashi

Tao Takashi — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:58:04 +0000

CC, I also wonder what will win. Companies like closed worlds with much control (much control means less possibilities though) to get their message over better. Then again it depends on how much people must love you just to come to your little world.

In the end though the internet is a decentralized thing and thus I don’t believe such things will work forever. At some point people really really need to love you to create yet another account and another avatar and so on. This already is annoying on social networks, it will be even more so in virtual worlds.

So I think a decentralized model such as a not-to-be-named world we all use a lot will become in the future, will win. No lock-in, more efforts needed to keep me at your place. Maybe companies would then even start listening to us ;-)

(that being said of course the flexibility we have of course needs a better user experience)

By: ganymedes1985

ganymedes1985 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:52:20 +0000

I like their constructions, but… if you would ever want to create those “main buildings” in SL, I think you’ld need 4 or 5 sims for the same dimensions and detail, even with using sculpties (and besides pillars, collums or stairs I’m not a fan of using sculpties for buildings).

So, I think they were smart to not use SL for this.

As for not having all the “powers” SL offers, I doubt most people will mind. Sure, the really creative people will be sad they can’t create something themselves.
Perhaps in time it might be wise to offer some designing by the users, like “design the Toyota for the year 2030″ (like Peugeot did a couple years ago) and that they can use external designing software (like SL can with the sculpty software stuff), but, just like with SL, that’s something that’ll happen when Toyota is ready for it.

By: AmandaShinji

AmandaShinji — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:27:17 +0000

I’m really quite surprised that Toyota haven’t built this in SL, a ready made platform for this sort of thing. As you mentioned, Scion have been in SL for a long time now and quite successfully too from what I can see.

By: C.C. Chapman

C.C. Chapman — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:10:00 +0000

Wow, quite an impressive build and investment they have going on. I think your final paragraph hit the nail on the head and it is going to be interesting to watch and see how this goes.

For all the freedom that Second Life gives us, it also can be rather limiting by scaring off new people sometimes.