Videos & Animations

Yesterday Hipihi, the Chinese answer to Second Life, entered open beta with a somewhat international downloadable client (pc-only). As Virtual Worlds News presumes: “It sounds like, based on an interview with UgoTrade, that the goal is to mix English and Chinese names, encouraging interaction between HiPiHi’s diverse audience.” However, the english launch seems to come premature, with several key user interfaces still in Mandarin (the revamped Mandarin/English-version seems to have scraped an older, already existing english version, dating back a few months). As a commenter on virtual Worlds News describes: “Unfortunately, the PDF user guides giving English-language translations of the Mandarin are now difficult to use, since they refer to a UI that is now defunct.”

According to China Web 2.0 Review, development of Hipihi started in 2005, with a slightly bit different direction: Back then, Hipihi was divided into a Hipihi World and (a somewhat Cyworld-comparable) Hipihi Home. Development then focused on the SecondLife-like Hipihi World, eventually partnering with Intel and IBM. The Chinese start-up has a funding of US$ 3 million under the belt from Japanese investor NGI Group. 

While Techcrunch accuses Hipihi of cloning Second Life, it will be interesting to see wether Hipihi will suffer from the same problems troubling the original.

BTW, at the meantime, release of PlayStation Home has been pushed back yet again. 

Mabinogi 마비노기, South Korean MMORPG released by Nexon is going to open to the public tomorrow, as scheduled. The official US-website has a notice about a “huge patch” available as of today, which will launch Generation 1 Season 1 of the game (Mabinogi’s term for its patches). The client itself comes at a hefty 890 MBs and can be downloaded here. While the game itself is free, Nexon offers premium items and skills to boost your character. Also, players who wish to participate in the game’s storyline must select from one of three exclusive monthly services. Gametrailers has a few videos, check them out here. 

The game probably keeps the record of hacked virtual goods with a Japanese teenager stealing 36 million yen (US$ 325,000) worth of game-points, sparking a discussions about online games’ billing-systems. 

Today EA opened the doors to its official new Sims 3 website with a few screenshots (the above video depicts reputed screenies of the game) and some marketing-chit-chat. According to Gamespot, EA’s CFO Warren Jenson announced the franchise’s 3rd part as “a fiscal ‘09 title… , meaning the game would hit stores before April 2009.”

A few highlights of Sims 3, as reported by Wayfarerwings.com will be: “Less micromanagement of your Sim — there will only be 3 attribute bars to keep up with rather than the 8 we have now… More focus on developing the neighborhood as a whole… More personality customization...” and “Opportunities — somewhat like mini-quests that you can choose to undertake with your Sim (think MMORPG style)”. Another addition will be – more ads, as Gamespot has it: “While EA will enter into agreements with advertisers for The Sims, Seabolt said the publisher is very choosy about how it goes about that and is careful to make sure it’s something players will welcome. For example, he mentioned a promotion that saw Sims players receive an in-game Ford Mustang. While Ford did pay EA for the product placement, Seabolt said many users looked at the car simply as a cool gift for their Sims to drive, not an ad.”

While Steve Seabolt, EA’s vice president for global brand development of The Sims label, is probably right that ads can add realism and flavor to a virtual world, one has to wonder if players who already payed for a title still want to be pestered with advertising. Even without such added revenue-streams, the Sims continues to be a cash-cow for EA, with the 100 millionth unit about to be sold this month. 

The next iteration of Sim City on Nintendo’s DS has been herolded with a japanese trailer a few days ago, the release-date is set to March, according to Gamespot. The first DS Sim City worked like a charm when played with a stylus, it was a very decent port.
Sim City 2 seems to not have changed a lot graphic-wise, but rather comes with a completely different take on its well-known city-building concept: according to Kotaku, game-play will revolve around building cities in different civilizations, which could turn SC2 into a lovechild of Civ and Sim City.

BTW: Civilization will come to the DS, too. Check out this article and a few screenshots after the jump.

We recently came across this video about alpha-gameplay taken from Wakfu (which is already a bit older, admittedly). Wakfu is a partially free anime-styled MMORPG from Ankama, the french developer of the well-renowed Dofus. Good work, Ankama, the video looks very promising. Check the original video at dailymotion. 

Update, 01/30/08: Massively points out that we seem to be flinging mud at SL with this posting. Seriously, it’s not our intention to badmouth SL, or anybody else, for that matter. I apologize if the posting appears to be hitting a wrong tone. Our blog contains some completely biased opinions, admittedly—we’re gamers too, and besides reporting on the progress of our product Coobico, we write about things we like or don’t like on the internet from time to time. Even if SL has its own problems, its still a great site.
Lutz Winter



Second Life does not cut a very good figure in the blogosphere currently; take Techcrunch, Kotaku, Intuitive.com or The Onion as examples; they just don’t get a break from making bad headlines about pedophilia, bestiality, illegal gambling, technical bugs, laggy support (especially when it comes to billing-matters) and user-initiated law-suits. Even Time Magazine joins in by declaring SL as one of the five worst websites lately.

Sure, those are all just snapshots, but each of them leave their mark on Second Life’s reputation and their attractiveness towards business-partners. Wired broke news about Second Life’s technical issues and second thoughts of Linden Labs’ sponsoring partners lately:

“Once you put in several hours flailing around learning how to function in Second Life, there isn’t much to do. That may explain why more than 85 percent of the avatars created have been abandoned. Linden’s in-world traffic tally, which factors in both the number of visitors and time spent, shows that the big draws for those who do return are free money and kinky sex… The Internet will eventually be full of such 3-D environments; Second Life might even be one of them. But in the meantime, it’s just slurping up corporate dollars and delivering little in return.”

Linden Labs will need to work hard on ironing out bugs and developing their product to stay competitive. Especially if you take a glance at previews of PS3’s Home. Probably an unfair comparison to draw, but probably something Linden Labs will need to see to, once Home is out of private beta. Havoc Havok, the engine which Linden Lab has licensed to run SL, will be aquired by Intel shortly, by the way; Intel and Havoc Havok signed a definite agreement as Gamasutra reported yesterday.

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This is a short sneak-peak into Coobico’s upcoming concept-art. More videos and animations on avatars, non-player-characters and monsters will be coming up under this category.