Re: Disappointing take-up of Gather.Town

[Christian Huitema <[e-mail]>]

On 7/30/2020 2:19 PM, Paul Wouters wrote:

> On Thu, 30 Jul 2020, John Scudder wrote:
>
>> I consider myself reasonably social, by local standards :-), but by
>> that I mean in meatspace. Back when
>> MUDs were a thing, I took a look once and didn’t see the appeal. I
>> just dipped in to the gather.town space
>> and, quite apart from the tumbleweeds blowing through, I also don’t
>> feel drawn to the simple pleasures of
>> navigating a chunky-pixel avatar around gamespace, when I could be
>> doing something else. It’s not like we
>> lack for ways of connecting with one another when we want to, so
>> hanging out in a rerun of Ultima II
>> doesn’t seem like it brings a lot to the table.
>
> Are you suggesting we should meet in Red Dead Redemption 2 ? We would
> have virtual food, a campfire, wolfs howling in the background while
> we humm. And a rather effective dispute resolution process :)


We do not actually use a virtual world metaphor. What we need is the
possibility to have an impromptu chat, and simulate interactions like
"do you have a minute", "may I join you" or "may I interrupt". That last
part was actually rather well done in Gather. The avatar and the 2D
Pacman style grid on the other hand was less attractive.

-- Christian Huitema