Areae’s MetaPlace has been revealed.
Check out the site (linked below) or this article:
Areae Debuts Metaplace, Virtual Worlds for Everyone
Their CrunchBase entry:
Areae’s Metaplace platform wants to revolutionize the virtual worlds space. Their platform will provide an open, easy-to-use interface which will allow users to create virtual worlds that can run anywhere. Metaplace-created virtual worlds will be robust with users being able to play games, socialize, create content and conduct commerce.
Most virtual worlds are walled gardens making it hard to get data in and out of the worlds. Metaplace-created virtual worlds can be embedded into your Facebook page, MySpace page, or your own blog via a flash-based client widget. Every world is indexed, tagged and rated by users on the Metaplace portal, so virtual worlds in the Metaplace network can be easily linked together.
The Metaplace network links all the worlds together. Each of them can be completely different including virtual apartments for decorating, plazas where readings and musical events happen, space-action games, full-blown MMORPGs, casual games, and Amazon storefronts.
And from the FAQ on the MetaPlace site:
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.
It’s an incredibly exciting concept; I can’t wait to see if it works out. Consider the possibilities if every interested gamer could add a mini-game on their blog, then link them to other gamer’s blogs, or to some larger, central game. A game on every MySpace or Facebook profile?
Yes, there’ll be dreck, there always is, but I’m sure sites will spring up to help rate and manage MetaPlace game lists and so forth.
I’ve signed up for the alpha, though I have no idea if I’ll get in…