Second Life's Caledon expands to Blue Mars
by Tateru Nino 
Dec 17th 2009 at 1:00PM
Filed under: Culture, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Blue Mars, Virtual worlds
Desmond Shang, operator of one of the most popular and cohesive themed communities in Second Life, is extending his community into Blue Mars in just a few days time. Shang's Caledon, popular among aficionados of Victoriana, Steampunk and Gaslight, is opening a sister colony, Caledonia on Blue Mars, with an initial stake of roughly four million square metres.
Caledonia is roughly 30% larger than Caledon, sporting a lot of wilder country, forests, mountains and more. We'll be looking forward to seeing what the content development pipeline will really do. Initial reports are that Caledonia will, even when built out, be considerably less bandwidth intensive on its own than Caledon.
Shang is confident that the new community will grow well, "I think the Blue Martians will enjoy participation in Caledonia, will build it out beautifully over the years and thereby add richness and depth to our overall history. Most of all, I want to ensure that citizens of this plucky little micronation have every opportunity to lead the pack in all manner of virtual disciplines. We've proven ourselves before, and are simply not willing to rest on our laurels."
That isn't to say that Shang's abandoning Second Life and the burgeoning Caledon. Caledonia might not be the last in Shang's expansions in the coming years. "Just like radio, television or the Internet, a wide variety of offerings will allow the technology to become more mainstream. While expanding to multiple platforms might seem self~competitive in the short term, ultimately, drawing more people into virtual worlds should raise all ships."
Certainly, Caledonia's a great score for Blue Mars right now. The genre's a popular one at the moment, and attractive to a wide-variety of industrious and inventive people. It's not quite a ready-made community, but tends to be a self-assembling one. We're looking forward to seeing how it goes in the coming months.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Lizzie Lexington said on 4:37PM 12-17-2009
This is very exciting. I am actually starting to blog more about blue mars myself and I am looking forward to what Blue Mars has the potential to be. YAY
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thud said on 1:03AM 12-18-2009
I still don't quite understand Blue Mars.
Is it like a 3d version of metaplace? are worlds connected by anything more than just avatars? I walked for a bit and found barren lands, endless empty buildings and no SL/metaplace style inventory or currency going on.
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Dread said on 2:09AM 12-18-2009
Dunno, I tried walking around but it was a barren laggy piece of crap so I logged out and deleted it from my system
Tateru Nino said on 1:06AM 12-18-2009
Currency and whatnot is just launching. And I suppose that yes, some comparisons to the way Metaplace places hang together wouldn't be inappropriate.
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Alikar said on 1:12PM 12-18-2009
Blue Mars is really at the moment a very early beta software. To judge it now is far far to early. It could end up being something really good, but it needs more work.
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Azul said on 9:31AM 12-22-2009
FWIW, according to an email I received, but cannot confirm, Metaplace is closing 1 JAN 2010. I checked the web site (still up), but could find no mention of the closing.
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Tateru Nino said on 10:24AM 12-22-2009
We've confirmed it: http://www.massively.com/2009/12/21/metaplace-announces-january-1st-shutdown/
We've got some additional coverage/observations on that later today.