Blue Mars limited-term pioneer pricing plans announcement
by Tateru Nino 
Dec 18th 2009 at 6:00PM
Filed under: Betas, Business models, Blue Mars, Virtual worlds
Avatar Reality Inc, the operators of Blue Mars, are today announcing limited time "pioneer" pricing for developers, digital entrepreneurs, educators, and businesses for space on the Blue Mars virtual environment platform.
Space on Blue Mars is allocated in "cities". A Blue Mars city can be any size up to 16 kilometres on a side (a total of 256 million square metres). A city is more or less a discrete environment, or pocket "world" (if you prefer the term) with its own custom terrain, interface, rules, controls, items, themes, dominant language, and activities.
Cities can be subdivided into blocks, and sublet by the developer. Blocks themselves can be further sublet for shops, residences and venues.
Unique, we believe, to Blue Mars is that the costs associated with a city are not based on the size of the simulated space, but on the maximum number of concurrent users allowed in the space. Avatar Reality is providing pioneer packages from as little as five concurrent users, up to 1,500.
Here are the Pioneer city hosting plans as they currently stand:
| Concurrent users | 5 | 50 | 250 | 1,500 |
| Land area | Any | Any | Any | Any |
| Setup fee | US$100 | US$750 | US$2,000 | US$7,500 |
| Monthly fee | US$30 | US$275 | US$1,000 | US$5,000 |
| Support | Forums | Forums/Email | Forums/Email | Forums/Email |
All the plans come with a 30 day trial period. The pioneer pricing plans are a limited time offer, however. The plans seem to be priced competitively with Linden Lab's Second Life offerings, and the lowest class of plan looks suitable for experimental buildouts and preliminary development projects.
While Blue Mars cities can support, well, quite a large number of users at once, the view is presently limited to the 50 closest avatars. Avatar Reality indicate that they are investigating alternative visibility systems that may prove to be more appropriate to different usage scenarios.
Also, right now, while user-concurrency for a city is presently a hard limit, future options such as burst pricing and paid admission are planned.
Overall, a mix of pricing options, and the capability of delivering high-quality content from comparatively easy-to-use tools makes Blue Mars look like a pretty interesting proposition, at present. As you read yesterday, the Caledon community from Second Life is expanding into Blue Mars, and Blue Mars itself has gone into open beta, and now features its own currency.
Certainly one to watch.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Xugu Madison said on 7:44PM 12-18-2009
"Developers get 75% of transactions using Blue Mars Dollars." - http://www.bluemars.com/hosting/service.html
Kinda puts the 5% + L$10/month listing fee for XStreetSL in a different light, doesn't it...
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mpdivo said on 11:18PM 12-18-2009
what makes SL great is the player content. I really can't see how Blue Mars is going to be successful.
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Sorcefire said on 11:26PM 12-18-2009
Please explain to me why people are paying money to own virtual property? I get the whole virtual environment, collaboration, and online marketing ideas, but I fail to see the purpose of buying virtual property for development when it's all virtual and more can be made avail whenever they want. Or is this monopoly for the geek generation?
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Samantha Poindexter said on 1:04AM 12-19-2009
"Property" in this case amounts to a metaphor for servers. Somebody needs to pay for 'em...
Tateru Nino said on 2:42AM 12-19-2009
I get asked why people buy/rent/lease virtual land a lot. It’s both a tough question to answer and an easy one at the same time.
Having virtual land is like most people having a front yard.
The common-case front yard is costly to maintain over time. There are expenses involved, both monetary and in upkeep time. And then what? It doesn’t actually do anything except sit there. You can stand on it. Sit in it. The neighbors can appreciate the work (or lack of work) that you put in it.
And that’s about it. Maybe, with a local council permit you can put a lemonade stand or microscopic business venture on it.
Why have a front yard at all? In most cases, it’s either just extra space, or raw self-expression. Or both. The parallels between that sort of use and virtual land are very strong, though.
bigalexe said on 2:01AM 12-19-2009
The first virtual world that allows direct and reliable importation of .dwg, .dxf (AutoCAD) files, .blend (Blender), and Google Sketchup files for player content will win in my opinion and I have yet to see that happen. Also a standalone editor is needed, I can't afford to be logged into the world and therefore lagged all the time in order to do work.
I'm not asking even for a straight importation, make a standalone converter that uses .igs or something. Just let me use industry standard CAD tools to make items and structures.
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Cowy said on 5:32AM 12-19-2009
I recall looking at a preview of this "virtual world" and the thing that stood out most in my mind was the Ads.
EVERYWHERE, there was product placement overflow with logos slapped on everything. Bleh.
I felt bombarded and repulsed. DO. NOT. WANT.
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Tateru Nino said on 5:37AM 12-19-2009
Really? I haven't seen any. Must have been looking in the wrong places.
iggyono said on 10:18AM 12-19-2009
SL is boatloads cheaper for educators, when compared to the 50 concurrent users BM pricing. The discount price for an island is twice as much, but:
--Monthly fee is half
--We can make content in-world w/o high-end developer tools
--SL is platform agnostic and, warts and all, will run on most student laptops (poorly but it will run).
So, Blue Mars in education? Pass on that.
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Xugu Madison said on 1:06PM 12-19-2009
Hardware & software requirements are the serious issue for us. I'm fairly certain there aren't any PCs in the entire institution that would run Blue Mars; CS have some systems with decent graphics cards, but nothing running Vista. The standard lab system is Windows XP with barely enough graphics power to get SL going.
The cost wouldn't be such a major issue, but I'm mostly left with a feeling of "Okay, we've dumped a bunch of students into this virtual world, now what?". The most successful projects we've done, by far, have involved letting the students loose with editing tools.
iggyono said on 10:36AM 12-19-2009
@Tateru, "delivering high-quality content from comparatively easy-to-use tools"
Could you unpack that statement? Easy for whom?
The types of 3D development tools I've heard mentioned about BM are beyond the reach of anyone except perhaps 20 people on my campus, and beyond the reach of any but a few faculty members.
Maybe at e-schools and architecture programs....but this does not look promising for the sorts of regular educators with technical skills who have been the pioneers in Second Life and Open Sim worlds.
That said, the lowest-end pricing would be very appealing for experimental projects, to see if one wanted to "ramp up" to a larger city.
But I'll find a Windows box (yuck) that will run this thing and give it a whirl, if only a play a few games and see how the graphics look on an appropriate system.
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Tateru Nino said on 11:22AM 12-19-2009
Granted the "easy" part came from talking to a few people who told me "You know, learning to creating content was easier than I thought it would be."
That said, it's probably outside my current skillset as well.
Xugu Madison said on 1:08PM 12-19-2009
I think the difficulty to pick up the tools (and I presume Blender can be used for this, so there's at least a free option) is overestimated. On the other hand, I don't think we've ever sat down and gone "Y'know what, we'd love to do this project in a virtual world, but we just can't make it pretty enough..."
danielravennest said on 3:03AM 12-20-2009
Any 3D software that can output the COLLADA format can be used for Blue Mars creation, that includes 3dsMax, Maya, Blender, and Google Sketchup. The latter two are free. I have been using the city editor tool they give developers (also free) and it is no harder to use than building in Second Life, once you know what buttons to use.
Also note that all content creation and city setup are done offline, and that is free until you go live on their servers. It's even possible to log in in "Developer Mode" with other people, you just have to distribute your content manually rather than through their servers. That's how our "Sandbox City" project will work until we go live:
http://sandboxcitymars.blogspot.com/
Peter Miller said on 11:37AM 12-19-2009
I'm looking forward to visiting but, as Iggy says, it won't be pulling many "early adopter" generic edu accounts unless the people concerned have a lot of support centrally.
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iggyono said on 12:51PM 12-20-2009
Daniel, this is great news, re: the in-world tools. I'll add a caveat to my latest blog post on what I've heard about BM.
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Yo Brewster said on 4:00PM 12-20-2009
Alright so I finally got to download it. Besides the 300MB initial download and the fact that you need to download each city individually (another 300MB/city), it was virtually unusable on my computer. LOL - this is actually the first "game" I haven't been able to play on my computer so I'm a bit shocked with the specs. After trying to walk for 2 minutes I basically had to give up since my computer simply couldn't handle it. The high hopes I had for this platform have been crushed completely. I assume within 3 years this platform might become usable but right now the requirements are way to steep.
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Gwyneth Llewelyn said on 8:47AM 1-07-2010
Hmm :) If there's something I've learned about people getting soooo eager about "standard" formats to upload content (be it .OBJ, COLLADA, or any other) is because they just want to grab it from the Google Warehouse or similar "3D content archives" and upload everything for free...
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