Metaplace announces January 1st shutdown
by Rubi Bayer 
Dec 21st 2009 at 8:00PM
Filed under: Betas, News items, MetaPlace
While it's sad news for both staff -- a significant number of whom have been laid off due to the closure -- and fans of Metaplace, the community team is holding their heads up and maintaining an optimistic outlook. The goodbye party on January first is being treated as a celebration of the fun that's been had, rather than a gathering to mourn the ending. Community Manager Tami Baribeau also shared some hopeful news in a blog post: "Metaplace, Inc. as a company (and as a tool) isn't going away. We have whole new shift of focus ahead of us and a smaller team set out to accomplish some big goals."
Our sympathies are with the staff members affected by this, and with everyone who has invested their time, creativity, and effort in Metaplace. However, we join their team in looking forward to the good things anticipated by the company.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dblade said on 8:25PM 12-21-2009
This was no surprise, to be honest. Best of luck to them in whatever they choose to do next.
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Celestian said on 8:30PM 12-21-2009
And yet people still take what Raph says as gospel. Fool me once people!
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Pingles said on 9:41PM 12-21-2009
It was a neat product with a neat goal that just depended too much on user-content.
I'm a fan of Raph and this project. At least he was trying to do something different.
They mentioned in their e-mail that they are already working on another project and I wish them the best of luck.
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Keen said on 10:35PM 12-21-2009
There was no game. I think that's the bottom line. The platform was extremely limited and does resemble something a decade late. Whether or not it was good or not becomes irrelevant.
I hope they create a game now. Raph has plenty of talent and an understanding of the social workings of a mmorpg.
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Dblade said on 1:06AM 12-22-2009
I don't know. IMVU has no game either and yet seems to be doing smashingly well. I agree though, I used to just hang out in the square, and there was nothing. None of the virtual worlds worked well enough to be enticing, and they were all reminiscient of bad 16-bit games.
Not really sure raph has all that good a grasp on the social dynamics of MMOs though. Not after Metaplace.
Venekor said on 2:42AM 12-22-2009
Yeh I have no idea why he didn't just make SWG Pre CU 2.
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Brian! said on 1:01AM 12-22-2009
The idea that people could create their own worlds and environments was cool, but there was no point and the actual setting felt very limited in scope.
Like said above, there was no game - no hook. It was sort of a old-graphics version of SecondLife, which is something else I don't really "get" all that much either but seems to have far more of a following.
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Brian! said on 1:05AM 12-22-2009
The idea that people could create their own worlds and environments was cool, but there was no point and the actual setting felt very limited in scope.
Like said above, there was no game - no hook. It was sort of a old-graphics version of SecondLife, which is something else I don't really "get" all that much either but seems to have far more of a following.
Oh, I should say though - it was amazing what they did with the Flash player though. Very elaborate interface. If they end up closing completely, I sort of hope they open source their code. Their base could spawn some seriously high quality Flash based games.
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Seraphina Brennan said on 3:01PM 12-22-2009
Oh yeah, I agree there. When they released the flash embedding capabilities, we ran a story here on the site where we embedded the game into the post. That was a seriously cool post. Amazing to think you could read the news and then, like, interact with that news all on the same page. You could even chat with fellow Massively readers, if you wanted.
I'd certainly like to see that aspect continue.