I don’t blog too much about Metaplace here, mostly because I try to keep this blog my un-biased opinion on the industry and other industries and basically everything else I want to talk about. Everything really, except for Metaplace. 
I haven’t even really talked much about community management or my career. I guess it’s because I feel like there are oodles and oodles of community oriented sites already saying what I would say. Lately though, it seems like overnight our community has started to bustle with activity and I thought I’d just talk a little bit about it here.
A couple weeks ago I talked about the great Meep fiasco and how cool it was to see our users with so much passion and attachment to Metaplace. We’ve had some more pretty fantastic moments happening left and right.
Today we had a teacher from the University of the West of Scotland conducting a distance-learning class about virtual worlds.
Tuesday, we had our first live streaming concert – and Grace McDunnough dual streamed into both Second Life and Metaplace. A true bridging of virtual spaces, and it was fantastic.
We’ve had quite a few contests with lots of great participation and some really neat winners.
We had our first video review of Metaplace by a beta tester, Lunarraid.
We’ve had several great tutorials posted by our users on the web.
They’ve posted about how much they like our dev team and our Terms of Service.
We had a Game Jam event that some of beta testers participated in.
We had an opening of the MP Art Collective, a group of artists commited to helping out artists on Metaplace!
There’s been tons of really neat looking virtual spaces.
The list goes on. We have a user working on an awesome global pet system, a whole bunch of testers who banded together to make “Where’s Waldo”esqe worlds that link together, we’ve seen educational worlds, a world that was a storybook, instructional Role-Playing spaces with tutorials, murder mysteries, riddles, hidden collections – you name it. Every day, there is something new and interesting to see – and something fun to do with the community. It’s such an awesome feeling to see the community you’ve been cultivating since the very first external tester was let in start to blossom and completely blow your mind with creativity. I love user generated content. There’s never a dull moment; there’s so much to see, do, help out with, and the imaginations of others is such a powerful tool to build a community around. While managing a community built around a virtual world creation platform has it’s unique challenges vs. working on a traditional MMO – they’re all good challenges that provide for such a varied terrain to walk on each day.
I love it, I love them, and yeah..Metaplace fucking rules. The end.
Cafe Paris by Daallinii
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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While I haven’t actually seen the game yet,the other day I was thinking about how much potential there actually is. Online classes sounds awesome. I am taking online classes this semester after having the baby, and while it is OK, there is something lacking about not being able to interact with others, and the forums are always dead unless an assignment needs to be posted. If the class were held in a form such as Metaplace that could really add to the learning experience.
I was also thinking how great it could work for some religions. For example, I know in the Pagan community there are many who study solitary, but sometimes in solitary study it is hard to envision what you are trying to learn. There are some “online schools” available, but you have to wonder how questionable those are, and you know they are out to make money. But on a place such as Meta, people who were studying solitary could come together to teach and learn from one another, and the participants would be able to actually see what they needed to do. Obviously this could work for many outlets, not just that specific community or religion. Anyway, sorry for the long ramble! lol