So, Metaplace is closing down [registration required]. The company will still be around, and may or may not produce something exciting down the track, but as of 1 January, 2010, the user-generated worlds will be no more. From the official announcement:
"Over the last few months it has become apparent that Metaplace as a consumer UGC service is not gaining enough traction to be a viable product, requiring a strategic shift for our company....
"This is a bittersweet moment for us. Metaplace Inc the company will be continuing on – in fact, we have big plans – but what you the users have known as Metaplace will be going away. We are also losing some friends and colleagues here as part of this strategic shift."
Raph Koster will have something to say about why it didn't work, but to me, the most obvious failure was the toolset. The success of Metaplace rests, in part, on the quality and quantity content generated by its users, and for this, you need tools that somehow manage the impossible: powerful yet easy to use. While Metaplace's tools were relatively easy to use, they weren't easy enough. It needed to offer the kinds of tools that haven't been invented yet; tools that make people want to use them; tools that people talk about.
Like Spore.
Spore's character creator was an exceptional piece of software that led to mountains of user-generated content. Some of it was great, most of it mediocre, but that's not the point. The point is that 10 year olds were making 3D models that previously could only have been created with a 3D modelling app. You could argue that Spore's character creator can't be compared to something that creates virtual worlds, but that would be disingenuous -- it's an incredibly sophisticated and empowering tool where mistakes can create something interesting and useful.
In contrast, while I only briefly played around with Metaplace's tools, they were crude, slow, finicky, and ultimately uninspiring. Even if the assets were spectacular and the community were vast, it was clear, after just an hour of playing around with it, that the tools were dooming what was already a niche and relatively unexciting idea.
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As a side note, I also agree with angry archivist Jason Scott's sentiments that Metaplace should provide its contributors with a way to export their stuff easily, rather than manually copying and pasting scripts into Notepad. In fact, I'm not sure what's more disappointing: that Metaplace doesn't care enough to provide an export option, or that its users (and gamers in general, really) don't seem to have a problem getting fisted by game companies.
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