Comments | cyranojoe: Whyville, have you said goodbye yet?

cyranojoe

Whyville, have you said goodbye yet?

Mar 09, 2007 16:53

There's not much time left for sites like Whyville, I think:

GDC07: The LittleBigPlanet Editor In Action - Kotaku

The above is just a taste of high-quality world creation. All that's left to make Whyville utterly moot is a selection of educationally-bent activities, and a little more flexibility in designing the avatar, and that's it. As it is ( Read more... )

online communities, technology, gaming, whyville

Comments 6

looks like whyville is getting bigger and bigger to me anonymous March 13 2007, 00:21:05 UTC

far as I can tell, whyville keeps getting bigger - and if you go to second life, there is never anyone there -- plus, you need fancy computers and a big connection to use second life -- my computer keeps crashing in second life. And its easy for me to make face parts in whyville, and its hard to make anything in these other sites.

So, I think that whyville has it right, and these other sites are all fancy graphics and nothing else.

Besides, South Park is one of my favorite shows -- and the graphics in southpark are worse than whyville..

Re: looks like whyville is getting bigger and bigger to me cyranojoe March 13 2007, 00:25:19 UTC

Good point about the graphics and hardware requirements, anonymous. I love my Nintendo Wii and have chosen not to get a PS3 though I could actually afford one if it was important to me. It does boil down to the quality of the game &/or community. Which leads me to ask, what about Whyville draws in new users today? What keeps them there?

why whyville anonymous March 14 2007, 13:02:41 UTC

well, I dont know -- what I like is that my friends are there, and that people seem to behave better in whyville than other places. And, i didnt go to whyville because it was educational, but now I learn things there I didn't know ( ... )

Re: why whyville cyranojoe March 14 2007, 16:48:02 UTC

Interesting. I guess that after a time it gets too easy to see the flaws in something like Whyville. It's nice to know they're still succeeding (at least for some kids) at what they want to be doing.

(I could note that self-reported cases like this aren't as trustworthy as empirical studies, but that's getting a little unnecessarily scientific.)

Who is this posting? Wiio/willis4?

Interesting comparison, console puzzle to cross platform social experiment. dweebikus March 21 2007, 22:52:34 UTC

Little Big Planet is a PS3 game built on the premise of user created content with physics puzzles and physics influenced game play. The social aspect is limited to whatever is allowed via PS3 online, which I'll assume out of ignorance is voice chat. There are no real meeting rooms, it's not built off of a socializing premise, but instead a cooperative game play premise. I'd also argue that a game based fairly heavily on user based content and coop play will only hold the user's interest for so long, while a chat room with games interjected in it will appeal to a different demographic and hold them much longer based off of the more robust social aspects ( ... )

Re: Interesting comparison, console puzzle to cross platform social experiment. cyranojoe March 22 2007, 16:49:45 UTC

Whyville was originally built on the premise of science games and science-influenced games. User-generated content then followed and is now a fundamental element as well. I would further argue that voice chat has tremendous benefits/attractions over type chat/mail, with the most notable difference that the latter has staying power -- Whyville's Y-mail can exist long after the conversation has ended. Not a top-level difference, to my mind ( ... )