With virtual worlds a continually evolving global phenomenon, what are the issues that affect developers creating titles that may be played in a multitude of different cultures? At the recent ICE 08 conference in Toronto, a panel featuring Matt Daly (Metaversatility); Barbara Lippe (Avaloop) and Adrian Crook (freetoplay.biz) discussed these issues, with Lippe detailing features of Avaloop’s social MMO Papermint, currently in English-language beta.

After an introduction from moderator Lucie Lalumière, vice president of interactive at Earth Rangers (an initiative that intends to inspire children to care about the environment) Barbara Lippe began the session with a short video of Papermint in action, a “friendly social networking game” with a visual style that could best be described as “Parappa the Rapper in pastels.”

Lippe detailed the idea behind Papermint: aimed at a “60% female, 40% male” audience between 25-30 years old, “It’s World of Warcraft with much more social meaning, or it’s Facebook with much more game.”

Lippe then explained the unusual way in which characters are created in Papermint. “When you start playing, you are the child of two already established players. It’s not easy! Those players must first find each other, fall in love and be successful at the ‘child making game’ in order for you to exist!”

Her look at Papermint’s features included some discussion of the online world’s sustainable economy. All players in the world survive by eating mint, but it is rare in the world and if picked excessively can die out. When launched in Austria, Lippe described, “Players picked it until it ran out -- and the entire community died. But players learned and started to protect the mint on the second time round. They’d defend it round the clock and tell new players off for picking too much. Certain players actually formed a religious cult around the protection of mint!”

“We don’t have a help page, but the players understood it from their mistakes,” Lippe said, while making the case that virtual worlds offer the ability for communities to work together and learn en masse.

Cultural Differences

“Virtual worlds are cultures, but you have to take care and make sure you localize them to the culture they are based in,” Lippe continued, drawing on her experience of launching Papermint in Germany and Austria, and the preparations for launch in an English-language version.

“Germans and Austrians don’t care about MySpace,” she explained as an example, “and they don’t use Facebook that much yet, though I think that will change. Another example is that in Japan they prefer [social network] Mixi, because it’s perfect for people to socialize in a much more private manner, unlike MySpace where everything is out in the open.”

Metaversatility's Daly agreed. “It’s interesting that these games and networks break down borders, but due to cultural differences and technology differences that we’re reaching a second level of barrier. I’m not sure what effect is going to be – are all our differences going to be homogenized or will we see even more diversification within cultures due to the external influences?”

Adrian Crook used his understanding of the free to play PC game market to explore the differences between cultures. “Free to play exists because games needed to be accessible on the fly from wherever you were due to ‘PC Baang’ [internet café] culture in South Korea. As a result, game play tends to be more competitive over there. North American gamers like to play PvE [Player versus Environment] better than PvP [Player versus Player] perhaps because while in a PC Baang you might be sitting next to the person you’re battling, and be able to set up a rapport, here you tend to be sitting at home alone.”

Lipstick On Your Collar

Papermint uses the “free to play” model, and Lippe announced that the title uses a similar revenue stream to most free to play titles -- item sales.

“Because it’s a social space anything that ‘pimps out’ your avatar is the best way to raise money,” she joked. “We work a lot with fashion designers on creating new costumes, and they can cost up to 60 Euros [$95 US] for a full outfit!”

“You have to buy the best stuff to get people interested in you,” she admitted, “they look great, I made them, but I never thought that people would buy them -- that people in Austria would have so much money to spend on such things!”

Of course, the attention people lavish on you might get you in trouble, particularly with Papermint’s ability for in-game character to marry each other: “A lipstick mark won’t fade for 12 days,” Lippe laughed, “It’s a real problem in Papermint if you’re already married and your spouse finds one of those!”

Snow Crash

The panel moved on to look at user-generated content, and the way in which, as seen in Second Life, different users wishes and expectations can lead to a wildly incongruous aesthetic.

“When I read Snow Crash in 1992 I couldn’t have believed that there would be a world that offers what was talked about in the book by now. I admire Second Life for that, but aesthetically it just doesn’t work for me,” Lippe said. “In Papermint there is a lot of user-generated possibility, but everything has some limits. It’s more fun for users not to be overwhelmed by the possibilities and for it to fit into the world.”

Crook agreed: “Too much choice is a bad thing. It scares people off -- people want total free choice but they don’t really want it. I think in the tailing off of these true user-generated worlds we see great evidence of that.”

In conclusion, Lalumière asked if there was a core message that the panelists felt people creating virtual worlds should keep close to their hearts. Lippe asked creators to “not just jump on the ‘3D train’” and to create a look, warning people that they must make sure to “take care of their art,” but Crook warned in turn that first and foremost developers must take care of their revenue stream.