Second, play the game SimCity until you can successfully build a metropolis. Third, activel y participate in a UseNet newsgr oup devoted to a subject about which you are passionate. The key to recognizing what Worlds Inc. has discovered lies in understanding the central role of value formation in human relationships. Worlds Inc. produces, publishes and markets networked shared virtual experiences. As you would expect, users can move between environment s hosted on different servers as easi ly as one browses across Web sites.
Avatars are crudely animated figures chosen from a modest inventory of predrawn types.
A low level of customization has recently been introduced and, in time, full custom avatars will be available. These could be based on scanned-in images of the real you or perhaps a fantasy version of yourself. This is possible because most of the building blocks required to render a scene, including the avatar shapes and all the standard world components, come off each user's hard drive. The only information tran smitted in real time is the data required to position the moving avatars as well as display, in little cartoon bubbles, the text of what the avatars are saying to each other. Environments are hosted on standard Unix servers.