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Colony Alpha, the construction of an Active World
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A Dream in Virtual Space
by Moria
Colony Alpha is a virtual world/community built using Active World technology produced by Worlds Inc. It allows any user with a connection to the internet to experience and interact with a 3D environment on their computer screen and to experience real time communication with other like-minded individuals from around the world.
Via their internet connection, the user can control their Avatar, or in-world character, with gestures, speech, and movement that allows them to experience and enhance the world both for, and with, other users.
The history of Virtual Communities stems from the early days of the Commodore 64, with a world called Habitat pioneered by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar. It was also the driving force behind such books as Neuromancer by William Gibson and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and much information can be obtained on the background of this document by reading the above books and by visiting various websites such as the following:
http://www.worlds.net Worlds Inc. http://www.communities.com Electronic Communities
It is now possible for individual worlds, aligned to the desires and whims of their creators, to be built using Active Worlds technology and accessed by all.
This document is the history, reasoning, and process that went into designing one of these Active Worlds, or communities in cyberspace.
The dream was ultimately the reason for building Colony Alpha. When I first became involved in virtual communities I found myself putting onto paper my beliefs regarding the future of this technology.
I dreamed I saw...a place where on a clear day, you can see for ever and ever, a dream true to your own wishes and desires in a dreamscape fit for all. In a world of fantasy, friendship and fun, where all those present can live in harmony, free from the strife and tension normally associated with the art of life. In a world where all are equal and where all desires are possible. In a world free from illness, death and depravity where truly all may live together in harmony. Where none lack for company, friendship and love. A dream where we truly have the right and ability to create a future for all those present and where by example we can produce a collective spirit which can truly affect all those present by it's goodness, truth and love for all time. I dreamed I saw...
People do things for different reasons, maybe a dream is as good as any.
A dream is all very well, but translating that dream to a reality takes time and dedication and subjected me to far more thinking than I was currently accustomed to. It seemed that to put the process of the design of Colony Alpha onto paper could be beneficial to others facing the same situation.
So as in all cases such as this, the best place to start must be the beginning, and that beginning was the announcement by Worlds Inc in early 1996 that Active WorldServers servers, or licenses for sub-worlds were to be made available at an affordable price. Within hours of reading the announcement I was in contact with people at Worlds to determine the actual details.
Within a few days, I was set-up. I had a dream, I had access to technology, and I had a blank screen in front of me and almost a sense of dread. How was I going to turn my dream into a reality, and was the dream worthwhile after all?
It was time to start thinking.
Two ideals kept springing to mind from articles I had read about from history. Those of the Agora and the Panopticon.
The Agora was a place in the original democracy of Athens, the marketplace and more, where citizens met to discuss any and everything, to gossip, to argue, to enjoy the freedom that their democracy provided, and to return to willingly.
The Panopticon was the name invented for the ultimate nightmare in 18th century Britain where with a combination of architecture and optics it was possible for a single ruler to see every citizen and for no citizen to see anything or anybody else.
I considered these two ideals to be the two sides of a coin in Active World construction, the obverse and reverse of Cyberspace engineering.
I was determined to build a Cyberspace Agora.
Because of the pioneering nature of my work in the construction of this Cyberspace Community, and because of the direct impact this has on every user and visitor, I needed to understand and question more than just the mechanics of construction, but the complete political, economic, and social aspects of what I, as a designer was building.
Ultimately, I had to decide the purpose of my Active World. This sounds like a simple question but is far from it. The answer to this question would live with me for the life of the Active World. What was I actually trying to achieve? Was I setting out to build a community? Was I trying to advertise a product? Was I experimenting with the technology? I was stationary, until I understood and truly believed the answer to this question. It was not possible to plan without a clear understanding of the ultimate goal. An Agora to one may be a Panopticon to another.
In the case of Colony Alpha, all three questions regarding purpose had some impact but in varying degrees. Primarily it was to be a community. It was to satisfy my dream, but to be completely honest, yes, there was some advertising and experimenting as well. If I wasn't an experimenter, then I wouldn't be here, and yes, the product I was advertising was myself.
Having asked and provided answers to this primary question of "What is it for?," the next was "What do we want our Active World to achieve?" Or more directly, "What will define the success or failure of this Active World?"
To me this was much simpler. I wanted this Active World to be a place where people want to return on a frequent basis. The success of Colony Alpha would be determined not by what I thought, but by what the users thought. If they returned and formed a community, then it was a success; if people came once, never to return, it was a failure.
Ultimately, the reason people return is as individual as the person involved, but some things attract certain people, in varying degrees of success. "Warmth" and "Comfort" seem to rate highly.
'Warmth' and 'Comfort', strange terms to be using in a description of a technology or a design process, but it is my belief that when you start using technology to bring people together in real-time, if the emotional aspects of what you are creating are ignored, then the outcome will verge towards the cold and impersonal. In my view, this would be a step towards a failure of the once only visitor.
If, however, someone feels safe and comfortable, they'll want to return, regardless of the purpose of the Active World. If they can meet people that have similar likes and dislikes, or can share common likes, beliefs and ideals, then they will come back.
People in virtual communities use the words on screen to exchange pleasantries, argue, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, flirt, play games, make friends, lose them again, and generally do everything they would in real life but without the handicap of their bodies.
Within the Active Worlds technology, we can provide all of this, and do it in an environment that we create, but our creation can both help and hinder all of these ideals. The technology has the potential to bring enormous leverage to the ordinary citizen at little cost, but the technology itself will not in itself fulfil that potential, this latent technical power needs to be used intelligently by the world creator and an informed population. The world designer must learn about leverage, both social, intellectual and commercial if it is to live up to its potential. A community is created when sufficient people realise that potential and return again and again to carry on a public discussion long enough and with sufficient human feeling to form a relationship.
What was to be the basis of our community? This I feel is as important a question, and is directly linked to, the question "What is the purpose of our Active World?" Is it a meeting place? A place for people to meet and talk, a place to play games and solve puzzles? A place to experiment or a place to gaze at what we have created? Or any combination of these?
As a meeting place? Any open area will do that. By definition, we are provided with this by the technology, it is the arrival point on our Active World also known as Ground Zero. A place where people meet, often for the first time, discuss, maybe even form relationships. To some this will provide all the incentive to return again and again, but for some this is not sufficient. A few visits and they may be bored.
As a place to play games? Tricky. Every game has an ultimate conclusion called THE END. You either win or lose. As a means to an end, a game is self terminating. Therefore, although people will return while the game is in progress, unless the game is constantly changing, the community disbands at the end of the game.
As a place to experiment? People only come to watch another experiment for so long. In order to return, they must have a space in which to experiment themselves -- or frustration sets in and the community of followers disperses.
All of the above? And where does that leave us as designer? If we dash off right now and attempt to create an Active World that is a combination meeting place, building space, puzzle and game centre, and experimenters paradise...firstly, it will take years to develop and secondly, if not extremely careful, we will create an area of disarray and conflict.
Let us go back to the ideas of leverage, leverage of the social, political and commercial. How can we get our users to help us?
The answer I selected for Colony Alpha was not to try and pre-define these answers, but to provide an environment for people to decide what they wish to do within the overall environment. Now ideas were forming in my mind.
Firstly, the realisation that most people will arrive at Ground Zero helped form a decision that Ground Zero must be open. It had to be a place where people had room and freedom to just stand and talk. If possible, it had to encourage that feeling. I had the impression that if Ground Zero was badly designed, many would leave before they had the chance to realise what was available. So I returned to ideas from History. All meeting places were clearly defined areas, whether it was the Marketplace of Athens, The Agora, or the amphitheatres of Rome, or even the Stadiums we build today.
Ground Zero at Colony Alpha would be a Stadium, an open area with a central stage, and clearly defined boundaries with exits to the rest of the world. A place to make people feel welcome, to talk, to help and encourage, and to entice.
In addition, the Active World's design would allow people to help create a world they would want to exist in and return to.
The answer I selected had nothing to do with how the Colony looked or what was present within it: the answer was to allow people to own their own small section of that Active World. The land lease system in Colony Alpha where people lease building land was not created to recover costs, nor was it done to make money or be capitalistic; it was done to attract those that were prepared to consider an investment in their own future; to attract those who would want to be part of a select group of people who literally bought into the idea of becoming a community.
Having resolved the decision of how to empower the user to want to return, all I needed to do was provide the environment.
I was now at a stage of having asked many questions and come up with some ideas. It was now time to determine how to use the technical aspects of the Active World technology to produce the vision which I had formed. The primary requirements were still to make people feel comfortable, but to do it within a pioneering environment.
The environment was determined by reference to known ideas and conceptions. Rather than decide what to use as a theme, I would base it on what I thought people would feel comfortable with.
The reasoning went like this...we are pioneering futuristic technology, so the Active World should be futuristic and pioneering as well. Most, if not all, of my initial users would come from AlphaWorld (the first Active World), as the Colony needed to provide terms of reference which existing users would feel comfortable with.
So, futuristic, pioneering, and reference to the home world... the idea of a settlement on a new planet or moon was borne. People could build using similar materials to those contained within AlphaWorld, and both combine their pioneering spirit, and their pioneering nature as settlers of a new World.
One of the major dominating features of any world environment is the backdrop or panorama that we use. In my case it could provide a reference, so if you look up in the sky in Colony Alpha, somewhere West South West, on a clear day you can see AlphaWorld, shining brightly in the light from the Sun. A constant reminder of our origin.
The next most important area is Ground Zero. A stadium design had already been selected, and was built with that central arrival stage and ground sloping up to walls surrounding the area separating it from the main world outside.
The stadium idea was continued throughout the rest of the world, with increasing heights at regular intervals going outwards from the central zone, so as to add a height perspective throughout the world. Having done a fair amount of building in AlphaWorld, and enjoying building underground, I had ideas about the kinds of underground building I wished to try. By raising the artificial ground level, designing underground would be possible without having to build under the actual ground level controlled by the software, and would add realism and help the speed of the software in operation.
I also decided that before people could come to colonise this world, certain structures would have to be in place, both as demonstrations of the building objects available and also as a framework for the Colony to develop.
Certain structures seemed relevant: a bar (all good communities need a bar), a library, a spaceport (to allow supplies to arrive), a help centre, and a land registry site. All structures and areas would be designed to promote that feeling of comfort. In addition, each major structure had to be placed outside the central wall area, each on a different point of the compass, so that wherever a resident built, he or she already had a community building near to him/her.
Of all these structures, one deserves special mention: the first building constructed in Colony Alpha -- the Black Sun Bar. Named and designed after the similar building in the Metaverse of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, it is in honor of a great author with visionary ideas.
Finally, to encourage building and layout, the building zone was carpeted and laid out with a grid of roads. Not that there is any need for roads in our communities of the future where we have the ability to teleport and fly -- however, I felt roads were necessary in order to retain that feeling of comfort with ideas we already know.
The Colony opened on July 4th 1996, rather an ironic idea on my part in that not being American, I found it somewhat amusing to find a way of celebrating independence day in my own world.
Wondering if anyone would come to the party, I turned up at the appointed time and found a real who's who of Worlds Inc. and Virtual Worlds friends waiting for me. At one stage we were overflowing the confines of the Black Sun.
In addition, there were some true pioneers who had signed up for a land lease in the Colony right there on day one.
My definition of success was to empower people to want to return and form a community. When I see those community members building areas for use by all, such as parks, art galleries, roller coaster rides and meeting places, doing joint building projects, and more importantly talking to visitors and explaining why they should join the community, I believe Colony Alpha is indeed a success.
What will the future hold? One factor in deciding the future is now that the Colony has been prepared and designed, the future is now in the hands of its residents. Although it is possible to gently introduce ideas with new objects, new avatars and sound files, it is up to the community members to interpret their use of such objects for their own use. My role has now been reduced to that of technical maintainer and facilitator.
New buildings are constantly going up within the Community, and interest remains positive from existing residents.
It is up to me to leverage that interest by providing new objects, accommodating artwork and music produced by the residents and to allow their ideas to formulate and be accommodated.
I have dreamt, produced and formulated Colony Alpha. The residents are now my future. They will determine if my dream lives or dies, and whether the Active World is a success or failure. The Worlds Inc's. Active Worlds technology has made this possible.
Its future is my future, and although the above can only be a glimpse at the ideas and solutions I came up with, I hope that when you visit the Colony, you may be able to decide for yourself whether the answers I gave myself were right or wrong.
