by Dusan Writer

Transcript of the Connecting the Dots segment following the interview with Jim Sink of Blue Mars.

I’ve been excited about Blue Mars since I first heard about it 18 months or so ago. Blue Mars reminds me of glee, I guess you’d call it. The glee of exploration.

It excites me because it reminds me of why virtual worlds appealed to me in the first place: as a destination….a place to go where we can be surprised, entertained, and where the impossible can be made possible.

But the deeper power of virtual worlds is what happens after you’ve explored, after you’ve mastered the game mechanics, or after you’ve farmed your first set of matching armor. That power happens because of people.

Virtual worlds have always been social spaces. There have always been fan sites and guilds and social connections.

But I think something different is happening. Once, virtual worlds were the place where communities were created.

Now, communities themselves are making demands of virtual worlds: that they respect our sense of virtual identity, that they give us the tools to facilitate social connections, that they respect our desire to be co-creators in our stories.

I’m less interested in things like interoperability and content creation pipelines, and am more interested in how I can extend my social connections and sense of self across virtual worlds.

As we immerse ourselves in these destinations, we can be deeply entertained, engaged, and we can create new connections. But the renaissance of virtual worlds is increasingly being facilitated by the many ways in which we can carry our virtual identities into new territories, remain in the old ones, and bring our friends along for the ride as we explore these frontiers of creativity.