China’s Latest Virtual World: Novoking
I had coffee yesterday with China’s best-known IT blogger Keso, and we were joined by some folks from China’s latest entry into the virtual world market, Novoking. This new world will launch in closed beta in the coming weeks, some time during the first half of September, with a very limited number of testers. It’s been under development for nearly two years now, and will be publicly available within six months, according to PR manager Wang Ruibin.
China’s virtual worlds, who have the advantage of being able to learn from the mistakes that Linden Labs’ Second Life has made without any real direct threat from SL in their huge home market–all seem to be thinking in the same general direction. They’re all trying to lower the technical barrier to entry, especially with respect to object creation, and to pitch their product to younger audiences, and to young women.
Where Second Life prides itself on the fact that everything in-world is user-created, Novoking will be launching with a pre-built virtual city, replete with apartments, clothing and accessory shops, bars, a disco, pet stores and a scenic park. The idea, says Wang, is to make users feel like they have something to do right away–that they get busy upon entering, rather than having to slog through long lessons on how to create things.
Users will be able to create, of course. And here’s where I think Novoking is very interesting: Using popular 3D graphics software like Maya and 3DMax–or even Photoshop–users can create items offline and upload them into the Novoking world. The founders, led by CEO Patrick Zha, believe they can tap into the many, many young Chinese professional and amateur 3D designers, animators, art students, and interior designers.
The world’s economy will, in accordance with Chinese regulations, necessarily be a closed one, not unlike Korea’s Cyworld or Tencent’s QQ Coin system. Virtual currency can’t, at least for the time being, be converted to real-world currency.
Novoking says that with its multi-server load balancing system it will be able to scale indefinitely and will be able to support up to 500 users per individual server in a shardless world. I’m looking forward to hearing more about this one: judging by the screen shots the company supplied, it looks very compelling.
Keso, by the way, is a really fascinating guy whose blog posts I’ll start getting in the habit of excerpting, translating, and posting on this site from time to time.
8 comments thus far
Makes you wanna go hmmm… Look forward to new developments and will have to get in there and roam.
Posted by Mark Forman on August 31, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Looks good, but target is right inside Hipihi AND Frenzoo (16-35 + female). Anyway, most important is to spend quality time in a non-buggy and lagging environment: that’s the lesson from SL?
Posted by Cyril on August 31, 2007 at 6:08 pm
[...] gives a good run down on Novoking, a Chinese virtual world due for release soon. They have a sound approach — [...]
Posted by metarand » China: King of the Virtual Worlds on September 6, 2007 at 8:06 am
[...] Chan at China Web 2.0 Review has taken new virtual world Novoking (see this earlier post) for a test-drive. Now in closed alpha testing–your faithful reporter has received an invite, [...]
Posted by Around the Web in China’s digital media on October 10, 2007 at 11:44 am
[...] http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&lm=-1&cl=2&word=novoking http://digitalwatch.ogilvy.com.cn/en/?p=105 Bookmark on del.icio.us. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « An [...]
Posted by Masters of Media » Virtual Worlds in Modern China on October 25, 2007 at 12:15 am
The one problem with the mentality of creating only prebuilt objects without use of maya, 3ds max or programs like it is that most people dont have the technical know how nor the money to afford such programs, Maya and 3ds Max both run over 1 grand in cost…. Blender is free but not that easy to use and all the programs have a larger learning curve overall then second life does….
You get a library of prebuilt stuff that linden labs has made when you start in second life and there were linden buildings premade in second life when it was first established…. People can use these basic shapes that LL provide to make stuff and its simpler to learn….
The other fact of the matter is this has been tried before. There.com has tried a similar approach in the past and it wasnt all that grand. The other aspect is you have this heavily regulated by the developers so you may not always be able to bring in exactly what you want.
More power to china but sometimes adults want to get away from kids. The average gaming crowd is something like 16 - 35 or so… So its kinda silly to point and say lets go younger. Most parents dont want younger kids on the internet…
Im all for more competition but….. At the same time these developers spew on about ease of use for the end user. What about those that do want to create content and cant afford to learn a long drawn out process over 6 months time nor afford professional tools?
Posted by Lina on March 14, 2008 at 6:30 am
Another side note is that second life only lags in highly populated areas and where people have junky computers…. The only reason it would lag in a non populated area is bad scripting or an overly complex avatar. With havok 4 being introduced soon (its on some private islands now) and mono coming up at some point (its on the beta grid now..) it should be a bit smoother server side….
Also keep in mind this will likely never see the outside of China…. They take a long period of time to develop english clients and it will likely lag for anyone that isnt close…
Posted by Lina on March 14, 2008 at 6:33 am
[...] SL “clones,” HiPiHi, Novoking, and UOneNet. I’ve written about the first two here and here. UOneNet’s still unfamiliar to me but I’ll certainly check it [...]
Posted by China’s Virtual Worlds: Good bet in spite of inauspicious beginnings on May 6, 2008 at 10:09 am
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