Worlds.com

Worlds Chat

(formerly Knowledge Adventure Worlds) Windows NT Windows 3.1 Japanese (archived)

History

Worlds Chat development began at Knowledge Adventure Worlds around 1994, eventually spinning off into its own company, Worlds Inc. During its beta period (1995–1996), Worlds Chat was available as a free demo for users who installed the 4-5 MB application on Windows 95, Windows NT, or Windows 3.1. On September 16, 1996, it officially launched as Worlds Chat Gold, featuring additional avatars, new worlds, and a retail CD-ROM version. Now there was a free demo version with limited features and a paid Gold version with expanded avatars, worlds, and more.

Team

Assembled by Dave Marvit (VP of Production), the original team that constructed Worlds Chat consisted of Andrea Gallagher (producer); Dave Leahy, Syed Asif Hassan, and Bo Adler (development); Tulley Straub, Jeff "Scamper" Robinson and Helen Cho (UI and graphics). The original client/server protocol for the multi-user environment was developed by Mitra Ardron, Bo Adler, Judy Challinger, and Dave Leahy (PTO US6219045). Contributors to the project included David Tolley (music), Wolf Schmidt (documentation), John Navitsky and Scott Benson (operations), Naggi Asmar (quality assurance), and others.

User interface

The Worlds Chat interface provided several sections, including a chat message window, a 3D interface similar to the video game Doom, and a space station map indicating the user's current location.

When launching the program, it offered users a selection of 15 pre-existing 2D avatars to serve as the user's representation within the virtual 3D environment. If no avatar was chosen, the default was a wooden crash dummy avatar. The gallery of avatars was presented from a first-person perspective. Upon clicking on an avatar, the user was placed within the central hub of a virtual space station, where they could interact with other online users who were also represented by avatars.

Within the virtual space station, users could navigate between platforms through sliding doors and hallways. Every new room or space served as a new area in which users could chat with one another. There were originally 20 rooms distributed among the Space Station world. It eventually expanded the number of worlds to include Sky world, Garden world, Sadness, and Glee.

Technical challenges

The first release of VRML, a standard for defining virtual worlds, was less than six months old when Worlds Chat was released, and thus still lacking in any best practices to use. Additionally, the speed of dial-up Internet connections placed limitations on the amount of information that could be transmitted to and from the Worlds Inc. servers. An increasing number of users alongside the expanding virtual world increased these pressures. Unlike other immersive environments of its day, it worked on lines as slow as 9600 baud.

In 2011, Tamiko Thiel, the creative director and producer at Worlds Inc. from 1994 to 1996 for the Starbright World project, wrote an article entitled "Cyber-Animism and Augmented Dreams" describing the history of virtual worlds, in which she wrote: "In the virtual worlds and avatar communities in the mid 1990s, we thought we all would start parallel, virtual, online existences in which we could create ourselves anew and realize our personal dream worlds. The technology however was too awkward, the processors and the Internet connections too slow, and the user base for our worlds never extended beyond a small dedicated community. By 2002, the virtual communities of the first generation all went bankrupt or looked for other ways to earn money."

WorldsPlayer

Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows 8 Windows 10 Windows 11 Linux (through Wine)

History

WorldsPlayer launched in December 1998 as Worlds Ultimate 3D Chat.

User interface

Using WorldsPlayer, a user assumes an avatar (a 2D holographic penguin by default) and can move, chat, express themselves via gestures, voice chat, send email, listen to in-world music, or view videos hosted in worlds.

Significance

Though it had tens of thousands of active users at the height of its popularity in 1999, it was much less by the 2010s. By the 2020s, it was considered a "digital ruins" by some academics.

Server outage

Due to a server misconfiguration, WorldsPlayer servers have been offline since August 6, 2024, preventing users from accessing online chat features, though the client remains available for download from Worlds Inc. As of now, Worlds Inc. has not issued an official statement regarding the duration of the outage.

In response, multiple community-run servers have emerged, utilizing reverse-engineered software to allow users to interact and chat online within independent networks.

References

References

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