Blue Mars entered a scaled open beta back in September, and we've not heard a lot from that quarter since then. It's still there, though, quietly doing its thing and keeping its fans happy. Jim Sink, the CEO of Honolulu-based Avatar Reality, spoke recently with Honolulu Weekly about where Blue Mars stands today.
Blue Mars has a fairly small audience of around 100,000 and adds roughly 10% to that figure every month. Part of the reason for the small audience is the limitations given by the game itself, but Sink hopes to change that in the near future: "The current version of the game is slow on older PCs. We're adopting a new technology called the Cloud Fusion Server this summer though that will allow anyone to play Blue Mars online."
The team behind Blue Mars hopes that this will open the doors for a much larger player base. Plans for things such as a switch to browser based play and Facebook applications give Sink hopes for a bright future for the game.
Honolulu Weekly has the full interview with Sink, and it's well worth a read for anyone interested in the genre.
[via Worlds in Motion]
Reader Comments (17)
Posted: Apr 24th 2010 8:36PM (Unverified) said
Is this basically second life with better graphics or am i missing something?
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Posted: Apr 25th 2010 12:14AM (Unverified) said
It's Second Life with better everything, yeah.
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Posted: May 18th 2010 3:04PM (Unverified) said
It is similar to Second Life in concept, as far as having avatars, land, and an economy with user-created content. It is quite different in technical details.
Despite what some people claim in other posts, anyone can upgrade to a developer account and make stuff. It's free, automatic, and takes about 2 minutes. Learning *how* to build will take longer, because the tools are more advanced.
Better graphics comes with a cost of needing a better graphics card. They system requirements are still pretty high for most people who are not active gamers, but they are aiming at the next decade, not the last decade, as far as graphics capability.
It is not so much a game as a "game design platform". The developer kit you can download is based on the Sandbox2 Editor, which Crytek used themselves to write the Crysis games, so it is quite possible to create a racing or combat game as one of the "cities" (game levels). It just has not happened yet since they are only halfway through beta.
They call it beta, but its really an open design process, where they let users and content developers in much earlier than most other games, to get feedback and let us start building stuff well before the player software is finished. I have a city now ready to upload and get online. It needs more work, but having the player software finished with no places to go or things to do will not hold people's interest, so we needed to get started early. This is pretty much what happens with commercial games, where the guys writing the game engine work in parallel with the guys designing the levels.
Reply
Despite what some people claim in other posts, anyone can upgrade to a developer account and make stuff. It's free, automatic, and takes about 2 minutes. Learning *how* to build will take longer, because the tools are more advanced.
Better graphics comes with a cost of needing a better graphics card. They system requirements are still pretty high for most people who are not active gamers, but they are aiming at the next decade, not the last decade, as far as graphics capability.
It is not so much a game as a "game design platform". The developer kit you can download is based on the Sandbox2 Editor, which Crytek used themselves to write the Crysis games, so it is quite possible to create a racing or combat game as one of the "cities" (game levels). It just has not happened yet since they are only halfway through beta.
They call it beta, but its really an open design process, where they let users and content developers in much earlier than most other games, to get feedback and let us start building stuff well before the player software is finished. I have a city now ready to upload and get online. It needs more work, but having the player software finished with no places to go or things to do will not hold people's interest, so we needed to get started early. This is pretty much what happens with commercial games, where the guys writing the game engine work in parallel with the guys designing the levels.
Posted: Apr 25th 2010 3:08AM Joystiq Login Bugs SUCK said
Wonder if they count me in their 100,000?
I logged in for 5 seconds at most before deleting it.
Reply
I logged in for 5 seconds at most before deleting it.
Posted: Apr 25th 2010 4:30AM (Unverified) said
Wow, you're edgy and your opinion means a lot to me.
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Posted: Apr 25th 2010 8:41AM Scone said
Personally I think it's sad that they have to revert to older tech to get their game out in the public. I mean really people? CryEngine 2 came out in 2006 which is 4 years. In that four years you should have upgraded your PC parts enough that the second engine should work rather than resorting to some low-grade, piece of junk browser-based or cloud based system. A 8600 GT which came out in 2006 (around the same time) can run it (moderately) so I don't understand why games need to go back on what they built because some people complain with 10+ year old machines that only run Starcraft.
On a less ranty side, I wonder what this game will continue as since Cry Engine 3 is said to be released sometime between 2010-2011. A possibility to create a benchmark game? Hopefully.
Reply
On a less ranty side, I wonder what this game will continue as since Cry Engine 3 is said to be released sometime between 2010-2011. A possibility to create a benchmark game? Hopefully.
Posted: Apr 25th 2010 12:35PM JohnnyMann420 said
Lol.... to those that said this is SL with better graphics... well you're wrong....cept the better graphics part. I'm a creator in SL.... I know the scripting language, etc. I also make sculpties...etc.
Anyways user created content is mostly non-existent compared and you have to apply and be accepted to be a creator to begin with.
I'm not saying there isn't potential, but the fact they make it such a pain in the arse just to create something means that there isn't a huge dev community at the moment.
Besides....SL can be as PG or XXX as you want it to be. That reason alone is why SL does as well as is does.
I've kept BE installed and rarely hop in any more. I always check out the new stuff as it arrives to see if it is going in a more free user created content direction and unfortunately it just isn't.
Reply
Anyways user created content is mostly non-existent compared and you have to apply and be accepted to be a creator to begin with.
I'm not saying there isn't potential, but the fact they make it such a pain in the arse just to create something means that there isn't a huge dev community at the moment.
Besides....SL can be as PG or XXX as you want it to be. That reason alone is why SL does as well as is does.
I've kept BE installed and rarely hop in any more. I always check out the new stuff as it arrives to see if it is going in a more free user created content direction and unfortunately it just isn't.
Posted: Apr 25th 2010 12:43PM (Unverified) said
I have a PC that can throw the polygons in Crysis around without much trouble, and the Blue Mars beta was really, really jerky.
I lasted about 15 minutes. The fact that I couldn't seem to create anything other than a generic hollywood teen avatar didn't help either.
Reply
I lasted about 15 minutes. The fact that I couldn't seem to create anything other than a generic hollywood teen avatar didn't help either.
Posted: Apr 25th 2010 3:05PM (Unverified) said
Weird how this is called a game even by the creator while it has no aspects of a game. Also, I must agree with most people here that Blue Mars is unusable unless you have a good graphics card. While I have no problems running Second Life on my newer pc, I could simply not run Blue Mars (very jerky). I'm glad to hear they're trying to do something about that...
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Posted: Apr 27th 2010 5:13PM (Unverified) said
Blue mars is nothing like second life. For example, you cant create your own content for blue mars, but you can with second life.
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