I found this an interesting article, particularly the section discussing how Kitely has evolved over the years since 2011. Here's a key point:
This rings true to my own experience, from Myst Online: Uru Live (MOUL; 2007) via There.com (2008) and Second Life (2009) to OpenSim (2010 onwards).Ilan wrote:A lot of the buzz around virtual environments is about extraordinary experiences, e.g. walking through an underwater palace. But these experiences are one-off events; they don’t have lasting value. The truth is that most of our lives are spent in the same locations meeting the same people and doing the same types of things.
MOUL's environments are necessarily static, so when the storyline fizzled out only the social element remained. When MOUL itself closed in 2008, most of the friends I had made moved to There.com, recreating a virtual home in a way. Some of us tried to emulate, in spite of There.com's cartoony graphic style, the fantastic immersive environments we had loved in MOUL; others set up games, events and learning activities -- the weekly game of Spades, for example.
The move to Second Life enabled a subset of the group to create and explore environments that were closer to what we were looking for, but with the accompanying headache of impossibly expensive tier. This is where the "Devokan" story concept started to take off (we had a full+homestead combo), especially when we role-played the subsequent bitter-sweet move to OSgrid. We still kept small plots of land in Winterfell and/or with the main Myst/Uru contingent to keep in touch with friends and make new ones (/me waves to Danko).
In the meantime, There.com closed, so those who were meeting there for cards moved to SL -- my small plots always had a Spades table somewhere!
OSgrid gave us the space and freedom to create a multitude of environments, some of which are archived (or being further developed) here in Kitely -- Time Vault, Eoliah Village, Aquatas, Evensong, Tallis, Stuart, Pulse among others. At this point I would say that my own Devokan-inspired roleplay/storybuilding came to a natural end, but others are taking the concept still further (think, for example, of Mat Mahogany's atmospheric worlds and Paislee Myrtle's fantasy environments).
My latest world of Intersections does not have a story behind it; it may have some of the recurring symbols and structures from an online past shared with friends; its function, though, is a place where we can continue to meet, to play cards and other board games, to catch up with each other's news.
"The truth is that most of our lives are spent in the same locations meeting the same people and doing the same types of things." Playing cards, chatting, and creating and exploring immersive environments -- activities that this small group of friends have been doing together for more than 7 years now.
Kitely is ideal for both: we meet for cards in Intersections, a fixed-price Starter World; the storybuilders among us have the affordable and flexible options of Premium Worlds. Kitely Market brings some of the quality items we've missed since leaving SL. And we can back everything up!
