For awhile now, competitors to the virtual world have been cropping up and stealing a bit of the market from Second Life. However, there has been more of a specialization in the space, bringing up titles like Habbo Hotel, Playstation’s upcoming “Home“, or the popular Club Penguin. Being so, Second Life has seen little in terms of direct competition.
Well, enter Vastpark. After anxiously submitting a beta invite request, I looked around to find out more of what Vastpark claims to be. More importantly, I wanted to know just what the rest of the world was thinking about it.
I hesitate to grasp the concept of Vastpark for a few reasons. My primary complaint is that it doesn’t really sound like it has anything special or with purpose. Is that my problem? Well, maybe. As fun as a virtual sandbox world is to me, it has a short lifespan before I lose interest. Second Life provides a lot of interest in terms of what the people have done with it and how it relates to MyDisguises, don’t get me wrong. But for my buck, I need a goal and a reason.
Vastpark enters the stage likely with a few things on their minds. If they want to succeed, they’re going to have to improve upon what SL doesn’t do so well. Primary to these issues is performance. If they can somehow manage to make the Vastpark experience a seamless and entertaining one without choking users into massive upgrades on their machines, then maybe they’ll capture the good of SL while improving upon the bad.
They do seem to boast a robust development toolset, and frankly this will be the first virtual world to be in direct competition with SL on this front. In the pre-sculpties days, prims ruled the roost and Second Life was still the best thing out there. It’s hard to see exactly what else Vastpark could have planned that would revolutionize the tools of creation set by SL. Maybe they’ve truly hit a spark.