The Guardian writes about the proposed virtual Beijing Cyber Recreation District:
Anyone who still thinks that virtual worlds such as MindArk’s Entropia Universe or Second Life are the plaything of geeks should look at what is happening in China. It is simply mind-boggling and, if it all comes off, has awesome implications for western economies. I have written before about how the Beijing municipality in partnership with private capital (and with help from MindArk of Sweden) is planning a virtual world for around 150m avatars, of which 7m could be online at the same time. This is so far above the capability of the much-hyped Second Life, which rarely has more than 50,000 online concurrently, that I had some difficulty in believing it.
…There are nine similar virtual universes being planned. China is converting a 100 sq km site (yes, that is a very big space) on the former nationalised steel mill site to house, among other things, virtual worlds able to support not millions or tens of millions but billions of avatars. When I looked puzzled, he said that people still did not realise how big a country China was. And he is right. It is tempting to dismiss all this as an Asian phenomenon with no implications for us. That would be a serious mistake. It is about the availability of broadband, not culture. The sky is no longer the limit. The world is changing. [Full text]
