A New Strategic Partnership
Yuki and I are just back from yet another month-long trip to Asia, and there are a million things to report. I’ll hit just a few of them in this post.
We checked in with our offices in Shanghai and Tokyo, met with HiPiHi and MySpace in Beijing, with Melting Dots, Spiral Growth and many other bright, enjoyable people and companies in Tokyo, and visited partners in Singapore and Hong Kong. I don’t have to tell you that Asia is charging full-speed ahead into new technologies and forms of entertainment. That’s a given. And virtual worlds are a rapidly advancing part of that charge.
Between HiPiHi’s impending fall launch, Shanda Entertainment’s announcement of another upcoming Chinese virtual world, CyWorld’s domination of the Korean virtual space, Entropia Universe’s entrance into the Chinese market, and a variety of virtual worlds in Japan such as Splume appearing, the question isn’t whether Asia will play a key role in the advancement of virtual worlds, rather just how big that role will be.
Which brings me to our new strategic partnership with Metabirds. Naoyoshi Shimaya is the CEO of this company specializing in Second Life development. Based in Tokyo, Shimaya-san’s team has developed a number of corporate builds and a lot of Japanese community builds. Shimokitazawa focuses on community and music, MetaEgg is a new conference center, and Biz Island is a place for Japanese businesspeople to set up their new businesses.
Metabirds shares Centric’s love of science fiction as well as our dedication to bringing international communities together in virtual worlds. We plan to work together on a variety of initiatives, some serious, some wacky, hopefully all interesting and relevant. We will innovate: in strategy, design, building, machinima, and cross-cultural, multi-language projects.
To me, this partnership is exceptionally exciting. Not only do we get to increase our team of dedicated Second Life developers, but we have the pleasure of working with fun, intelligent, talented people halfway around the world.
We think it’s going to be one hell of a ride.
Want to come along?
