![]() take them to the arcade to play games, casino to gamble, theme park to ride rides, stadium to toss a ball around with other users, art gallery to see art hung on the wall, Sunset Beach to see our most beautiful/artistic VRML world, employment center to get a job, mall to buy items, help them set up their house and decorate it, etc.) and explain the history behind the places we visited (like Flyby Park which was named after our Mayor who passed away in real life). I had fun taking users through the city, showing them what fun was to be had (i.e. New users could also choose to summon a City Guide who would appear before them and introduce them to the city. I would hang out in public places and be a friendly face for new users. the "jobs" would have to be more appealing (not just glorified moderators), and there would need to be multiple servers (cities) for scalability. It would be fun to explore which concepts worked in the 90s but wouldn't work today - i.e. If I had the funds and resources, I would create a modern version. For a while there was talk about creating a "Next Generation" version of Cybertown which would have modernized it for the early 2000s, but nothing came of that. The website failed to evolve and keep up with trends, became outdated, and was sold to a company which lacked interest in keeping it going. The City Council would vote on important city-wide matters, hold public meetings, etc. A Colony Leader was in charge of organizing all neighborhoods and blocks under their purview along with everyone who was employed by that colony, and representing their residents on the City Council. Eventually I worked my way up and became a Colony Leader and City Council Member before I left. a party), take screenshots of the virtual world and the avatars of people who had attended, and it would be published in the Daily News along with an article written about the event. One of my favorite jobs was City Photographer - I would show up to events (i.e. I took on quite a few jobs while I was active in the community. The primary focus of the website was simply to hang out and make friends with other users, with all of these unique features serving as a backdrop and generating bustling activity. I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface it was really quite amazing for a creation of the 90s. There was an arcade, bank, flea market, theme park, employment center, a city news organization, etc. There was a Security Chief and Security Deputies who policed the website for inappropriate content and had the ability to suspend or ban users. a lamp or painting), and make money from the people who purchase your product to place in their virtual house. There were other jobs, such as Mall Chief and Mall Deputies, who were in charge of the mall where you could upload your own 3D VRML products (i.e. They made decisions which impacted the whole website, in coordination with the parent company/founder of the website. Sci-fi Colony, Fantasy Colony, Teens Colony, etc.) and the City Council was comprised of the 6 or so Colony Leaders, along with a Mayor and Deputy Mayor. There were something like 6 colonies (i.e. You could start as a Block Deputy, work your way up to Block Leader, Neighborhood Deputy, Neighborhood Leader, Colony Deputy, to Colony Leader. There might be another block in the same neighborhood called Neuromancer. Citizens with an interest in the book Snow Crash would place their home there. A "block" was a collection of homes, a "neighborhood" was a collection of blocks, and a "colony" was a collection of neighborhoods - a sample colony would have been something like "Sci-fi" colony, "Metaverse" neighborhood, and "Snow Crash" block. Block Deputy, in charge of deleting homes owned by inactive users and making more space for new people to move into their block, policing homes with offensive names/content, helping their Block Leader host events for their neighbors, etc.). The part that I was most fascinated with was your ability to start as a new citizen, and seek employment from someone who was hiring for a low-level job (i.e. I've never quite seen it replicated with modern online communities/MMOs and I'm not even sure it would work with today's internet culture. Think Second Life but with a functioning government, economy, virtual homes and neighborhoods, jobs (for which you are hired by a real person, and receive payment in virtual currency), and other unique attributes. I was active on it from 1999-2002 and those were its peak years - it's entirely gone now. There was a web-based virtual community called Cybertown.
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