The founders say around 100,000 people have visited Online Town’s website since its inception, and roughly 3,000 people enter one of its private “rooms” each day. You can enter and exit them, just as you might at a real party or event, except here you navigate a pixelated avatar around one of its virtual worlds. It allows you to have multiple separate video chats at the same time. Online Town can be thought of as a mashup between Zoom and an 8-bit videogame. They had been mulling over the idea for Online Town for months when the pandemic arrived and provided the impetus to finally get it up and running.
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The free program was created by Cyrus Tabrizi, Phillip Wang, and Kumail Jaffer, three friends who together formed a tech collective called Siempre to develop projects that, they say, “help us support fulfilling long-term relationships.” Previous inventions include a wristband with pictures of friends and family tap one and you automatically call that person. “Why do we need virtual chairs if our virtual bodies never get tired?”Ī more recent experiment in digital space making is Online Town, which launched in early April. “I think the new demands of the shelter-in-place orders may prompt interesting new designs for virtual spaces and also help us rethink assumptions,” says Nick Yee, the cofounder of Quantic Foundry, a gaming market research firm, and the author of The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us-and How They Don’t. Virtual worlds like Second Life, as well as massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, have been around for decades, but the Covid-19 lockdown presents an opportunity to revisit them and to explore what we want in an online destination. Why not add a virtual world to your next video call? Having a place to socialize, even a digital one, can make connecting through a computer far more enjoyable-even if you think you don’t like videogames. Fun backgrounds aren’t enough to feel like you’re at a real party or hangout, or at least not a good one, especially if you’re spending most of the time staring at your own face on screen. Social gatherings are transformed into formal meetings-exactly what Zoom was designed to facilitate but not what you always want. On Zoom, the conversational format is essentially "virtual sharing circle," where one person can talk at a time and you're never completely sure whose turn is next. What’ is less expected is that a piece of corporate software, often terrible at mimicking real social interaction, has emerged as the hottest app of the pandemic. “ Zoom happy hour” has officially entered the nomenclature, and some people are even suffering from “ Zoom fatigue.” Millions of Americans have now been confined to their homes for weeks or months, so it’s no surprise they’re relying more on video chat. It’s where college kids throw parties and how elementary school students attend class (at least until their teachers get Zoombombed).
In a matter of weeks, Zoom has gone from obscure business app to household name.
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