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Le Deuxième Monde

Article: The Lost Metaworld
by David Cuciz

A long time ago, in a server far, far away...

There used to be a time (actually, there still is) when the most common accusation against the Internet was that it hampered socialization. The Net isolates us, they said, because it degrades inter-personal relationships into sterile chat-line and e-mail conversations.

As we all know, nothing could be farther from the truth: as Aristotle poignantly suggested a while ago, man is a social animal, and will socialize no matter what and by any means. Internet is simply another tool, particularly convenient, to extend interaction. It was so even before the Web, thanks to Usenet and MUDs, the first online multiplayer games (I kid you not, World of Warcraft is not that revolutionary after all) and now the list of virtual places to know and meet people on includes social network and online virtual communities.

Now, the most famed and discussed metaworld is Second Life, Linden Lab's ecosystem that features an internal economy, an evolving social structure, and a hybrid status - it is, after all, a wannabe-game in an eternal sandbox-mode. So much has been written about Second Life: this virtual world has been both lauded and reviled, because this space offers is a totally new way to live the virtual community. But is it really so?"

But is it really so?

Hold on tight. We're going on a time-travel trip, back to an age far away (in digital terms): the year 1997.



Vive la Révolution!

Two generations of consoles divide us from 1997, the year of Mario Kart 64, of Quake II and Carmageddon, of Age of Empires and MDK and Ultima Online. 1997 took away from us Master Gunpei Yokoi, inventor among other things of the Game Boy and the D-Pad. DSL was not a common commodity, and a flat dial-up connection ad 56 kbps was still the most economical mean to surf a pre-YouTube and pre-VoIP Web. Those who did online gaming had often to contend with nontrivial amounts of lag. Windows 95 was still the most advanced OS for PC users. The future of home video seemed to be the VideoCD.

In this remote-yet-near era, something big was about to set France on fire.

France has always been a different world for computer types: in the land of Joan of Arc and Napoleon, computers are les ordinateurs, byte are les octets and software is called logiciel. Before the Internet came along, the French already had access to online services thanks to the Minitel system: the number 3615, the code used for Minitel pages, is a part of French pop culture and the system is still used through a Web interface.

France also gave us some new concepts and visions in the videogaming world: we owe it to French programmers, for instance, the very idea of the Survival Horror genre thanks to the popular title Alone in the Dark.

And it's in France that, in that distant 1997, a totally revolutionary vision to live the Internet took shape.

Ville Lumiére, Ville numérique

The project was actually older: its roots can be traced to 1993 when Alain Le Diberder (already a consultant for the Minister of Culture and Communication under Jack Lang and for the chairman of France Télévision) and his brother Frederic (responsible among others of the INFOROUTE project with CAP GEMINI) had the idea of merging the social mechanism of MUDs with the immediacy of realtime 3D graphical adventure games to create a new interactive media.

In 1994 Alain Le Diberder left France TV to join Canal +, which was immediately interested in the concept. Le Diberder's idea had the support of talents like Philippe Ulrich, CEO of Cryo Interactive Entertainment. Together, Canal + and Cryo would produce titles such as Versailles.

However, the new project was boldly going where no-one had gone before: to create an authentic virtual metaworld, accessible through the Internet, based on a 3D graphical system and a simple, intuitive interface, where the users would have been able to create their own avatars, meet, socialize and explore. Moreover, the metaworld of 2ème Monde would have its own economy: commercials, job market, personals and so on would have had an important role in the digital metaworld the same way they have in the real world.

As opposed to the modern virtual metaworlds, 2ème Monde was not set in an "open" world as in Second Life or in a fantasy environment: the scene was Paris, although in an idealized and traffic-free version. A Paris to live and visit in all of its historical and cultural aspects. A virtual world made to humans specifications and made possible, ironically, by machines.

System requirements were modest: a 486 CPU clocked at 66 MHz, 16 MB RAM, a 4x CD-ROM drive, a 65000 colors VGA card, a Soundblaster-compatible sound card and the Windows 95 OS - and a modem, of course - were all that was needed to enter the new world. Canal + offered an Internet connection to make use of its product.

A dial-up connection, with the modest speeds allowed by the modems of the time would suggest a rather limited experience, plagued by heavy lag, but in the case of 2ème Monde the problem had been solved in an ingenious way: the majority of the data needed to build the 3D environment was contained in the supplied CD-ROM, so as to minimize the quantity of information exchanged through the internet. Clearly, this reduced the system's flexibility in terms of expansion and customization, but the goal of 2ème Monde was, above all, socializing in a virtual space. As Alain Le Diberder put it, it had to be "neither a mausoleum or a box match".

Allons, octets de la Patrie...

2ème Monde's debut was scheduled for late February of 1997. The CD-ROM was bundled with an action-adventure game titled Legendes Souterraines, based on the myths and legends about Paris' extensive underground and the historical characters that people them.

The possibilities, as explained in a press kit, were enormous and are still impressive in this day and age: it featured virtual shops that sold "real" items. No more queues, no more hassle: the goods would be delivered to the player's real-life address - think of a 3D Amazon.com. For the newbies, help would be provided not just by the built-in helpfiles but also by avatars who were there to guide the player around. 2ème Monde had its own newspaper to keep the users updated about the happenings in the virtual world.

The designers and planners had enough foresight to understand that a new world would be in need of a government system: always self-conscious when it comes to the ideals of the Republic, the French programmers had their own version of democracy for the virtual world. 2ème Monde had a Constitution, a form of direct democracy that could work even when the "citizens" were not online, thanks to a "digital representative".

Everything would require a vote, everything could be discussed, even the rules written by the developers. Campaigns, popular referendums, petitions, all the tools of a perfect democracy (the kind we would love to have in real life) were there to be used without any limit imposed by financial or practical means. There was a Parliament, a Court of law. Even the risk of a coup d'état was there, but that risk is inherent to all democracies.

Given the status of today's virtual societies which range from total anarchy to absolute dictatorships (benevolent or not) by the developers, 2ème Monde was parsecs ahead.

The Life and Times of 2ème Monde

2ème Monde seemed to possess all the right ingredients: the concept itself was innovative - if not groundbreaking, the product inexpensive, the possibilities enormous. The project could rely on such heavyweight sponsors as IBM, Kodak, Peugeot, Mattel, Virgin, ADECCO, and the Printemps malls.

Upon its initial launch, the community had more than twenty thousands subscribers. When the 2nd version of the software was launched in March 1998 (as a web service working through a real-time 3D engine by Blaxxun Contact) the number grew to 200'000. This figure is still impressive today, but it becomes far more impressive when one remembers that we're talking about a time when the total number of Internet users in France was in the order of a few tens of thousands. The popularity of 2ème Monde was not an issue.

And yet in February 2002, five years after its online debut, 2ème Monde was closed down. One year before, the technical team had been officially disbanded and a campaign by the users (the "bimondiens") was launched to save the community. Alas, to no avail. 2ème Monde was terminated by Canal + on that same year.

What went wrong? How could a project so innovative, and with such strong backing, fail? It boils down to a simple matter of economics: 2ème Monde was mainly an advertisement-supported operation and it actually pioneered online advertising. Back in the pre-Euro era, a thousand ad banners in 2ème Monde would cost about 400 French Francs - very little when compared to other media.

However, the costs of running a virtual world were (and still are) on the high side: servers need maintenance, software needs patching, updates are mandatory when you are dealing with an expanding and evolving world. The initial distribution method, through CD-ROM, was unsuitable as well in the long term because the costs of burning and mailing the disks to all subscribers were substantial.

When 2ème Monde switched from the original engine to the new Blaxxun platform in order to reduce development and compatibility troubles (the original was a pure software renderer that didn't take advantage of the new graphic cards), the technical team had to redesign all the 3D scenes - which had taken years to make - from scratch in just one week. Yet the move paid off technically-speaking, because the new PC graphic cards could render the environment to new standards of quality.

However, 2ème Mondewas still losing money. This age was marked by the ongoin "Browser Wars" between Netscape and MS Explorer, everything (almost) was for free while 2ème Monde was not. Even reducing the running costs the exercise was simply not profitable enough to keep open - although at the time it was probably the least expensive and the less money-losing enterprise in France.

What Lies Beneath

Ten years after its appearance, five years after its sudden termination, what remains of 2ème Monde? Its novelty notwithstanding, the project introduced many, many French citizens to the capabilities of the Internet and the importance of the virtual communities. The "bimondiens" still fondly remember their lost metaworld, with its unique Gallic philosophy and quirks, and its promises that the whole of the Web is still trying to fulfill in some way. Like some other great concepts of the computer world (such the Playcable system or the Amiga computer), 2ème Monde stands as a milestone and as a testimony to a great concept way ahead of its time.

Blogosphère

Le deuxième 'Deuxième Monde' Jeudi 19 Octobre 2006

Web 3.0 ? Reprenant la recette du Deuxième Monde, lancé en France en 1997 par Canal+ et Cryo, l'internet américain s'enthousiasme pour un nouveau service baptisé "Second Life ", un monde virtuel persistant en trois dimensions, qui vient de passer ce jeudi le cap du million de membres. L'accès de base est gratuit mais Second Life nécessite un abonnement de 9.9 $ par mois pour pouvoir s'y établir. Un appartement de 500 m² est par exemple loué 5 dollars par mois, la location d'une région entière, coûte près de 200 dollars par mois. Second Life propose également sa propre monnaie (1000 L$ coûtent environ 4 dollars) et commence à attirer médias ou marchands. Il y a quelques semaines, Adidas ou Toyota y ont ouvert une boutique en 3D et lundi, c'était au tour de Reuters d'y créer un bureau de presse, afin de couvrir l'actualité d'un monde réunissant de plus en plus de personnalités politiques ou culturelles…

En 98, j'ai testé le Deuxième Monde (version CD-rom avec Cryo), j'ai également testé la version blaxxun (C+ en solo) ou encore Cryopolis ( Cryo en solo). Je garde d'excellents souvenirs de ces mondes virtuels et de ses "bimondiens". A ma grande surprise, Second Life n'est guère plus évolué et je doute que cet univers puisse séduire massivement les internautes. Et vous, qu'en pensez vous ?

JERÔME BOUTEILLER