Metaplace is shutting down and I know this isn’t supposed to be the appropriate time to disassemble why, but I think that’s part of the point. Everyone has been too polite and reserved toward Raph Koster and his big project. The collective web has been a group of yes men. There’s no grand conspiracy, just a lot of respect. Respect != Honesty. Of course, I’m just as culpable as the next fanboi. It’s too damn easy to critique after the fact, but better late than never.

Content is king. If you’re going to develop a game / platform / whatever that focuses on Community Content Creation, then you better jumpstart it with some seriously good content yourself to begin with. This has been true since Lode Runner and all through Doom, Quake, Half-Life, etc..

When I logged into Metaplace, it seemed cute, but no more compelling than any other Flash-driven avatar system. I know there was more than the usual under the hood, but the exterior never grabbed me. I don’t know if that was everyone’s experience, but that’s my take.

I also feel that trying to trying to compete with Facebook and Myspace is silly. That’s not a market of many successes, it’s a domination of few. The gold rush on mainstream social networking is already over. Although I’m convinced that game communities could wedge into the social networks market, it would require leveraging from a strong game.

I’m curious to hear Raph’s postmortem on Metaplace, which I’m sure is coming. I hope next time he makes a fun game design first, content creation tools second.