The Fishbowl
Blub blub.
Exactly what it says in the title: A fishbowl standing on a table, for chatting inside or outside of.
Reportedly one of the very first worlds made for V-Chat!
Exactly what it says in the title: A fishbowl standing on a table, for chatting inside or outside of.
Reportedly one of the very first worlds made for V-Chat!
Click Here to download The Fishbowl
Sound Effects
[Click Here to mute page background audio]
SONG.WAV
ENTER.WAV
EXIT.WAV
COLLIDE.WAV
The Entry and Exit sounds are shared with The Hanami.
[Click Here to mute page background audio]
SONG.WAV
ENTER.WAV
EXIT.WAV
COLLIDE.WAV
The Entry and Exit sounds are shared with The Hanami.
In-World Links
None
Credits
Additional Notes/Information
Though there is a sky-textured wall surrounding the actual Fishbowl itself, there is one single wall that is not solid, allowing users to escape the boundaries and explore the facade behind the scenes, the walls around the chat room held up by supports like the back of an actual stage set. Small white platforms dot the featureless "landscape" out here, giving users somewhere to discuss their freedom from the confines of the Fishbowl.
An excerpt from the "Metaworlds" article:
In one of V-Chat's very first chat spaces, [Reay] hid a secret passageway in a fishbowl sitting on a table in a round room. Not long after V-Chat opened, curious users discovered that if they probed long enough, they suddenly found that they had escaped from the round room to the larger metaworld outside. And the back of the round room looked, from outside, much like the back of a stage set.
The secret passage was a surprise to Linda Stone. An artist and former children's librarian, Stone was one of the first HyperCard developers and evangelists at Apple. Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's director of advanced technology, lured her to Microsoft with the promise of autonomy and the chance to live in Seattle, where she'd lived before. And so here she is running Microsoft's Virtual Worlds Group. Stone was delighted when she found that users beta testing the fishbowl not only found the passage, but eagerly shared the secret with one another. "People like to explore, and they like to explore together," she says. "It's something that draws them together and causes them to play together and teach one another."
None
Credits
While the about.txt file only contains the words "Microsoft Corporation", articles like Hotwired's "Metaworlds" cite that Philip Reay, owner of the design firm Metacosm and creator of The Lunar Islands, at least had a hand in the creation of The Fishbowl.
Additional Notes/Information
Though there is a sky-textured wall surrounding the actual Fishbowl itself, there is one single wall that is not solid, allowing users to escape the boundaries and explore the facade behind the scenes, the walls around the chat room held up by supports like the back of an actual stage set. Small white platforms dot the featureless "landscape" out here, giving users somewhere to discuss their freedom from the confines of the Fishbowl.
An excerpt from the "Metaworlds" article:
In one of V-Chat's very first chat spaces, [Reay] hid a secret passageway in a fishbowl sitting on a table in a round room. Not long after V-Chat opened, curious users discovered that if they probed long enough, they suddenly found that they had escaped from the round room to the larger metaworld outside. And the back of the round room looked, from outside, much like the back of a stage set.
The secret passage was a surprise to Linda Stone. An artist and former children's librarian, Stone was one of the first HyperCard developers and evangelists at Apple. Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's director of advanced technology, lured her to Microsoft with the promise of autonomy and the chance to live in Seattle, where she'd lived before. And so here she is running Microsoft's Virtual Worlds Group. Stone was delighted when she found that users beta testing the fishbowl not only found the passage, but eagerly shared the secret with one another. "People like to explore, and they like to explore together," she says. "It's something that draws them together and causes them to play together and teach one another."