As I've reported here before, a few companies are investigating how to bring Second Life to mobile handsets. But what about exclusively mobile virtual worlds? UK firm Micazook has just launched one, called i-Citizen Beta 3D.
Despite the 3D tag, it’s more Habbo-style 2.5D, with an isometric viewpoint. And although it’s launching as a mobile virtual world, a PC-based version is apparently on the way by the end of June. Micazook says that the world has taken three years to build.
Its locations are all modelled on real-world cities - London, Barcelona, Paris and so on. Each city is only downloaded to the handset when you want to visit it, to save on the initial file size. It’s free to download, but certain sections are locked if you don’t sign up to a subscription.
There’s an interesting section called Showcase, which lets users upload music, videos games and other content “without restrictions”, and even sell them. Surely there will be some restrictions around copyrighted content though?
Apparently the world has already signed up thousands of users in its first days of availability. It works on handsets from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG and Sagem. I grabbed it for my Nokia N81, but am having issues actually getting access to the world - it’s hanging at the point where the application wants to read my user data, then chucking me out with a Security Exception error.
Still, the screenshots make it look pretty slick, so I’ll persevere. The main challenges now for Micazook will be promoting the world effectively to users (viral elements would help), and also the sticking point of data charges, for any users not on a flat-rate data contract.
Want a look? Point your phone’s browser to http://wap.icitizencommunity.com
The title is supported on a variety of J2me and Symbian mobile devices, which include Nokia, Sony, Samsung, Sagem and LG and new builds are frequently issued to cover more handsets.
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