Interview with Cindy Jiang of HiPiHi Options

[King Buzzo]

There has been a fair amount of buzz in Virtual World circles around a product in beta called HiPiHi. Dubbed "The Chinese Second Life", I wanted to get a taste for what this thing is all about, is it a Real Cash Economy (RCE), what they are attempting to accomplish and how they intend to grow the Virtual World brand.

I was fortunate enough to come in contact with Head of Marketing at HiPiHi, Cindy Jiang who explains HiPiHi as "a China-based global 3D virtual world." She goes on to say they "have been working lately to fine-tune our platform to make it more stable, to provide more powerful and easy-to-use self-creation functionalities, and to create a more immersive and interactive online 3D community where users of HiPiHi can swap ideas, perspectives and stories to maximize their 3D virtual world experiences.".

When pressed on how they plan to differentiate themselves from Second Life Cindy comments "HiPiHi does have some similarities with Second Life. However, the fundamental difference is that we are targeting different values and cultures. HiPiHi has made creativity a much simpler process by using pre-fabricated objects, and for sophisticated users, they can use the advanced setting and tools to build complicated and customized objects."

It is a very intriguing and attractive idea to me to simplify the user build tools. One of the large drawbacks to becoming a mass appeal product for Second Life has always been the learning curve. Take that away and you theoretically have allotted more growth potential. But, as I log in it becomes glaringly apparent I cannot read Chinese. "We are planning to release an international version in the near future, which aims at another double byte market in Asia. We'll reveal details soon." explains Cindy.

Real Cash Economy is an aspect of HiPiHi that appears to be up in the air. Whether the developer wants it and whether the Chinese Government will allow it are both in question. "We haven't decided yet whether there will be an in-world currency as in Second Life. It's sure that we are making strong economic policies to promote the business transactions in the virtual world, which will comply with relevant law and regulations in China." Cindy continues, "At this phase, we emphasize the inspiration of the creativity and accelerating the prosperity of the virtual world. When the demands from the residents rise, the in-world transactions will increase accordingly." At this point talk turns to Entropia Universe, the CRD and how what they are doing affects HiPiHi. "We think Entropia and HiPiHi are not competitors. We can partner instead of competing to explore market opportunities for virtual worlds in China."

This leads to my next question, how do you explain this Virtual World concept to those who have no clue what it is? Virtual Worlds and Metaverses are both very new to the average Western citizen and even moreso to those in Asia. "In light of the fact that the 3D Internet is still a newborn baby in China, it will take some time for people to understand the 3D Internet and virtual world technology innovation and development. But we can see the trend is taking place. With increasing broadband penetration and affordable bandwidth cost in place, as well as increased digital ad spending in anticipation of 2008 Olympic Games, more and more companies and business organizations have realized the value and the potential power of the virtual world in China. We see a significant growth potential for emerging digital platforms such as virtual worlds." The mention of the Olympic Games strikes me particularly. This is the second time this week I have heard reference to how Virtual Worlds will interact with the 2008 Games. In fact, the CRD (Read The CRD, Dotman, Entropia and My Spaceship) is located right next to several Olympic Venues. It will be interesting to see what they plan and how it plays out globally.

As for who HiPiHi hopes will enjoy their product? "People who enjoy the challenge, full of innovation spirit, have ability to create and share, are those we want to attract as customers. They are all smart, well educated and understand the value of the 3D Internet very well. HiPiHi should be a perfect platform for those people to explore the possibility of the virtual life by creating, exchanging, entertaining and socializing." says Cindy.

HiPiHi Founder and CEO, Hui Xu will be speaking at the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo in San Jose, CA - October 10-11, 2007. mindhive is a media partner of this event.

[Roy Von Rogers]

Very interesting that we have Chineese trying to duplicate the RCE or near RCE market. I realy dont like to indroduce politics in to the gaming enviroment, but considering that the Chineese goverment is in a flux, there realy is no choice, because it is what it is. It is very doubtfull if the Chineese goverment is going to allow the mixing of other countrys and cultures in a game enviroment, for reasons that should be obvious.

Its going to be interesting how this will play out.

Roy

[Fade]

Thanks for that heads up....that might be a fun place to practice some Chinese.

[Darkscorp]

Hey! You can DL an english interface for the game!

Hmmmm..are Yanks allowed into this world I wonder?

(IMG:http://virtualmindhive.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/lol2.gif)

[Fade]

Hey! You can DL an english interface for the game!

now what is the benefit of that?

btw, I heard there is a japanese gundum game. haven't seen it yet myself, but that most of the text is Katakana (so, you could just learn that one alphabet and be able to play it).

I had a classmate in Japanese class, who got a job working for a gaming cafe in Tokyo, even though he knows bubkis about computers. He got the job just by getting to know some friends playing the japanese final fantasy.

see...miracles do happen.

[Svetlana]

Nice observation regarding the ability (if not necessity) to target cultural diferences in various mmo's and rce's. While it is easy to assume that the internet can link citizens of the world, thus bridging cultural and political barriers in the process, it is perhaps naive to assume that it is always the wisest (if not most lucrative) decision. There are certainly benefits to careful creation of rce's, mmo's, etc, that target one culture (for linguistic reasons of course, let alone political and or overall value-based reasons). I find this truly fascinating and am keen to see how such endeavors work out. They may ultimately fail if they become too minutely geared towards a certain ppl- but HiPi would be no different than SecondLife or Entropia or any other that is geared towards Western culture.

For practical purposes alone, I expect HiPi will be a hit w/ its basic ease of functionality (ie. basic and advanced creation system, etc). That alone might offer other rce's a keystone to work off of to enable more 'non-traditional' gamers and internet users to quickly advance through the sometimes staggering and certainly debilitating learning curves.

This post has been edited by Svetlana: Aug 12 2007, 07:01 PM

[Erasmus]

For practical purposes alone, I expect HiPi will be a hit w/ its basic ease of functionality (ie. basic and advanced creation system, etc). That alone might offer other rce's a keystone to work off of to enable more 'non-traditional' gamers and internet users to quickly advance through the sometimes staggering and certainly debilitating learning curves.

From my exposure to Chinese and SE Asian culture (their target markets), the RCE aspect would be critical against competitors (the Entropia "concept" will do just fine in China because of that). The ease of creation is a huge advantage for them as is the ability to create (one downside to the controlled economy of Entropia).

While we see the Chinese cracking down on extreme gaming and money trading, I do believe that they favor a controlled RCE model, especially for games that will find a large audience outside China as it will be beneficial to their trade balance (yeah! Virtual exports, now think about that!)

[RexDameon]

i just herd that the guy who put lead paint in Matel toys made in china sold in north america killed himself. Hope nobody screws up and has 8 HOF's drop at once :rolls:

[Domochevsky]

i just herd that the guy who put lead paint in Matel toys made in china sold in north america killed himself. Hope nobody screws up and has 8 HOF's drop at once :rolls:

Somehow i dont see a connection between those two Sentences... am i missing something? :dntknw:

This post has been edited by Domochevsky: Aug 15 2007, 02:26 PM

[Guest_Jolly_*]

Hello,

We are a third party of Hipihi, which are made of friends all over the world loving and developing in Hipihi. We welcome firends abroad to join us and enjoy in the virtual world, no matter you are individual or company. You could contact us by ideashape@msn.com or log in our English forums: http://www.ideashape.cn/. Thanks for your attention.

Jolly

[Rivaldo]

Hi to everybody

[Administrator]

Hi to everybody

Hi Rivaldo. Please do not add advetisemets to non Virtual World site to your signature. Otherwise, welcome!