In 1991, Dave Gobel helped Bill Gross found Knowledge Adventure. Even before his involvement with KA, Gobel had dreamt of creating highly visual interfaces that would, for example, allow a user to point to a zone on the globe, zoom in, point to specific places, items or people -- while moving through time, of course -- and walk through the Amazonian village, use the local tools or role-play as part of the local tribe. (The "Earth" interface in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash is one way this might work.) But Knowledge Adventure is dedicated to publishing, and its success led to rapid growth. Gobel's plan was tangential to KA's mission, so he wrote a business plan. April 1994, KA's board authorized the spin-off and retained a minority equity position.

The resulting company, Knowledge Adventure Worlds, has designed a startlingly compelling, multi-user 3D environment that runs on PCs.

Knowledge Adventure Worlds in 1995 has produced KA Worlds. This would eventually become the Worlds, Inc. we know. The first major product was Starbright World. With four leading corporations,  Intel Corporation -  providing the PC's,  Sprint - providing the T3 lines,  Tandem Computers - providing the Network,  and Worlds Inc - providing the fully explore able 3D world. Starbright World is a virtual playground linking ill children from their hospital to other children in hospitals across the USA. Worlds, Inc knew that the technology was hot. And envisioned a world where people were free in cyberspace. Free to move about in a virtual world, and interact with objects and people in it, and build virtual homes or buisness.

Worlds Chat was born March 1995. Originally intended to be a showcase, a demo of sorts, of what the company could create for a business application. It quickly turned into a killer app. Released as a free demo-beta version, Worlds, Inc spent over a year developing the product through various number and letter combinations. Until the final beta version 0.9a. September 13th, 1996, departed during the "End of the World" party. Marking the end of the beta test period. The party included an awesome patch that caused major trauma to the hub center. Light's flickered, windows cracked, avatars were tossed like popcorn, metal fatigue sounds and electrical short circuts could be heard, and pengies tagged graffiti on the walls. All this happened while a nearing red planet smashed into the Hub Center! Bumper stickers were being passed out to citizens, and T-Shirts were sold. The commercial version was about to be born!

September 3rd, 1996 an unfamiliar message came into my chat window. A message declaring that the "New version of Worlds Chat can now be downloaded." I'm no stranger to pranks, so I asked "User" if they were for real. It was 3 am Pacific Time Zone, and sure enough, he was. After a hour an a half  Major Kira, I, and Daphne were blazing about the new station. A bit confused, but no less running around giddy like a child at Christmas! We were no longer able to use our screen names. We were all marked as Guest_000, Guest_001, and Guest_002. As Daphne became the first victim of "fading out" the Gold Version of Worlds Chat came into existence.

During this progression, and keeping in mind that Worlds Chat was only to be a demo, Worlds, Inc designed a much more robust environment. Alpha World (latter acquired by Circle of Fire and marketed as Active World) was the product that Worlds, Inc intended to succeed Worlds Chat. This interactive environment in which you can build, ride roller coasters, listen to music at your friends house, or visit virtual Yosemite National Park, came with a then hefty system requirement and needed large amounts of bandwidth. Worlds Chat grew even more popular by accident.

The successor to Alpha World would have never been seen had it not been for the smart marketing strategies of Worlds, Inc's partners - Nissho-Iwai and Toppan Printing in Japan. The partnership had already created a very successful Japanese Worlds Chat version, called Worlds Chat/J2. And with their help, Worlds Inc created Meet at Plaza using the newest technology, Gamma Language. Gamma is a smart combination of C++ and Java woven together to create an environment faster than VRML, but able to be linked across servers together like Alpha World. Meet at Plaza is now in its beta test period, and the system requirements are lowering as the product matures.

Worlds Inc's first commercial product, Worlds Chat Gold 1.0, started off with major repercussions. The firm hired to provide customer sales didn't have anything to ship until 2 weeks after the launch, and the bank account, to wire the money into, hadn't been setup. When Worlds Chat Gold finally did ship, the users quickly found out that the product did not allow the usage of their artistic custom avatars. And the final blow, the product would allow only one screen name. This enraged the general public, who until then, never said a bad word about Worlds Inc. As if it were one last attempt to please their friends, the customers, Worlds Inc released version 1.1a then quickly 1.1b to fix a sound card problem. A few months passed, and the voice at Worlds Inc faded.

In the middle of the designing of Alpha World, and a few months after the shipping of Worlds Chat Gold, Worlds, Inc had finally meet had on with financial trouble. A combination of bad marketing and not having a marketable product for so long turned Worlds, Inc upside down. Eventually they were forced to sell Alpha World to the Citizens. The citizens hired the development team and formed the company, Circle of Fire. Worlds, Inc is still restructuring. Worlds Chat Gold, in the companies eyes, did not become the success that was intended. And the product is no longer being actively marketed today. The stock in the company was recently acquired by Data Streams. Data Streams introduction to the picture provides a bit of mystery, as the company appears to only be an investor. Not a software developer. Worlds Chat Gold is still being sold, and nobody I've spoken with has mentioned shut-down.

The original people from Worlds, Inc still take pride in the product. And love to know that we, the citizens, still thrive in their Space Station. Who ever is currently at Worlds, Inc is remaining silent. We now are in a dark age where we can no longer contact Worlds, Inc.

Until then, if you need technical support, please leave me a message for me at Tricorder's Think Tank.
 
 

Here is a quick summery on Worlds Inc...

Knowledge Adventure Worlds in 1995 has produced KA Worlds. KA Worlds is now known as Worlds Inc. Here are some of the young company's products, technology, and links:

• Starbright World. -- With four leading corporations (Intel Corporation -  providing the PC's, Sprint - providing the T3 lines, Tandem Computers - providing the Network and Worlds, Inc - providing the fully explore able 3D world.) Starbright World is a virtual playground linking ill children from their hospital to other children in hospitals across the USA.

• Worlds Chat -- Created originally as a demo, Worlds Chat has taken off to become the first and premier 3D environment chat world. I have seen versions (Beta 0.3, 0.5, 0.6a, 0.6b, 0.6c, 0.7a, 0.7b, 0.7c, 0.8a, 0.8b, 0.8c, 0.8d, 0.9a,) 1.0 and currently 1.1b (1.1c for demo users.). It was no secret that Worlds Inc found that people suddenly discovered Worlds Chat and the average time spent in the "Space Station" was 20 - 30 minutes. Where as the average time on a companies home page is more like 2 seconds. Worlds took this understanding to mind, and was for hire to design "Worlds" for both conference rooms and virtual office buildings. A similar design to the beta version is the Japanese version called Worlds Chat/J2.

• Alpha World -- Acquired by Circle of Fire and marketed as Active World.. Worlds Inc developed the technology as an extension to VRML 2.0, and until the Worlds-VRML 2.0 standards are adopted, a browser will remain the primary way to view the worlds you create.

• Gamma -- A cool technology, and quite possibly the future of Worlds Chat, Gamma is more of a language than a product. Gamma combines C++ and Java. They have also included tools for the server and designer. One running example of Gamma Technology can be seen in the beta version of Meet at Plaza - a Japanese Kanji based City.