China and Virtual Worlds: The Competition Gets Stiffer

Have a look at this article from the Guardian from just last month, “Virtual China Looks For Real Benefits.”

China is converting a 100 sq km site (yes, that is a very big space) on the former nationalised steel mill site to house, among other things, virtual worlds able to support not millions or tens of millions but billions of avatars.

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If it were anyone but China planning this you would take it with a pinch of salt. But this is not the NHS, it is the world’s biggest manufacturing country pitching to lead the next stage of development as the internet moves into three dimensions. When I asked the professor whether the coming of virtual worlds would be on a scale commensurate with the industrial revolution, he replied: “It will be faster, bigger, more like an explosion.”