HiPiHi: Chinese Second Life?
By Charlie Crutchfield on Monday, July 16th, 2007Yet another virtual world has surfaced, this time from China. Like most virtual worlds HiPiHi’s main purpose is for users’ to interact and socialize. In Chinese HiPiHi means something similar to “a world created by you”. Many bloggers refer to HiPiHi as the Chinese Second Life or as a Second Life clone. But, what exactly are the similarities and differences between these two virtual spaces?
THE SIMILARITIES
HiPiHi has many similarities to Second Life. The avatar creation, avatar motions, and construction abilities are almost identical. HiPiHi residents can also buy, sell, trade, and manage their own piece of land. Both worlds are built around a socializing community, and both seem to focus on town centers, meetings, and malls as centers of attention and get-togethers. Although they seem so much alike, HiPiHi claims that they did not even know that Second Life was under construction at the same time that they were developing their world. Also similar to Second Life, the construction engine looks to work on the same physics engine and the building editor tools look exactly the same as in Second Life.
DIFFERENCES
The HiPiHi creators seem to pride themselves in the fact that HiPiHi may be similar to Second Life, but that they have worked hard to improve the graphics and user flexibility. In my professional opinion, HiPiHi is like Second Life; but with modified graphics, a different base language, and leans towards a female population. It should be noted that HiPiHi also claims that they are not focusing on a female group - even though 6 of the 10 characters are female and in all of their official promotional videos, there are few if any male avatars present. HiPiHi also prides itself in its helicopter control panel, which feels as if they had brought in a helicopter pilot to get ideas on how to make it more realistic. The HiPiHi creators also gloat that they include a parachute option so that avatars can jump out of flying vehicles in mid-flight. Many blogs that I have read say that the main difference between Second Life and HiPiHi is that they focus on different cultures and values.
Here are some links to blogs and websites that support these claims:
The Top 10 Things About HiPiHi
The Chinese clone of Second Life: HiPiHi
Interview: HiPiHI, a 3D digital world from China
The Second Life competitors materialize?
Charlie - great insight. Couple of questions, is HiPiHi being adopted in the US at all? What percentage of the users in your opinion speak Chinese vs. other languages, and specifically English?
Some people in the US play HiPiHi but to do so they have to download other programs to get HiPiHi to run on their computer properly, so not many people play it. I would say below 7% of people who play HiPiHi speak english, so not very many.
please keep your eyes on the HiPiHi new event “Vote Your most Concerned HiPiHi Policies!” That’s interesting.
Check the following link:
http://forums.hipihi.com/main-read-11-ff80808113d2c36c0113e2f3c8e97555.html