User:Roy Curtis/Cloud Party

Cloud Party is an online virtual world developed by Cloud Party, Inc. It was opened in June 2012 as a public beta. It is built on WebGL, allowing it to run on supported browsers without plugins or additional downloads. Cloud Party users can interact with one another via public chat and explore on floating so-called islands, as well as create and upload virtual goods such as clothing.

Designed as a direct competitor to similar platforms such as Second Life, it has a built-in editor for builds. Features of the world, such as static and physical objects, avatar animation states, materials and particle emitters, are treated like distinct types of assets with associated metadata. Interactivity to islands are enabled by so-called sequencers, which tie animations and special effects together with events, and scripting in Javascript with a dedicated API.

A virtual currency, called Cloud Coins, is used for the in-world economy for buying assets and islands. Assets are protected by a permission system which can control the ability to modify and resell the asset. A royalty value can also be set, which pays back an amount to the asset creator each time the asset is resold.

History
Cloud Party was started as a project between Sam Thompson, Conor Dickinson, Jimb Esser and Jered Windsheimer in June 2011. The aim was to build a realtime 3D massively multiplayer online game engine, without the use of browser plugins. The project originated from San Jose, California. Cory Ondrejka, a former chief technology officer of Second Life, joined the team as an investor and advisor with Bruce Rogers.

In June 2012, Cloud Party was released as a public beta. It allowed users to login as guests to try out features, but registration required a Facebook account to login with Facebook Connect. On December 2012, this requirement was removed by allowing users to sign up with an e-mail address instead.

The built-in marketplace was fully opened in an update released December 11, 2012. It allowed sales with the use of its virtual Cloud Coins currency and cashing out.