I must confess that the blurb about dio hadn’t gripped me at all, it looked like another social network, with some funky features but we’ve seen it all before. Versu is the forthcoming Linden Lab project I’ve been looking forward to, that’s the interactive fiction, that’s the creative space that appeals most to me.
However, after using dio, I’ve changed my mind. There’s a lot of potential here and it’s a very diverse place. There are also quite a few Second Life and virtual world users setting up home there already, sneaky bunch aren’t we.
The thing I like about dio, already, is the many different use cases and you can create your own interactive fiction or game experience if you like, it’s not going to be a fast and furious game, but you can still create a very creative experience. However if games aren’t your thing, if interactive fiction isn’t your thing then don’t fret, you can create a photo album, you can create information about your roleplaying sim, your hobbies, your whatever you want it to be and once you realise just how funky this can be, it starts to get a lot of fun.
dio is, as Inara Pey suggested “surprisingly easy to learn – but could take a good while to master.” which sums it up really well. A good place to start learning dio itself is on the youTube tutorials page. There are around six tutorials but they are short and sweet and should give you enough information to get started, after that, take it wherever it leads you, because there are many routes to take.
When you’re creating your dio places you can just use text or images or you can get funky and add objects for people to interact with, gizmos for people to do things with, characters to go from page to page with. A nice example can be seen in the dio place of Sherlock Holmes: The Murdered Magnate by Milo Ferp, even if you don’t get all the way through it, you’ll see a nice example of how dio shares stories in a very good fashion.
I have to admit to be extremely pleasantly surprised by this, it’s something that you really need to explore yourself but I think many of you will be pleasantly surprised about dio too.
“However if games aren’t your thing, if interactive fiction isn’t your thing then don’t fret, you can create a photo album, you can create information about your roleplaying sim, your hobbies”
You *can*. But there is no reason why you would. If you’re not going to use the scripting and the whole “physical world” metaphor, there are easier, prettier and more effective ways to present your information.
The “it can be anything” rationale for Dio hinges on a vacuum. It *can* be used if you don’t already have a billion ways to get your pictures and text online. But you do.
This makes me think that Dio is very much intended as the world/environment for further products, and what we’re seeing here is merely somebody’s bright idea to earn a bit of ad revenue from a niche use of what is essentially the core engine, while the actual product is being developed.
I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if Versu turned out to essentially be an “Actor” object living in Dio rooms.
“The “it can be anything” rationale for Dio hinges on a vacuum. It *can* be used if you don’t already have a billion ways to get your pictures and text online. But you do.”
That’s exactly why I thought I’d have next to no interest in the product to be honest. Why another space? I don’t have enough time to keep up with the existing spaces.
However the thing is, like plenty of other ventures, it will live or die by being social and that’s why people may put up photo albums, or it may be the domain of people who like interactive fiction.
There are definitely ways of making dio do, what it sounds like Versu will be able to do, complete with alternative endings and outcomes, but I think Versu will be a bit meatier, but there could be some overlap.
I have no doubt that Versu will be much more geared towards driving a narrative forward. But I can’t help but notice that Dio is absolutely drenched in a “this is a physical world which actors can manipulate with an easily interfaced scripting/trigger language” approach. This looks a lot like it is intended for more than a cumbersome way of building HTML menus. So my bet is that the “Dio” branded release is merely a milestone, though it may also be testing the water for just which direction the product should take.
Shared persistent? AI agents? Pretty presentation? Seeing what people are attempting to use it for.