Fountellion in THE SPIRAL: Greenwise & the Nature of the Game

INTEGRAL

NATTER-CAST:

@spiraltimes : #GreenGarden #Fountellion
More and more people LOCKED OUT of The Spiral and finding themselves in Fountellion instead!... read more HERE...

Following on from the final release of 'Fountellion', the major new Spiral metaverse [or Virtual Super Online World of Nature] from the Development Division itself, we have some breaking news. It now seems people are being 'shut out' of The Spiral – along with nearly all of its well-kept, super-worlds and experiences.

Is this 'for real'? Has the Spiral gone down? Is it suffering from an actual cyber-attack (the Falling – again?) or is it just server instability due to new player overload. Or... is it deliberate? These are the questions everyone is asking across VSM and the V-web, so here we explore some possible answers...

Firstly, what have the Development Division – owners, curators and designers of The Spiral fabric and Fountellion – had to say so far?

John Leaven (Co-Founder and a Lead Designer) and Zack Collins (Lead Developer) had only this to say, as their boss 'Professor Ben' Fielding is still 'off-grid', and rarely talks to media anyway.

"We are working hard to identify the issue and to fix it. Not all access is down, there is still one way to access The Spiral – from within Fountellion itself – due to its integral relationship. Therefore, at this time, we can only state that playing Fountellion is the only way – and the key – to 're-finding' the Spiral again... while we work to identify the cause and provide further updates. At this stage, it's still unclear whether the problem has come from within our company or from an external source. We hope users will continue to experience our new project Fountellion in the interim..."

In other words, if we want to get back to the portal and into any other Spiral-supported world, then we're just going to have to 'play the new game'... and find our way back...

This will only add fuel to the criticism of the Spiral as an 'umbrella' or portal system, despite its huge success, coming at a time when Fountellion (or titled The Green Garden in beta development) was meant to carve a clean slate and 'push the envelope' for the next Virtual era.

Our personal opinion here at Spiral Times, is that it's a move by the D.D. to usher people into Fountellion, while using the system issue as a cover. Just as Leaven and co. mentioned, it somehow forms an integral part of The Spiral... Besides, it wouldn't exactly prove too damaging to the D.D. to impose such a limitation on Spiral access, at least for awhile.

Whatever the case (and potential future law cases will be), most users are not as frustrated as might have been expected, with so many already hailing Fountellion as an exhilarating success. Quite simply, people are happy to be lost in there – for now... Reports are suggesting that it might just be pulling off the whole 'envelope-pushing thing', although no-one has yet 'completed' it, if that applies; it's an open-world experience with the focus on that word.

And meanwhile, now that restrictions on avalog recordings and sharing have been lifted, it's proving hugely entertaining just to listen/watch/experience other people's fresh captures and recorded streams of survival on the island of Fountellion (especially that of Dan Harvester's Super-world entries). For one thing, it's such a dense, yet open, world that every new player has a very unique experience. Some attune well at first and then 'devolve' later, some get lost quickly and then pick up their gameplay in the forest and a few even get banished after deciding to launch a desperate battle against the guardian of the game-scape itself. There are also many amusing 'fails' of players falling and crashing in their initial attempts at 'super-jumping'.

But right now, it's the captures created by the Key-Finders and Early Access Beta players, which are the most valued. These were the first savvy folk – and 'the invited' – Early Access testers, who were effectively given a head-start over everybody else by Professor Fielding. Gamers such as Daniel Harvester, 37 years old from Plymouth, (uk) ran a little-known gaming channel before uncovering a hidden location for one of the access keys. His channel now has over a billion hits and he's a star. He's also the only one to make it past Progression Five, and seems to have 're-discovered' a way back to The Spiral again. He comments that it took him "some time to reach, even by collaborating with early players."

He claims he has no idea about the lock-out, because he was so involved in playing Fountellion, and has also been quite changed by it all. "It might do people a lot of good. In fact, I hope so... as much as it has, so far, for me."

What do the other Early Access / Beta Testers have to say? Spiral users are looking to them for explanations or 'a way back' into full access, but none of them have put forward any prior knowledge or reason for the lock-out (which includes access to Super-News, the Know-Zones... among hundreds of others). Just how will people cope – without their feed-spaces?

Well, this situation may even unite hardcore gamers with ordinary users whilst playing – and co-operating – in Fountellion, especially the many who 'crave' daily Spiral Tower access via a heavy addiction to life in the Virtual.

How will they fare in this new 'nature-world', since they've effectively now been given little choice other than to 'change their games'? We'll just have to stay tuned, and watch this (super-)space... [see below for our latest live capture feed.]