Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 14 minutes
WorldsChat is a social virtual world that was launched in 1994, and is still online today. Users can equip avatars and hang out in 3D spaces, conversing with each other over text-based chat. WorldsChat allowed users to create their own spaces and avatars. Over the years, they transformed it in a way its developers could never predict. Today, it is not just a time capsule of the early 90's utopian web; it also contains a vast labyrinth of outsider art that has arisen within its fringes.
We spoke with GradualDIME, an amateur archivist documenting WorldsChat's user-created art and environments. He gave us a tour of his favorite places in WorldsChat, and told the story of what happened when 4chan's paranormal board discovered it.
Up Next in Season 1
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Preserving Worlds S1 Ep2: ZZT
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 28 minutes
In 1991, 21-year-old game developer Tim Sweeney launched a simplistic, already-outdated MS-DOS game that would become, entirely by accident, the most popular hobbyist game development tool of the 90’s.
ZZT's free, r... -
Preserving Worlds S1 Ep3: Myst Online
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 28 minutes
In the mid-2000’s, Cyan Worlds, creators of the massively popular adventure game Myst, released an ambitious online sequel that never caught on the way they'd hoped. Myst Online: Uru Live sought to translate the single...
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Preserving Worlds S1 Ep4: Doom
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 25 minutes
The first person shooter Doom launched in 1993 and quickly secured its place in popular culture. The game’s creators were unusually mod-friendly, and they set the game up so it was easy and legal for fans to create the...
