World instances?

[kayhhh]

I've been trying to think about how world instances should work. In VRChat and other similar apps, you can create a unique instance of a world, make it public or private, etc. There could be hundreds of instances of a particular world, or only a few, or none.

And while there are many benefits to this, such as privacy of creating friends-only instances, moderated instances, and just giving space for the massive playerbase - I do think about an alternative approach where there is only 1 instance of each world. The idea being a world is not some ephemeral setting that disappears when you leave - but a real, persistent location. You could tell someone, "Meet me at the XYZ bar", and you would both go to the same place. Popular locations would get crowded, but this would give space for new worlds to gain traction by spreading out players.

One way we could still allow people to create their own "instance" of the world would be through a cloning process (if the world owner allows) where they get their own copy of the world they can edit, add things to, etc. Or maybe cloning should be it's own feature, and typical ephemeral instances should still be allowed. Cloning could be a place owners can monetize their work by selling worlds, or selling access to their world for certain events.

These are just some ideas I've been thinking about. I like the idea of giving world owners the option to reduce the supply of their world, turning it into a scarce asset they can monetize. Many of the top world creators in places like VRChat make very little, typically only through Patreon donations. I also really like the idea of more persistent, evolving locations.

[kayhhh]

Started writing a page for this in the wired protocol wiki https://github.com/unavi-xyz/wired-protocol/wiki/Instances