Community
Atmosphere had a dedicated beta-testing community, whose members constructed many worlds and avatars, promoted the software by word of mouth, and conducted community events, such as world tours and building contests. The largest of these contests was Star Wars 3D, a large-scale effort to create a comprehensive set of worlds and avatars based on the Star Wars trilogy. The creations were unveiled on July 4, 2003, and festivities officially continued until July 6. Another large effort held was themed to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Community members also organized and attended events such as World Tours, which featured innovative worlds each week, and Tech Talks, originally a weekly event intended for world and avatar developers. Initially, most community discussion occurred either in the worlds or at the appropriate Adobe User-to-User Forums. Later, to supplement the official Atmosphere product Web site and discussion forums, the community created a large number of resource Web sites, some of which are listed below.
Beta-testers dubbed the Atmosphere developers "zombies", in recognition of the long hours the Adobe employees apparently spent developing the software. The running joke on the team was that, instead of the typical meal of brains, Atmosphere's zombies ingested eyeballs, due to the visual nature of the product. The beta-testing community eagerly awaited new releases from the development team, to which the developers invariably answered that it would take "about two weeks"; this response became a euphemism for "when it's ready."
Despite the decentralized structure of Atmosphere and the popularity of the world-building contests, the Atmosphere community still preferred to gather in worlds created by Adobe and its partner DigitalSpace, such as Adobe's annually-revamped HomeWorld and DigitalSpace's Atmospherians Community. As the HomeWorld was the primary starting place for new users, the community found it easier to establish lively crowds there. When Adobe shut down HomeWorld, along with a number of other Adobe-hosted worlds, many builders made attempts at emulating the success of HomeWorld with their own starting points. However, without the constant stream of new users that HomeWorld experienced, most of these attempts failed to attract more than a small group of regulars.
Years after Adobe ended support for Atmosphere, some worlds remain online, though very few have been maintained and fewer still continue to support multi-user chat. Nonetheless, the software continues to enjoy a small fanbase that meets online each year on Halloween.
Read more about this topic: Adobe Atmosphere
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“Populism is folkish, patriotism is not. One can be a patriot and a cosmopolitan. But a populist is inevitably a nationalist of sorts. Patriotism, too, is less racist than is populism. A patriot will not exclude a person of another nationality from the community where they have lived side by side and whom he has known for many years, but a populist will always remain suspicious of someone who does not seem to belong to his tribe.”
—John Lukacs (b. 1924)