Dubbed almost everywhere as the "Chinese Second Life", HiPiHi is a virtual world, currently still in private Beta, that aims to emulate the success of its American counterpart. HiPiHi allows users to fully create and customize their character, meet new users and interact in an open world. The world is expected to have its very own economy and will allow users to have their property and businesses. The screens we saw of the application are very impressive and many users have signed up for a tryout already.

We recently had the chance to talk to Cindy Jiang, head of marketing at HiPiHi, to understand a bit more what HiPiHi is about and how it aims to attract users.

What are the social networking aspects and tools of HiPiHi? How can users interact in HiPiHi?

HiPiHi is a platform, which can offer a totally interactive, immersive and open-ended experience for users to create, inhabit and govern a new world of their own design. So it is also natural to be a social networking platform. Just like in real life, communication is the basic part of your life in the virtual world. The users can exchange their ideas through the online chatting tools (only text for now). They can also send messages to each other both online and offline. How is it different to Second Life?

HiPiHi does have some similarities with SL. However, the fundamental difference is that we are targeting different values and cultures. A virtual world is not just a 3D environment, but a complicated social system involving relationships, policies etc. HiPiHi was born in China, and we really hope it can embrace Chinese culture. We also believe functionality will be better in HiPiHi than in SL. For example, HiPiHi will make creativity a much simpler process by using pre-fabricated objects, and there will also be advanced setting for users to build customized objects for trading.

How can you move around? What equipment is available?

In the HiPiHi world the user can choose different actions, such as walking, flying, jumping, swimming, dancing, and etc. Moreover, during the period of the limited beta test, every users can have their helicopter, which can make them move fast.

6 of the 10 characters you can choose from are women. Does that mean Hipihi is aimed more at women?

Absolutely not. We want to target anyone with a computer and net connection.

We only saw human avatars. Will other creatures be available? Tell us about the different customizations available. Not yet. When you enter the world, you can customize your avatar first, by choosing different hair, face, clothes, body, etc., everyone can be unique and special. Then you can claim an 100mx100m area (It’s only free for the limited beta test). So in your own area, you can try to create things. You can use those pre-fabricated objects, which will be a little easier to use for beginners. You can also use the advanced settings for more complicated creations.

Describe the economy. Can you buy property? Are you expecting people to create and sell products inside the environment?

A business model similar to a 2D model can be applied in 3D. Advertising and branded products will be incorporated within HiPiHi. We have been approached by the marketing departments of many foreign and Chinese companies looking to become involved in HiPiHi. Subscription to HiPiHi will be free, although there will be products/services for sale within the world. We haven’t yet decided whether there will be a HiPiHi currency as in SL yet – a lot depends on market regulations – but of course there will be trading.

Read part 2 of our exclusive interview here.