About Us
Reno Project is a website seeking to document and archive everything pertaining to the Lucasfilm's Habitat and WorldsAway technology based virtual worlds.
What kind of content can I find here?
We have plans to write up a full, detailed history along with screenshots, scans and interviews with key people who were involved. You can find this content whilst it's being curated and built out over at the Wiki, the Image Archive and the Interviews section.
We also intend to share more regular blog posts for information or updates that don't warrant their own wiki article or area on the site.
Why are you doing this?
In our eyes, it's an important part of the early days of the internet and we want to make sure that its place is documented in history. It's also important to us to provide context to all of the materials that we have gathered here. A screenshot or a chat transcript might not mean all that much, but when you add context, it can completely change your understanding of things.
Also, it has been almost 40 years since Lucasfilm's Habitat was created and almost 30 years since WorldsAway was released. The people who were active in their respective communities are getting older and time is passing fast, so it's important to document as much as possible whilst those people are still around.
We want to secure as much extant material relating to these virtual worlds as possible before it's lost forever.
How can I help?
If you have any material you would like to contribute, please get in touch with us here.
We are looking for:
- People to interview who worked on any of the virtual worlds we are interested in
- Official documentation of any of those virtual worlds
- External communications by the companies who created or operated those virtual worlds (Newsletters, updates, customer service, etc)
- Internal communications by the companies who created or operated those virtual worlds
- Magazine articles about those virtual worlds
- Screenshots of those virtual worlds
- Software related to those virtual worlds (clients, plugins, internal staff tools, etc)
- Member stories (If you were a member of any of these worlds and have a personal story to share, we'd love to hear it)
If you have anything that you don't see on this site, we are very likely interested so please get in touch.
What virtual worlds are you interested in specifically?
Our main focus is on Lucasfilm's Habitat and Fujitsu's WorldsAway virtual worlds, but both of those technologies spawned various different services using those platforms. We will list all of the relevant ones to our research here. If you have any material to share about them, please get in touch.