After Raph Koster and Metaplace Inc. closed down it's virtual world and user generated content system Metaplace on January 1st, 2010 the company shifted focus to social games. It's first game on the Facebook platform was the farming simulation Island Life.
The core game loop shared many similarities to that of popular social game Farmville however thematically was set on a tropical island where the user plays a character living and building their own island paradise.
Even though the game shared basic game play mechanics with games of similar genre, because the game was built on the highly robust Metaplace platform, Island Life had many advanced featured that were not seen in social games at the time. Including realtime multiplayer in which other players could visit each others islands and preform actions with each other such as farming, building, crop boosting, dancing, sitting, etc.. Island life also included realtime multiplayer chat allowing players to be truly "social" in the social game.
Island Life drew a lot of media attention during it's launch because of the notoriety of Raph Koster and the shuttering of the Metaplace Universe. With many questioning the companies switch to social games.
Social game developer and publisher Playdom purchased Metaplace Inc. in July of 2010 and Island Life stopped receiving frequent updates, with it's last known update being in August. In late November it was announced that the game would be shut down complete and by December 22nd it was taken offline.
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