TalkWorld was a graphical "virtual chat environment" from the mid-1990s, originally made by Etchinghill Studios. You joined as a customizable sprite avatar in a small virtual town where you could walk around, enter buildings, and talk to other users over the Internet. The aim was to make it friendlier than the text-only chat programs of the day, while trying to usher in a new era of virtual interfacing within cyberspace.

Its main selling point was VoIP chat. Most chat programs of the time only let you type into a text box, whereas TalkWorld let you speak through your microphone so other users could listen live as you talked. This was far cheaper than an international phone call, because Internet use was billed at local phone rates. On top of that, it let you talk to other people while you were on dial-up, since you couldn't use your phone and the Internet at the same time without specialized equipment to get around the issue.

If you Google TalkWorld, you may come across a GitHub page and an itch.io page that let you download the program. Those versions came from a loosely connected group (that I am a part of) in which a few of the members, myself included, originally revived the software back in 2018, breathing new life back into TalkWorld. That server has since been shut down, so if you download those versions, they'll try to connect to a server that no longer exists. Don't even bother. I have taken it upon myself to rehost TalkWorld, where it will stay online indefinitely.

If you're tired of Discord, Teams, and other centralized community software that sell your data, and of sweeping Internet legislation that diminishes personal freedoms under the guise of children's safety online (which really is the responsibility of good parenting, but no one wants to deal with that), then feel free to join TalkWorld and tell your friends and family to get online and talk with people around the world! Click the button below to start playing!