It’s somehow wonderful to see this Terra Nova piece on Virtual Laguna Beach and contrast it with the f13 thread entitled “KILL ME NOW!! MTV Beta Testing Virtual Laguna Beach”. I suspect many of the core gamer crowd will be quite unhappy with many of the coming developments in virtual worlds…
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Only in the sense that the developments aren’t happening with something i’m interested in.
It will be interesting to see if the griefers that flock to some of the other virtual worlds head to Laguna beach and how MTV handles them. I find most games companies are very tolerant of disruptive behavior, I wonder if the big corporations running some of these other worlds will be.
Ah, my kingdom for the Ultimate Ignore switch. Go on my blacklist and my client happily subtracts every aspect of you from my experience. No avatar. No chat. No grief.
I think it will be quite revealing to people to see how MTV’s corporate culture really operates when they have to start dealing with griefers. In fact I’m going to bet that there will be some elements of the gaming community who will purposefully engage in virtual world gorilla terrorism.
Whats particularly funny to me is that if there is gamer backlash (I think its safe to say there will be) against the collision of these media conglomerate sponsored social worlds (already happening with Myspace)and “games” its going to get ugly quickly (see the recent Myspace outage and pornsite redirect this summer) as gamers tend to be a more technically literate crowd shall I start printing the “I Haxxed VLB” now?
Just back from my visit to VLB. It’s in “Open Beta”, so I guess I can forgive the fact that there was no one to play Paintball with, and that I couldn’t buy clothes because it couldn’t “get authorization” to update me. That leaves the controls. Having my hand on the cursor controls to move me around reminded me of old first person shooters. To bad I can’t tap the spacebar to jump over a short log. Biggest selling point: Two people can sit next to each other and kiss. Didn’t see any dogs, but there was a dog park. Teleporting while sitting down seemed to mess everything up. Also, I “zoned” and then while disorented “Zoned” again. Not quite sure that they need outside zoning at all, but if they want it, I suggest a blue flashing line on the ground, or something.
As far as culture class, a few regulars defended the existing world, and mentioned promised improvements, newcomers complained that there was no way to get cash and everything was “lame”. Anyone been to both VLB and There?
I doubt VLB is aimed at core gamers. I don’t have any numbers to back this up but in our house it’s not the gamers watching Laguna Beach, it’s the teenage girl. And if VLB is advertised correctly I could see my daughter installing and logging into Virtual Laguna Beach to have a chance at catching the eye of one of the main characters or even getting a glimpse of them up close.
If MTV is smart, not saying they are or they’re not, but if they are. then they’ll get some of the main actors to make appearances in their virtual world from time to time.
This would probably draw in more of the viewing audience.
Have you ever noticed how a chat room will suddenly overflow when a celebrity shows up. I think the same could happen in a virtual world.
*** Just had this thought ***Everyone has seen those television shots of celebrities entering an event and the people crowding near the ropes trying to get a picture or just a look at the actor close up. Now why couldn’t that be put into a virtual world in such a way that the fans would get the impression that they are up close to their idols? Ropes or security guards would be impassible objects.*** End of thought ***
All Virtual Worlds don’t have to be marketed toward gamers.
Interesting flip on the usual bullying methods isn’t it. In the real world bullies slap the nerds around, in the virtual worlds the nerds try to slap them back. Sad when you think about it, but I guess it is just human nature.
I hope your not implying that Virtual Laguna Beach is the future of the virtual world. I think if that were true more then core gamers would be unhappy.
Actually, yes, I do think that things like VLB are major parts of the future of virtual worlds, possibly even drowning out the game worlds to some extent.
This is the part I love though, the generation gap, the collective awakening of a group to their grand place in the economy. Look at the rise of all these trends, the rise of RMTing, the rise of big media coming, the rise of Business 101 folks looking to cash in. ALL of this ignores the hardcore F13/Corpnews/Lum-diaspora order.
Heck, even while I dive in out of academic curiosity, most of this stuff just doesn’t engage me like a good old fashioned diku does. I can appreciate it, but I know I’m no longer the target either. But I got my warning from TV and radio commercials. I ain’t their target anymore either, being outside that core 18-34 irresponsible-spending-spree consumption crowd 🙂
There’s always the issue of pop culture and the backlash against it. “Everyone” hates music from Britney Spears, right? But, someone keeps buying those CDs….
Heres a funny: I added a younger gamer to my friends list on a site the other day and he said quote: “Dude your 37 and you still play games! Your my hero!
My immidiate thought was: “Am I suppossed to be doing something else?” lol
Ralph — How does one VW “drown out” another? I guess if the teenage girls that were just on the cusp of playing WoW decided, instead, to play VLB, well… that might be a drowning. But if we’re getting people interested in VWs who might otherwise not have tried them at all… OK. What’s the point?
Back in the mid-to-late-80’s, when I was in college, you only got about 1 decent new PC game coming out every month. Not much better on the console side in the few years after that. Why? Because so few people were hardcore gamers and had the requisite rigs. By the mid 90’s, though, the volume was way, way up. Rising tide and all that. Did the tide also raise a lot of crap? Sure ’nuff. But you also got a lot of great games that would never have been made had there not been a much larger market.
Do I, personally, believe that VLB sucks long and hard? Yes. Do I think it will probably continue to do so? Yes. And die a grim and somewhat humorous death. But at some point we will probably have a much more interesting and compelling VW/game experience that takes into account the things that some people that worked on VLB and similar crap have learned. And that relies on the market of users who now have a slightly more mature experience level with the genre.
So while it may, on its own, be quite horrible… it is an indication, I think, of quite a good thing. Signs in the water.
I meant drowning out in the sense that it’d be “harder to hear” the gaming worlds. I think there’s a very good chance that this sort of lightweight gaming experience will be the dominant mode.
I think the convergence will results in virtual worlds such as Amazing Race, Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, or Guitar Hero Online.
These type of online worlds will be the dominant MMO experience.
Frank
Ralph: Thanks for the clarification. I totally disagree with you, then.
Back when we only had 3 television stations (4, if you count PBS), we had a very, very limited choice as consumers. Now, I have 150+ on my digital cable. I have no trouble “hearing” the Science Channel, Discovery Channel, Disney, Nickelodean, Comedy Central, the Sci Fi Channel, Bravo, etc. We are becoming more and more sophisticated consumers of media and content, and the tools we have (search engines, tagging, TiVo, long-term/massive storage) are helping us select when/where/how we watch, listen and play in more granular and sophisticated ways.
It may be that gaming worlds will be a smaller piece of the overall VW/MMO pie, yes. But as that pie grows, the social and economic interest in the genre will grow across the board. Sports games have grown, over time, to be a much larger piece of the video game market than they originally were. Has that been bad or good for gaming? And has it meant more or less attention, money and development for other types of games? Has it been harder to “hear” all the other great games that EA has produced because it has made such a boatload of cash on its EA Sports franchise?
Really? Because I think TV is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Every year there are more shows, more channels, and more niches. The mindshare held by, say, PBS, has shrunk dramatically.
Has it been harder to hear the other EA games? I think the answer is undoubtedly yes. Name five non Sims non sports EA titles. 🙂 (The ones you come up with will be megafranchises). Partly this is because EA has focused on fewer franchises and concentrated their marketing on them.
When I say “drown out” I mean from the perspective of the ordinary consumer, not the gamers. I think gamers, as you say, will absolutely be able to find the titles that interest them. But they’ll be the equivalent of the block of Discovery channels — a small part of the overall array of choices.
Andy Havens wrote:
Peruse Customer Indecision-Unmaking: Overview at will. The overview is part of an article series I’m working on.
[…] Raph Koster had a post the other day entitled “Culture clash over Laguna beach” in which he questions how gamers will react to branded virtual worlds like Virtual Laguna Beach. I am sure that he is right, that there will be some kvetching across the websphere, but I also think that would be pretty silly when MTV is not marketing VLB to gamers at all. Gamers can jump in the pool if they want to, but it’s an entirely “opt in” experience. Of course, all change brings complaints, especially on the Internet, and we are definitely going to see change. More branded worlds will emerge (and I think Multiverse will help propel this) and more brands will get involved in “open” worlds (note: I consider Second Life an open world because, while it is closed technology, there is a diverse and growing tapestry of residents, brands, experiences, landowners, etc on the SL world/platform). The overall population of virtual worlds will outgrow the current base of traditional gaming, and any culture clash that might happen today will simply be considered a transitional thing. Even within Second Life, we have gotten a small number of similar reactions when a client has launched a presence that did not focus on the consumer community. The PR firm Text 100, for example, recently opened up their island within SL, but with no attempt to market it to the SL community at that point in time. A few SLers have asked “why is this here?” because it didn’t yet fit into their personal experience of SL. This is a perfect example of the maturation of the platform from consumer/game-like world to broad platform. Last week Text 100, which has 30 offices in countries around the world, used Second Life to hold company-wide meetings across those offices, bridging audio, video, and the virtual to bring their teams together. To me, that is as valid a use of the SL platform as any other. As Second Life grows up, we will see a huge range of uses/projects and individuals/organizations participating. The wonderful thing is that the virtual world is big enough for everybody. […]
Ralph wrote:
Ahhh… Similar to how ordinary consumers of TV are now confused by the multiplicity of cable channels, and ordinary consumers of news are confused by the availability of TV, paper, MSM Web, blog, Big Radio, chat radio, etc. sources of news. And how ordinary consumers of film are confused by all those titles at Blockbuster and now NetFlix. And how, in the past, ordinary readers were confused by all the books available in the library and more recently, mega-bookstores and Amazon.com.
I go out to a fancy dinner once or twice a year, tops. Anniversary and wife’s birthday, probably. I am not an “ordinary” consumer of 5-star cuisine. If by “odinary” we mean “routine and average;” i.e., that I am somewhat adept at the category. I am apt, therefore, to choose that service/product by dint of the “loudest” and most obvious marketing in that vertical. What you would equate with the blockbusters. I ask a few other people what “really nice” restaurants they’ve been to, I check Fodor’s, maybe, and the Columbus Restaurant Guide. When three or four big sources agree, I have got a pick that rates high on the “this is probably a good choice for a fancy-pants restaurant where I won’t feel bad about dropping US $100+ for a meal.”
Now, if I was eating that kind of meal every week, the way in which I’d choose each experience would be much different. I’d ask more people; I’d read reviews in more select magazines; I’d talk to the wait-staff and cooks and chefs from various spots; I’d read blogs; I’d compare menus. BUT… I wouldn’t want fewer choices, I’d want more. And I wouldn’t pooh-pooh new “common” 5-star restaurants, because they’d raise the bar for everyone, or perhaps bring a new sous chef to town, or add some new dishes or features that were lacking.
Now, in a relatively closed market like the food service biz, I might worry that a big, new, lower quality (to my super-refined taste) 5-star joint might put a couple nice little pubs (that I find more appealing, but that are off the beaten track) out of business. That’s a somewhat elitist way of thinking about it, but valid.
In the gaming world, though, we don’t have as much of a closed market, do we? Many of the people who bought The Sims probably got it as their first computer game ever. Same for folks playing WoW; first MMO ever. The fiels is wide open, with no geogrphic or “share of wallet” boundaries at this point. Is there mindshare in the industry at this point? I’m not sure. It’s still a very young business. Most of the “common” people are still not playing video games as much as they are watching TV and movies. To my mind, the marketshare of games (and VWs/MMOs especially) needs to grow a lot more before we start worrying that one game or one sub-genre in particular is going to water-down or drown out others.
If a game — even a bad game — like VLB can bring some new kids into contact with VWs for the first time and get them interested, that’s cool. If we, as “uncommon” gamers and observers can learn some stuff, even “let’s not do that again” stuff from it… that’s part of having a bigger pie, too.
As Morgan’s post points out (thanks for the link; but oh-my-gash, I’m so tired of manufactured “2.0” references…), there are times when too many choices can be troubling to consumers. Do you honestly think we’re there yet in terms of the availability of VWs? Or even videogames in general? I read the blogs and the Web sites and the paper mags… I’m a gamer, not a “common” consumer (heh heh), and I still have trouble finding really, really good games. Viva choice, I say! Viva competition! Viva trying new things! Viva giant screw ups and weird new attempts to get kids into the space!
Raph-/Morgan-/Andy-/Frank-
Much to grock there for a Tuesday morning (PS: read your blog Andy keep it up thats good meat and potatoes speak that non-marketers like reading about marketing) well Im a sucker for a good food analogy also.
I was thinking about this quote I read once about the very early days of the internet, written by one of the early pioneering scientists. In it he describes the transition of a freindly community village into a suburban sprawl of billboards, commuter traffic, commercialism, and pronography. Was a good read on the transformation of the internet from a DARPA user’s perspective.
Much like colonization, or the wild west being tamed, this was my point earlier. “drowning out” “five star resturants” and “feature fatigue” (and dare I say Web 2.0? lol) aside, I wonder is what we’re seeing is less convergence and collision and more cross-pollination and colonization.
Corporations enter markets incrementally that they have deemed safe and profitable.
Colonists land on wild untamed and dangerous continents and forge settlements. (or conquer and exploit them)
DARPA builds an electronic communications system that eventually mutates into allowing for the functionality of Google. This transforms those who propigate the technology as much as (and increses the audiance for)those who use it.
Early games are crude and consist of simplistic rulesets and are a singular experiance, eventually allowing for the functionality of WOW’s 2-3 million concurrent users.
In these instances the convergence as it were really results in evolution of the medium. DARPA to Google, Unix to Linux, Pong to WOW, Assembly to C+++, Colonists on Plymouth to Las Vegas. Large but incremental leaps to be sure all representing and facilitating a broader user base. The inhabitants and early users of these spaces (and those who propogated the technology) had to adapt to evolve and function in the new enviornments or be stuck in a niche.
Im not sure that Games are much different, media conglomerates are moving into, by investment, purchase, or appropriating that which they deem safe and profitable. Games have developed enough revenue and functionality to prove themselves fertile for pollination, its only a matter of taking the infrastructure already build and optimizing it, improving it and using it for commercial purposes.
Will the industry accomidate its early users in this new dynamic? As a long time gamer I hope it will, I dont want to be resigned to VLB when I would rather be PVP’ing.
Raph is correct, its likely that the time of the gaming village is over. The smell of asphalt and tar is the smell of Vegas being built, virtual Vegas, but Vegas nonetheless….or Laguna Beach.
Perhaps the real point is not to have your house demolished or sell out to a carpetbagger but to build a Casino?
Andy, I didn’t say “consumers would get confused.” Let me restate without the “drown out” metaphor.
I see three trends: rising choices in worlds, diversification of worlds, and mainstreaming of worlds. What I am saying is that traditional gaming worlds — specifically the MMORPG — will be a smaller and smaller fraction of the market as a whole. The buzz and the attention will increasingly go elsewhere, particularly to the mainstream worlds since they will be largest by volume.
Plugged-in gamers will still be able to find what they want. But more and more it’ll be about “cult” status, because the gaming worlds in general will be “cult” level. It’s like being the biggest show on Bravo, or the hottest documentary on Discover.
There’s nothing in that thesis about “watering down,” except insofar as gamer fans complain that more dollars are getting diverted to chase these other markets. It may well be that certain types of games (e.g. the hyperexpensive MMORPG) get made less and less simply because of opportunity cost, but we have a while before that manifests, I think. I think that in the meantime, we’ll see a bunch of new types of game world popping up, some intended for crossover to broader markets (like the big casual game sites) and some not, such as the many PHP-based MMOs these days.
More recent evidence seems to show that too many choices are troubling to consumers only when they do not have the tools to navigate the choices. I have a high confidence that the tools will show up.
“I have a high confidence that the tools will show up.”
Hrmmm me too! 😉
The buzz and the attention will increasingly go elsewhere, particularly to the mainstream worlds since they will be largest by volume.
Does that mean we’ll see less foolishness about violence in games? Or will mainstream worlds also inherit the will to kill?
Ralph: OK. I gotcha. But I’m still not convinced.
When the VCR first came out, the first incorrect prediction was that it was going to kill movies because people wouldn’t want to go to the theatre, as sitting on yer keister in the La-Z-Boy would trump the movie-going experience. Strike 1. Then there was this idea that it was going to mean fewer “blockbuster” movies, because the public would divert its “available movie dollars” to renting videos, and that, therefore, less box would be there to produce giant hits. Well, of the top 10 adjusted grossing box office hits of all time, 5 have been since 2000, and 3 were in the 90’s. Only 2 came before the VCR was de rigeur (Star Wars Episode IV and ET). Strike 2. Then we had the idea that easy copying of VHS tapes was going to lead to massive industry losses. Wrong again. And then DVDs came along, and the industry has been reaping record profits, because DVDs are 40% (ish) cheaper to make. And now with NetFlix, more movies are more reasonable to produce, because geographically disagregated markets (like the US Indo Europoean and Indian populations) can all rent from one “store.” Choice is good.
Gamer fans complaining that “more dollars are being diverted to chase these other markets” makes very little sense, at least at this point. If hard-core gamers are inclined to spend their dollars on hard-core games, someone will make those games. It may be different companies, they may be delivered differently (downloaded vs. boxed in EB), and they may have to fight their kid sister for time on the console… but the market chases the dollars. And getting
The fact that “Game X” is at the head of a gaming “Long Tail” today, and may be nearer the middle tomorrow and the end in 20 years is natural. The most popular show on Bravo right now is “Project Runway,” and it outscores many of the shows on the Big 4 networks. The first reality show on TV (unless you count “Cops,” which nobody but me does) was MTV’s “Real Life.” It took years for one of the networks to get wise to that production style and do “Survivor,” which has spawned an entire sub-genre of content.
My point is that the three trends you mention — rising choices, diversification and mainstreaming — are all hallmarks of what happens when a market/industry matures. And it’s almost always good for the folks who are the early, core “believers” in the original product category. The only folks who really lose are the ones who wanted to be “special;” alone in a tiny pond. Proud, hyper-specialized geeks. For the rest of the gang, a maturing market brings investment, entirely new creative ideas, new players (I mean that three ways here), new opportunities for employment, more competition, more discussion, more research, more interaction with other disciplines.
Up until the late 1980’s, wireless telephony was thought to be a fad or a toy for the uber-rich or uber-geeky. Until it reached a certain market penetration level and enough people had the phones and enough towers were up, it didn’t hit the “high curve” of the hockey-stick of growth. It limped. The phones sucked, the coverage sucked, as an investment it sucked, and employment in the industry pretty much sucked. Between about 1988 and 2004, though… BOO-YAHH!!! Loookitergo!!! And as the industry went from baby to boy to adolescent to Olympic athelete in about 15 years, it was scary… but with huge opportunities for customers, investors, inventors and workers.
Change is weird, yeah. But I like it better than the alternative.
Is it just me or are you two actually saying the same thing slightly differently? 🙂
Well said Andy. I think that Raph is just a bit guilty of overplaying the “other side” of his comments. Treating the core gamer market as all diehards and treating the coming change in the market with heavy doses of “doom and gloom” (or “dinosaurs and meteors”). The advocate of the purported “culture clash” is, well, what? A forum for some of the most hardcore of the hardcore. Yes there will be grouchy people all across the internet whenever ANYTHING changes. There is also a post on f13 about how Bioware has a DS division now and this may take away from their “focus”. So? As you point out, entering new markets can just provide even more capital for you to do your core production.
Cutting past the drama I think we just have a market in change, as markets have changed before, and the creation of several new markets. And I think people, even the hardcore, are aware of most of the changes. Almost everyone who cares knows about long tail and iTunes and MySpace and Korean MMO’s and we see the trend line whether Raph points it out and says “I told you so” or not. But saying that new game markets will “drown out” the core gaming market is kinda like saying that hybrid cars (or any other new product that captures consumer attention) will “drown out” core gaming. It’s a category error of sorts. The gaming industry is still generating lots of revenue, by all indications far more than non-traditional streams are now or are likely to any time soon (it’s not just a matter of technology for non-traditional gaming but it’s a matter of spending habits and consumer priorities). New people entering a new market and buying a different product won’t change this. Will we hear more about non-traditional gaming? Sure. Just as we hear more about hybrid cars or many other new consumer products out there. And yet we’ll still have a flashy core gaming market with a lot of people pouring money and attention into it. The changes will be good for core gaming and it will allow greater exposure. As more people play other sorts of computer games they will have more understanding and acceptance for the core market. Some will even enter it who wouldn’t have before. As video-gaming, at large, becomes more prevalent it becomes that much easier to air a story on the news about Civilization XXI and have the average viewer understand it.
I think that most everyone agrees about most of what is going on and there are just some philosophical disagreements and disagreements over the long term conclusions of all this. I often make contrary posts to what Raph says on here but I still agree with about 75% of what he is saying (and sometimes feel like I should just post “I agree” on some threads to help alleviate my grouchy contrarianism but then that doesn’t seem to add much to the conversation). And so we are bound to say “the same thing only slightly differently”. However, the slight differences are important.
Here the distinction between Andy and Raph, as I see it, isn’t about whether non-traditional gaming (which I think we all agree on) will flourish as a new market but about how this will affect core gaming. Andy is optimstic and Raph is still predicting meteors on the horizon.
Sometimes meteors are not a bad thing. Well oK maybe for dinosaurs….
I agree slight differances are important. I understand your plight as a grouchy contrarianist, would you like to become an honorary member of the CFDT Club StGabe? 🙂
Fees are payable in small denomination unmarked non-sequential bills of course…
I’m certainly guilty of using drama to try to get my points to a wider audience, and you’ve called me on it before. 🙂
I think in the case of the meteors, which are not what is being talked about in the post that set of this thread, mind you, there’s some highly disturbing business trends that indicate that the shift may be a bit more painful than usual. Think railroads in the face of new transportation mechanisms, as a possible analogue.
Hmm. A pattern I frequently have seen is that it’s almost always great for the consumers, but that many of the early business movers in a given space often get left behind as outsiders come in and trump their work.
Just so we’re clear on where I stand 99 days out of 100…
Raph is a God in this industry, and I frolic at the base of the mountain on which he lives. Absolutely, 100%, no sarcasm intented. I have never written a computer game (well, I programmed a “Canyon Bomber” sim on the TRS-80 in 10th grade using ASCII graphics; cheat key included), I have never worked in the industry. I do, in fact, agree with most of what he says and even when I don’t, enjoy reading his work as it is intelligently disagreeable ; )
What I do know, however, is marketing and advertising and the history of economics.
Raph said:
That is sometimes true. I wouldn’t use the adjective “frequently.” Because there are also numerous examples of the early adopters, the pioneers, the crazy iconoclasts who have gone on to become the wealthy, lauded icons of eventually stable, mature industries. Edison, Ford, Gates, Jobs, Kellog, Dewey, Einstein, etc. Early movers who rode the wave.
It’s only really dangerous for those early business movers who either, A) want to retain marketshare and/or mindshare over other, more meaningful business goals, or; B) place ego in front of all else.
Share of anything — an audience’s attention, spending money, good will, favorable impression — is only really important in a mature, truly competitive industry. When I have a choice between four, essentially identical hybric pickup trucks… then it’s incredibly important which manufacturer of same holds my wallet, my hand and my eyeballs. When nobody has yet convinced the American public that a hybrid pickup is, well… a “good thing,” then worrying about your whatever-share of that market is nowhere near as important as growing the market and watching for economic threats that are external to it.
There’s an old riddle in marketing land: what beverage is Coke’s main competitor? Most people will answer “Pepsi.” Which is, of course, wrong, because it’s a teaching riddle. The answer is “milk.” Why? Because someone who drinks Pepsi regularly will, if offered Coke as an alternative, probably be OK with that. Someone who really prefers milk… well, Coke isn’t even in the range of alternatives.
At this stage of market development of VWs/MMOs, when MTV (or anybody) develops a new product, no matter how ludicrous or dumb, it’s not going to do anything from an economic standpoint but drive interest and dollars into the market. Nobody who was going to play the new MechWarrior or D&D or even Sim VW is going to NOT play it because of VLB.
We’re at a stage where more and more entertainment forms are being driven over the Web. Mainstream TV and movies are hitting about 4 years before they were predicted by the industry pundits back around the Bubble in 1999. 2010 was the date by which they said we’d be watching network TV online. I can download Monday’s entire episode of “Heroe’s” right now. I can get some TV on my iPod. And then there’s the social “emotainment” (MY WORD! I CLAIM IT! MINE MINE MINE!) of posting, IMing, photo-blogging, tagging and yakking on MySpace, Facebook, blogs like this, etc. All kinds of stuff to do online. Not to mention non-social games. And just reading stuff. And doing your homework. And… and… and…
Right now, from a marketing/economic standpoint, VWs/MMOs need to be worring about “Desperate Housewives” and Bebo. Any new entries to the online game market at this point are growing the pie. And a kid who tries VLB may just end up enjoying the experience enough that somebody on the dunes, slightly harder core, can convince them that “real” games rock.
Early business movers in the space need to find ways to drag consumers from other media into our world, and worlds, rather than worrying about muddying the existing waters. Because games are better than TV and other more passive entertainments — I really believe that.
And I bet Raph agrees with me on that one… ; )
Actually, Andy, I do agree with pretty much everything you said. But I do have to note that in VWs, the “early mover” advantage has been lost around three times already (and I don’t mean UO to EQ to WoW, either, but rather entire business ecologies, such as closed online services gaming losing it to the Internet-based games). The current pattern looks very much like that last one to me, only with slightly different actors. The pattern is the same: less geeky, more mainstream, and better funded uses of the medium trumping the existing leaders. Few companies survive from the last wave, when the leaders were named Simutronics, Mythic, and Kesmai.
But your overall point is well-taken — the business is definitely in growth mode right now, not “red ocean” of fighting over capped market share.
Andy… think of yourself as Prometheus. =P
Also, I don’t recall Einstein riding the wave. Not only was he not in business, but he also railed against the rising tide of his age (quantum mechanics) and was more or less yesterday’s news by the time he died.
I think railroads might be a very good analogue. A painful adjustment and they are drowned out in the sense that many people think they went the way of the dinosaurs. Nonetheless they are still very much around
http://www.aar.org/PubCommon/Documents/AboutTheIndustry/Overview.pdf
I think Andy Havens nailed it.
and in at least some cases do ok financially
http://www.cn.ca/about/investors/pdf/FinancialStatisticalHighlights.pdf
Two little choice, and misunderstanding the space:
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=m_gladwell
To much choice and consumer paralysis:
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=b_schwartz
The thing about railroads and airplanes is that the change there was about technology. Here, we do have technology, but it is technology that will put EB Games out of business, not EA or other publishers. EA can put up their own digital distribution sites if they want. Or not. But it’s up to them. It just takes an investment of some capital of which they have far more than any of the new entrants into the field.
Publishers exist in a lot of markets, with some name or another. Books, movies, music, games. Just to name the big ones. And they exist because it makes sense, marketwise, for them to exist. Publishers aren’t so much a matter of technology as they are simply a sort of specialized investor. They’re backers. They invest in a given field, and an ability to distribute and market to that field, and then invest in people creating products in that field in order to take part of the profits from those products.
Whereas I have no idea what products will be sold in 1,000 years I can still imagine that there will be publishing firms of some sort or another investing in and selling them. Because technology has nothing to do with the notion of publishing. Maybe we won’t have publishers then, but that would be due to a change in how we do markets, not in technology.
EA and the like may or may not make the cut into the next generation of gaming but, if they don’t make it, it won’t be because the idea of publishers is an obsolete concept. It will be because they weren’t savvy enough to adapt to the market changes and (in all likelihood) other publishers took over the market from them and we’ll just have someone else selling millions of copies of Madden ’19 (because the market for that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere whether digital distribution is involved or not).
[…] Glad you brought this up. IMO it’s kinda true, it’s kinda long-running, and it’s kinda weird lol. But I’m a user-created, media-rich, web-connected virtual world guy first and foremost, so I notice biases in the other direction as much as I enjoy biases pointed in my own. I’m interested, as a vision, in the 3D web that we can use as an extension of everything great about the 2D web, and SL feeds that beast. Terra Nova raised me (I’m crazy enough to have read every post and almost every comment since it started :), and I know my straight-up MMOs and history (thanks largely to everyone here), but I’m more of a 3pointD-style guy because of the lack of enthusiasm you mention. That energy is elsewhere. I think this issue of SL within the Terra Nova community is maybe another more beardy level of the video game/virtual world culture clash that Raph’s been writing about. Does that sound right? […]