Virtual Worlds News Interview
I did an interview with Virtual Worlds News, which has just been posted. There’s a fair amount of crunchy Metaplace info there, plus echoes of the recent discussion on categories, and of course my usual trademark philosophical rambling…
I do worry about virtual worlds having this enormous potential value, like social value, in terms of self-discovery and bridging gaps in cultures and bringing people together who wouldn’t normally interact. I want them to reach their potential for that. That’s the big boon they can bring society. I do worry that won’t happen. The Internet has the great advantage of letting the person who didn’t fit in in their small town find other people, but it also has the disadvantage of letting you avoid talking to people not like you. I see that as risky. I think it’s important to always be encountering viewpoints other than your own. With Metaplace as a network, it lets you serendipitously encounter that, but I do worry about it.
9 Responses to “Virtual Worlds News Interview”
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Raph, as usual, has beentalking a lot about virtual worldsand what defines a virtual world. So that got me to thinking. I decided to attempt to break down and define what I consider to be the Primary Layers of Online Virtual Worlds. Every Online Virtual World will have at least one foot in each of the Primary
You wrote:
I worry about all my friends who are still making the big triple-A MMOs. I don’t think they’re going away, but their potential role is diminished.”
Do you feel that way because you feel the absolute size of their pie is going to diminish or just their relative size? In the latter case, it doesn’t matter. Having 200k players paying $15/month is the same now as it was in 1999, inflation aside, for example.
–matt
200k players a month at $15 doesn’t include the fact that the development costs are just about doubling each generation on the AAA games.
“We figure the Flash client will be the commonest client. Flash is ways away from being able to do good 3D. The system’s [Metaplace’s] architected to support 3D, but since we picked Flash, we don’t have the 3D rendering. If someone makes a downloadable client that does it, that’s great. The way it works is that it’s up to the client writer. A full 3D environment is possible.”
Ouch. Not good news for eye-candy afficiandos. ‘…Is possible’ seems, umm, luke warm. I could be over-analyzing words though.
It’s not lukewarm at all. I just want to be upfront about the fact that it isn’t 3d right now. But the whole system is designed to accommodate it in the future.
Look at this this way — the default, and the way all the other 2d environments are set up, would be “is not possible.”
You know, this may sound incredibly naive, but I’ve been meaning to nail some things down. There’s been a lot of debate amongst designers about microtransactions and monthlies – heh, as heard at AGDC.
My main question revolves around why microtransactions evolved: Have the billing models been following technology, or is the technology following the players’ need?
For instance, the earlier games mirrored phone call and service costs by the minute/hour. Then The Realm, Meridian 59, and Ultima Online helped initiate the shift to monthly rates. What enabled this? Was it the wider use of credit cards, checks – the innovation of gametime cards? The move to broadband?
Following that, when developers realized they could monetize portions of their game content and sell it off in bits and pieces, that wasn’t anything special: it’s still a credit card being charged $10, right? The game itself became the focus of the payment shift by creating a virtual currency with a deposit (bought by the credit card), that could be used inside. Was the innovation there just integrating billing directly into the game experience?
I’ve lived in Asia, played lots of games, so perhaps I’m biased towards thinking that MTX is a powerhouse that we, over here, just don’t seem to be good at yet. Do you think Metaplace is going to be able to shift that perception?
Microtransactions are more popular than a lot of “hard-core” gamers think they are. Games like Neopets (which just added a MTA system…I know this because my wife plays it)are causing a shift in the attitudes. My aforementioned wife is a perfect example; she’s always been violently, vocally opposed to, and I quote, “paying real money for virtual goods”, especially when it came up while we were playing WoW together.
Now, she’s getting interested. And yet, to me, she’s still not seeing the bigger picture. The Neopets model is of the “money for clothes” variety…the closest thing I’ve personally seen that’s moving it more toward a billing model is NCSoft’s “Dungeon Runners”. The basic game is free…you get a better experience if you pay a small fee per month. That doesn’t take it far enough in my opinion, though…MTA will eventually evolve into a multi-leveled tier.
It all comes back to one simple basic idea…is the game FUN? Do you enjoy playing it? I believe we’ll see more and more of a drift toward the emphasis being placed on that, especially as the generation that grew up with gaming a part of their lives continues to age and enter “the real world” of jobs and children (as they already have). Make it something fun and addictive, and the pricing model becomes irrelevant to some degree.
Metaplace sounds like it works is a way that is not too far off of the open source Ruleset Modeling Language that I have been working on for the last year or so at Project Angela. It is supposed to free the designer from caring too much about the client, or even the server platform. The designer could design his world to be accessible with a graphical client, or a text client.
I don’t know whether to feel vindicated or horrified…
You know, Unity3d would be a great tool for you to write a 3d client. Its just about to come out with its 2.0 version, I think about monday. I’ve been working with it on a casual game (also about to be released) and its really sweet, and has a great interface, one of the best pipelines I’ve ever seen or heard of. I think a Unity-based client would be a great way for people to build 3d spaces using your platform.
Oh, it also can compile to: a Windows-based .exe download; an OSX executable; a wiget; and a cross platform web-player (which requires a plug-in. So you can get browser-based 3d going on with it.