Metaplace!

 Posted by (Visited 33322 times)  Game talk, Gamemaking
Sep 182007
 

It is an amazing relief to finally get to talk about what we are making.

It’s been interesting to see the reactions everywhere. Lots of folks “get it,” some don’t (and that’s fine, no need to persuade everyone with just a FAQ and an eight minute demo!). Lots of folks saying “exactly what I predicted!” — which is fair. 🙂

For me, the bottom line is this: man, I have never had as much fun working on something as I have had working on this.

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Monday Mailbag: a neat graph, producers, UO, UO…

 Posted by (Visited 7980 times)  Mailbag
Sep 172007
 

Gene Endrody of MaidMarian.com pointed out this cool Alexa graph that shows how much seasonal trends matter for virtual worlds:

Alexa traffic graph

I did an Alexa compare of traffic for the last six months for MaidMarian.com, ToonTown.com and Habbo.com. Habbo’s traffic is from the US site only – compared with MaidMarian.com’s worldwide, so it’s not a fair comparison per se. What I found very interesting was how close the three correlate. You can see the boost that summer holidays provide, however the ebb and flow of web traffic is really obvious. I would be really cool if we had a Dow Jones Industrial Average for web traffic to compare against.

Yeah, I think any of the operators who have been running more than one world have noticed this. There’s definite seasonal trends to virtual world usage. We need some worlds popular in the Southern Hemisphere to even out the curves! 🙂

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The Sunday Poem: 48

 Posted by (Visited 4974 times)  The Sunday Poem
Sep 162007
 

A number shy of fifty, count short of a century’s half.
An age where half the time remaining is decline.
A span of time not quite tomorrow, a batch of hours
Piled past a rising sun and past a moonlit night.

The gap of time to find a killer before he’s off scot free;
The span of time for ecstasy to filter through a brain.
“A day or two,” the time we cite when something needs
Some getting over, the “she’ll be better in” refrain.

Anticipation’s simplest metric. The continental States.
The year of Paul of Tarsus’ mission, when singing
visions Damascened his eyes. Two even pair of dozens,
a pile of potential chickens, a deck without the kings.

All numbers have their secrets; odd or even, prime or strange.
All figures have their seasons, and all periods have a range.

Cross-learning with Habbo and WoW…

 Posted by (Visited 3943 times)  Game talk
Sep 162007
 

Gamasutra – Question Of The Week: World Of Warcraft Vs. Habbo ?

“Following the Austin Game Developers Conference last week, how important do you think online worlds such as Habbo and web-based social gaming in general is to the future of online games, compared to existing game biz successes like World Of Warcraft? What can WoW learn from Habbo, and vice versa?”

Obviously, a question that I am very interested in seeing the answers to!

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