It’s nice to finally see real movement towards a very old idea, the world that surfaces radically different experiences on different client platforms. With the announcement that Disney Fairies will have a Nintendo DS version, we see this finally coming to fruition.

Making clients that work on more than one platform or device is a tricky challenge, and one thing that has been talked about forever it seems is the notion of having a separate client that accesses a different portion of the world than the main client. For example, every MMO I have ever been involved with has discussed the notion of a cell phone client just for auctions, trading, checking your shops, and other sorts of low-rendering-requirements tasks.  And yet, the movement towards this stuff always seems sort of tentative.

Disney’s jumping in with both feet, with the notion from the get-go being that Fairies is a property you interact with on many levels, and the DS version and the web version are just two ways (with perhaps “central authority” existing in the web version). For that matter, the toys are also just another way.

When you are engaged in the process of building alternate realities, this is the right way to think about it. The client is just a window into a larger world. Creators should be thinking of their worlds as properties and entities that exist independent of rendering method, interaction method, and so on. And the strongest properties will be those which are not rendering dependent and yet retain a strong central creative identity, designed for everywhere.

Universal client will come — but there are always going to be different real life situations that demand different levels of engagement, and you want your players to be able to engage in every way they might want. Forcing them to sit at a desk is to force them to interact with your brand your way, not their way.