Archive for September, 2007

After months of anticipation Halo is here along with all the noise fans can make and Microsoft can buy. The buzz volume is understandable given what’s at stake.

The New York Times reports “The success of Halo 3 is critical for Microsoft, which has struggled to get its Xbox game players into homes around the world. While it is primarily a game machine, the Xbox 360 also plays DVDs and movies downloaded from the Internet. Microsoft views the game machine as an entry point into the home, where it may serve as an entertainment hub.”

I admit all the buzz has me going and I can’t wait to see what Redmond has wrought. However the buzz over Halo and Xbox obscures the fact that millions of laptop and desktop computers — and YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook — are already their owners/families entertainment hub. This halo of attention distracts from the news out of Arizona about Google’s emerging interest in the metaverse, which Virtual World News reported on Monday (coincidentally while I was writing the previous post about the convergence of MMOGs and social media in browser-based games). Raph Koster and Lee Wilson also picked up on the news.

The Virtual World News story also connected the dots between the blind beta test at Arizona State University and Google’s determination to bump MySpace out of it’s current first-place position in social media. Here’s a screenshot of what ASU students saw (click to enlarge). On the same day VWN posted its report, the Vallewag chimed in that “the real Googler behind its virtual world was very likely Google’s engineering manager Niniane Wang. Prior to her move to California in 2003, she was a lead design engineer at Microsoft Games working on Flight Simulator 2004 and racing games. Sounds like the perfect background for a fly-through metaverse.” Could the choice of ASU have anythig to do with professor James Gee’s recent move from the University of Wisconsin to Arizona?

A handful of US and European developers have been working in stealth mode on game engines and frameworks with low barriers of entry: inexpensive or free, browser based, pre-built components and code. Now that these products are beginning to come into view it’s notable that most are using social media as an integral part of their business model and banking on users to build a good deal of the content.

Arguably the most anticipated of the web-bred MMOs is San Diego based Areae, in part becuase of founder Raph Koster’s street cred in the MMOG world. They’ve been laboring for months under a level of secrecy Apple would be proud, but finally tipped their hand at the TechCrunch Conference where they announced and demoed Metaplace, “…a next-generation virtual worlds platform designed to work the way the Web does. Instead of giant custom clients and huge downloads, Metaplace lets you play the same game on any platform that reads our open client standard. We supply a suite of tools so you can make worlds, and we host servers for you so that anyone can connect and play.”

“You should be able to stage up a massively multiplayer world with basic chat and a map you can build on in less than five minutes. It’s that easy. Inherit a stylesheet — puzzle game, or shooter, or chat world — and off you go! Building maps and places is as easy as pasting in links from the Web, and dragging and dropping the pictures into your world.

“What’s more, you can link your world to someone else’s world. Put a doorway in your virtual apartment that leads to Pirate Vs Ninja-land! Stick your world in a widget on your Facebook or MySpace profile. Mail it to a friend and they can log in with one click.” You can read more in Wagner James Au’s story about MetaPlace on GigaOm.

Alright, get me some of that! I’ll report more once I spend some time with the Alpha release. But meantime where there’s smoke there’s fire, and when you look around you find that MMOG pioneer Koster isn’t the only one out in front in this space. In coming weeks/months look for Alpha and Beta releases of social gaming products from these companies:

• Combining Flash with community features, Kongregate seeks to “create the leading online hub for players and game developers to meet up, play games, and operate together as a community.” Similar to Manifesto Games which publishes and sells independent product, a portion of revenues - in this case from advertising - evidently goes to the developers supporting the site

• Bay Area developer Roblox has an Alpha release of a web service that promises a “Free virtual world-building game with avatar chat, 3D environments and physics” and allows users to build MMOG environments using Lego-like building blocks of graphics and code. Though the business model and positioning of Roblox is not entirely clear, it looks like their high quality physics engine is a key differentiator that gives them the potential to productize a version for the formal education market.

• Another new MMOG called Travian from Germany is a browser based game where you choose between three tribes in Romans, Gauls and Teutons, build and improve your village and I think eventually gain enough people and assets to raid other villages (I’m still building my village so what comes next isn’t that clear). Although there’s a Java chat client on the site, because it’s located a page away it doesn’t feel very well integrated with the game. This is an example of what *not* to do to foster social interaction, IMHO, though it may just be an early stage concession to getting the v1.o product out the door.

• What do you do when you mix social networking, avatars, and casual games? You get Flowplay, a “next generation social entertainment platform for casual games.” Not much on their site yet but Gamezebo has posted this interview with CEO Derrick Morton that sheds some light.

• New entrant Conduit Labs asks “Why can’t we do more together online? In the real world we get together to dance, play hoops, even skydive out of planes. Online we can add people to buddy lists, but there are few options when we actually want to create, compete, and play together.” Again, there’s not a lot on their website so try again next month or visit Conduit Lab’s blog for more info.

• InstantAction, born from the merger of Garage Games with Barry Diller’s InterActive Corporation. Though what they’re planning is a little vague, the partners claim to be “Introducing new technology which allows graphically rich, networked games to run in popular web browsers with no download installation, InstantAction will enable easy access to single player and multi player games with core-oriented mechanics and high-end visuals.” They have also announced a game development fund aimed at “fostering a new generation of game development for the internet.”

A few years ago a WoW avatar named Embir (a/k/a Lee Wilson, then a colleague at Pearson Education) approached me about the idea of using video games as learning tools. I’d had more than a passing interest in games since developing a MMOG concept prototype for Paramount Interactive and in a short time we partnered on a successful proposal to the company’s Innovation Fund, and got down to work.

One of the first things we discovered was the mountain of myths we’d have to overcome to get any traction with the then heretical idea that video games have a place in the classroom.

Fast forward several years: Although neither of us work at Pearson now we’ve continued to pursue research and due diligence, and have partnered on several MMOG research and development projects for the K-12 market. Earlier this year I wrote a piece on serious game engines and this week Technology & Learning published Lee’s new article about Video Game Myths.

Lee starts by describing how he started playing World of Warcraft with his kids (and occasionally with his colleague Ahuathil, er, Richard) while on the road.

I have since discovered a very vibrant community of academics, educators, students, and business types who agree that video games have a powerful potential for learning and training. As well, there is a growing body of practice, products, and research to support the notion that games are a valuable addition to the set of tools teachers are using in formal education.

The article continues to thoughtfully and convincingly debunk many of the myths we found when we set out on this quest. Don’t miss it, or the second installment which will be published by T&L next month.

Disney’s purchase of Club Penquin for $350 million (plus a follow-on $350 mil if certain performance targets are reached) may have contradicted my May 17 post naming SONY as the acquiring company (Global Warmng in Club Penguin) but it validated the kids MMOG space just the same. It also prompted me to log in and breath some life into my avatar Swiss Chard and I was just as impressed with Club Penquin’s overall user experience as when I analyzed the site for a client interested in the kids MMOG market earlier this year.

After waddling around for about an hour, however, I had the overwhelming feeling of consuming vast quantities of… empty calories.

Not that I’m one to deny anyone a little virtual waddling around — Club Penguin’s vast, colorful and decidedly social world delivers that all right — but after a while you start to ask yourself what’s the point? Am I able to have a real conversation with another penguin? Am I challenged do accomplish anything? Are the embedded games any more compelling because they’re inside of a virtual world? Um, no, not really. And I’m not the only one wondering.

Michael Arrington wrote on TechCrunch “I recently spoke to an exec of one of the companies that took a long look at Club Penguin before deciding to pass. They said the charitable donations were a big factor in passing. He also mentioned that much of the success of the company was driven by movies such as Happy Feet. How much longer are penguins really going to be the cool thing, I wondered.”

Arrington has it right. Being the next cool thing is great as far as it goes and in Club Penguin’s case it was worth a 5:1 premium on earnings. To go the distance, though, you’ve got to offer more. Whyville.net does that by offering a social milieu with games that are both fun to play and scientifically accurate simulations, and Whyvillian’s have been coming back for more since 1999. Will Club Penguin, Habbo and Nicktropolis get the message? To be continued…

There was a post on the New York Tech Meetup mailing list this morning, copied below, seeking help to find Steve Fosset. It’s a great example of Web 2.0 applications and crowd-sourcing, and their potential to make a difference. To participate login to the Amazon Mechanical Turk here.

On Monday, September 3, 2007, Steve Fossett, the first person to fly a plane around the world without refueling and the first person to fly around the world in a balloon went missing in Nevada. An airplane he was flying failed to return.

Although no one has any idea where he is, through the generous efforts of individuals at several organizations detailed satellite imagery has been made available for his last known whereabouts, and the project hosted by Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. If you are interested in helping with the search effort and can contribute a little bit of time to do so, go to http://www.mturk.com/ and sign in (or create) an account. This is a race against time and any help you can provide will make a huge difference. Friends and family of Steve Fossett would like to thank you for helping them with this cause.

A shout-out this morning to Lee Wilson who covered last week’s Austin Game Develpers Conference so well on his Education Business Blog. In Video Games, Virtual Worlds, and Education Publishing Lee covers several keynotes including one from Raph Koster, President of Areae:

The parallels between how the web is changing the game industry and the world of education publishing are fascinating. Because of the inherent lag in the education market we can learn a lot from how gaming companies are adapting to the web’s incursion into their business. Raph Koster, President of Areae, started [his presentation] by pointing out that 7 of the 8 largest MMOs are web based and that they have millions of monthly users. His message to the game developers was that by their standards the web based MMOs have horrible interfaces and very low production values. Game developers need to break out of their paradigms and start thinking of games that can be separated from their interface and design and still be compelling. Water dripping from your sword in foggy moonlight is cool, but it isn’t the game. Can you play on a phone? Can you play it on your TV? Could you play it on paper? Can you interface to the game from your GPS? The customers are already going there, better follow!

Lee’s earlier posts on the Austin Game Developers Conference (http://tinyurl.com/2po6ba and http://tinyurl.com/35awcg) include coverage of Blizzard Entertainment’s Mike Morhaime and the observation that

Blizzard matters to education because when you strip away the Orcs and Elves under the hood they have built an extremely elegant learning management system. As the undisputed world wide leader in the MMO space we have a lot to learn from their approach to building products and structuring their business.

For more coverage of Austin GDC and the overall business of educational technology, visit the Education Business Blog’s Serious Games category. Lee is a prolific blogger and has sharp insights into the convergence of educational publishing, technology and virtual worlds.