Bringing MMOG Development to the Masses
I’m thinking about massively multiplayer games. Really, I’ve been thinking about them ever since I was addicted to BatMUD years ago. (I’m ashamed of how many hours I spent on BatMUD. Didn’t I have research to do?) Now, I’m thinking about MMOGs again, spurred on by a combination of hearing Christopher Klaus speak about Kaneva, and reading Pete Cashmore’s post about Multiverse. Kaneva and Multiverse are two players in an emerging business of providing MMOG hosting for the average Joe. In both cases, the hope is to bring innovative games to a new market of casual MMOG players by leveraging the creative power of you, me, and our friends sitting in a garage. Both companies will provide servers, a development platform, and a method of revenue sharing. And, both companies have good people behind them. Christopher Klaus formed ISS in 1994. The guys behind Multiverse (I keep trying to type Metaverse) are of Netscape fame. This will be interesting to watch.
The real question: is there a sufficient base of ambitious, amateur coders/modelers/artists/designers out there to make these companies work? I hope so, because I’d love to see innovative competition on the MMOG front. Other than having pretty graphics, graphical MMOGs don’t seem much different than good old MUDs. I’d like to see some new forms of interaction, and more interesting, intelligent ways to use the fact that thousands of people can share the same virtual environment. I’m also interested in non-entertainment uses of these spaces, such as MOOSECrossing.