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From Virtual World to MMO: Gaia Online
"A lot of MMOs have the same experience where[ever] you go or no matter what you've done for how many people are in the area. It's a big treadmill of killing monsters and getting loot. We still have that, but we also have aboveground game like golf that people can play even if there's a battle raging around them." Dave Georgeson, Senior Producer for Gaia Online.As Gaia Online prepares for its closed beta, we're getting a bit more of a glimpse into what this MMO version of the current virtual world is all about. In a recent interview with Dave Georgeson, he explains why they're making that transition from a virtual world to an MMO and why it will be beneficial for existing players, as well as new players.Building an MMO from an existing fan-base is a helpful first step, just look at WoW and LotRO, but is it enough to make it last in this still-not-officially-named MMO? With over five million current Gaia Online players, you'd think an instant audience is a good thing, but the problem becomes more an issue of keeping those current users satisified with their new MMO shell, and simultaneously drawing in new players.
Games that could be MMOs: Pokmon
The Pokémon brand is one of the largest and most successful franchises the gaming world has ever spawned. There are no less than 10 videogames, 1 trading card game, 12 movies, an animated series, 10 soundtrack CDs, a bunch of manga -- but no official MMO.Why this hasn't already happened is beyond the imagination of this blogger. C'mon, a world in which thousands, if not millions of wanna-be Pokémon trainers are working hard to be number one, constantly pitting their captive critters against each other, and every iteration of the game franchise is only one-on-one? This isn't rocket science; it's not even science fair volcano science. But if we were to imagine a Pokémon MMO, it would look something like this:
Gaia Online borrows a trick from Willy Wonka
Gaia Online, the virtual community that boasts over 5 million players, will be present at this year's New York Comic-Con, from April 18th to the 20th. They're encouraging both existing members and people who've never played before to drop by their booth and take a chance at winning a golden ticket, good for early entrance to the beta test of their upcoming casual MMO, as yet unnamed.They're also offering other prizes, such as an in-game Angelic Halo, Gold cards (worth varying amounts of Gaia currency), and a limited-edition ring for use in the MMO to attendees of the Gaia Panel at 5:00PM on Saturday, April 19th. Full information at their site.If they manage to convert their existing playerbase to their MMO, they could be seen as a serious contender for size, right out of the gate. We'll keep our eyes open and our ears to the ground for more info on this as it gets released.[Source]
Make way for maintenance day
Maintenance day is underway until 2pET/11aPT and many WoW fans are searching for something to do, while players with day jobs log on to point out that they can never play during these hours. Fortunately, we have lots going on today, as well as some highlights from the past week that you won't want to miss. Wrath of the Lich King: Compilation of everything we know of to date about Death Knights, the new hero class we'll be seeing with the expansion. The new expansion is now in alpha testing! Read on to find out what this means, as well as what it doesn't mean. Arena Season 4: A great analysis of when arena season 4 might begin.
[1.Local]: The best of WoW Insider comments this week
WoW Insider readers are a talkative bunch. All of us here at WI monitor our own posts for comments, but there's not always time to keep up with what's happening on all the other posts. And if those of us who hang around here all the time can't keep up, we wondered how much our readers were missing, too?Enter [1.Local], our new roundup bringing you a smattering of the zingers that may have gotten buried in the peanut gallery. We'll serve up both the sublime and the ridiculous, the thought-provoking and the just plain silly -- definitely a cut above Barrens chat (although we do admit that "Barrens Chat" was a strong contender for the feature's title).This week's reader comments ranged from thoughtful ruminations on gender and modern culture's definition of "beauty" to an ongoing tussle over what constitutes success for an MMO. Be sure to dive into the comments area and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.Warning: Some offensive language mentioned after the jump.
Craig Sherman of Gaia Online: WoW is "not a success"
See if you can follow this reasoning: WoW has ten million players, which is nice and all, but there are actually 800 million teens in the world. Therefore, since Blizzard hasn't reached even 10% of them (80 million), WoW is not actually a success. That's what Craig Sherman of Gaia Online (a casual, browser-based MMO) said to folks at the M16 Marketing conference in San Francisco this week. He claims that WoW's subscription fee has hampered its growth, and that it would be even bigger if there was a free-to-play model.But his reasoning is unstable there to say the least. Part of the reason WoW is so successful is that Blizzard has had the cash to put up for new servers, new content, and a brand new HQ, and with a free-to-play model, they wouldn't be making nearly as much money as they are. Not to mention the quality of the players -- in my experience, part of the reason WoW is such a good game is that when people pay to play it, you often get a much more interested and involved player base. And of course, while yes, WoW hasn't reached a larger fraction of its "potential" player base (however you define that -- what makes Sherman think that Blizzard is targeting teens at all?), anyone who thinks a 10 million player MMO is "not a success" needs to examine the rest of the MMO market more closely.Will there be a game bigger than World of Warcraft? It sure seems like it -- at some point in the future, there should be a game that does go free to play and does hit on all the marks -- casual, hardcore, serious, fun -- that World of Warcraft does (in fact, maybe WoW itself will someday open up a free-to-play model). But to claim that WoW has somehow suffered from its subscription model is pretty far from the truth.[Via Worldofwar.net]
Craig Sherman: WoW not a success
It appears that Gaia's Craig Sherman thinks that World of Warcraft isn't a success when compared to the hundreds of millions of "willing-to-play" teenagers it hasn't managed to claim as subscribers. A ridiculous claim, as success is a relative term -- especially when comparing free-to-play titles with something like World of Warcraft. We're not saying that games like Maple Story or Puzzle Pirates aren't good, they're just a different breed of MMOs.Maybe we should measure MMO success by degree of pop-culture status: Has Maple Story had commercials featuring William Shatner, Mr. T and Vern Troyer? Will Puzzle Pirates become a theatrical film anytime soon? No, but that doesn't make these games any less successful in their own right. Plus, that's a ridiculous way of measuring success. There's a lot of differences in these games, but one thing is for sure -- World of Warcraft is definitely a successful game.
Gaia Online costs $25 million a year to run
When you take a look at the casual-focused Gaia Online, you probably don't think that the community-central site has been costing around 25 million each year -- well, according to company CEO Craig Sherman. It's kind of surprising to hear, since Gaia was a small start-up and has only been asking for around 100k to 500k for brands that want entry into the world of Gaia. We guess you have to spend money to make money, but that's a whole boatload of cash to throw at such a small start-up. It seems to have paid off for the creators of Gaia Online, at least. They're reportedly starting to see deals in the higher six figures range. We're happy it worked out for them, but this is definitely a good example of how risky the MMO market can be even for any sort of game a developer might want to put out there. We shudder at the thought of how much cash has been dropped on some of the upcoming mainstream titles this year.
GDC08: Gaia Online launching casual MMO
At GDC this afternoon Gaia Online's Craig Sherman announced that Gaia is developing a free, flash-based to play casual MMO. Though you may presume this is just another web-based casual game, Sherman says it will be a "real MMO." It will be launching this summer and Gaia expects it to become one of the top MMOs in the world within the first few months -- after all, they already have a user-base of 5 million players who want this kind of game play, so they aren't starting from scratch. Sherman wouldn't give us a name for the game (saying that they'd solicited names from current Gaia users and received around 20,000 responses), but ensured us that it would be a full-scale MMO (with combat, etc) with a heavy social aspect. Though we're hungry for more details, summer is only a few months away!
GDC 08: Entertainment content convergence in online worlds
We spent most of Monday ensconced in the GDC Worlds in Motion summit track, which made "standing room only" seem extremely spacious -- most of the sessions were packed to the gills and then some. It seems like more than a few industry types are interested in the intersections between gaming and virtual worlds. Case in point, the following session we've paraphrased (hopefully not too liberally!) from Reuben Steiger, CEO of Milllions of Us, a company that builds marketing campaigns and content for virtual worlds. Reuben: Storytelling is the bedrock of human culture. (Looking at a slide with a real campfire on the left and a user-created campfire in Second Life on the right) -- users in virtual worlds are recreating this storytelling tradition. I'm going to make a contention: the internet has failed as a storytelling medium. Instead, the norm is bathroom humor and ridiculous jokes. So virtual worlds: are they games or not? What defines a game -- linguists and semioticians get real worked up about it. The audience might say "virtual worlds are games without rules, competition, goals or fun." And it's hard to blame them. Extreme openness has defined virtual worlds, where fun can be in a way you define as opposed to what some game developer feels is fun. But the appeal of virtual worlds is that we can tell stories on a broader and less walled playing field.
Gaia Online's virtual gear gets real
I haven't played Gaia Online at all, and we've only mentioned it once or twice here so far on Massively, but I am really impressed by their Gaia Gear online store. They are apparently taking in-game items, and recreating them in real-life form. Now, these items are all "donation items" (now known as Monthly collectibles)-- they're designed and sold by Gaia for real money, supposedly to support the server and associated costs of the game. So basically these are RMT items in-game, not special loots available only in certain places.But it is incredibly cool that they've faithfully recreated this stuff. And I can't help but imagine what it would be like for other games to do this. What if you could buy a Perdition's Blade to commemorate all that time you spent getting one in Molten Core? Or a real-life model of a Hulk, or actual reproductions of player-created items in Second Life? I'm sure this isn't a new idea (we're already willing to pay large amounts of money to make virtual items and people real). But it is an exciting one.[Via Wonderland]
Regarding content in virtual worlds: build it, or buy it?
For those of you who may not be completely familiar with Second Life, one of its biggest draws is that it's a haven for content creators, as opposed to virtual worlds like There.com, which doesn't let its users build anything of their own. Now, of course, what you get in exchange for the freedom to build anything you want is having to see what everyone else is building, and this includes the infamous flying penises and other Objects You'd Rather Not Have Seen, Thanks.But, as my friend Eric Rice recently pointed out to me, there is something to be said for not having to create your world yourself. "I don't always wanna COOK dinner", he opined, and I know what he means. In my over 2 years as a SL resident, I've not created one thing; I have neither the knack nor the interest, frankly, though I do enjoy the fruits of the labors of other residents. Shopping is great fun in SL, and probably on the top of a great many lists of enjoyable activities. Exploring is equally as enjoyable, and it's this aspect of virtual worlds that deserves some scrutiny. More after the jump.
Omnicom drives a stake into Millions of Us
One of the more recognizable names among metaverse development companies (MDCs) is Reuben Steiger's Millions of Us. Steiger's MoU has done work in Second Life, Gaia Online and Zwinky. Omnicom, reported by Reuters to be the world's largest advertising services company, has bought a stake in the company. A majority stake, or just a share - nobody's saying. Inevitably, the sale is being compared to CBS's investment in rival MDC, Electric Sheep Company - a partnership which is leading to the joint release of a CSI:NY episode revolving around Second Life, and a customized, user-friendly Second Life client. What Omnicom and Millions of Us have planned at this stage is anyone's guess - advertising is where the smart money is, of course. Could MoU be becoming the general virtual worlds arm of Omnicom? Could be.
