JoiIto
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Revenge of the Joi of Warcraft
Serial entrepreneur and unofficial World of Warcraft spokesman Joi Ito recently sat down in the studio of Mobuzz.tv for an interview, which you can check out on their site. He touches on many of the most interesting aspects of the game (IMHO) including leadership and guild management, trust and bonding, achievement and value, and the implications of interface design when the current cadre of young players enters the business world and expects great tools to help coordinate personnel in that ever-elusive "real world." As one who sees a lot of parallels between my experiences in game and my "day job" experiences in the virtual office at Weblogs, Inc., I appreciate the way Joi communicates how World of Warcraft can provide inspiration for future leaders in the future office, as well as discussing the value that different and historically undervalued leadership qualities can bring to group coordination and management -- whilst simultaneously conveying the satisfaction and fun of pwning face.
Shawn Fanning's Rupture: social software meets WoW
Shawn Fanning's second post-Napster startup will be far more L2P than P2P -- set to launch sometime next month, Rupture is a virtual social community for World of Warcraft. The details regarding the functionality of the site are a bit slim, but it's clear the project will go beyond something like Warcraft Social, which is a completely external social network to WoW, as well as beyond the data extraction functionality provided by Allakhazam via WowReader and Thottbot via Cosmos plugin. Rupture will reportedly pull in-game data and publish it to a personalized site guilds can use to track stats and better manage their playing. Rupture's investors include Ron Conway and Joi Ito, venture capitalist and level 60 mage of We Know fame. Considering Ito's investment history in social software and stated interest in developing guild management tools, my hunch is that Rupture will look a lot like groupware for guilds. As an officer in my main guild, I'd agree that current in-game management tools are lacking. Tools like GEM are a start, but the idea of a one-stop shop for guild management is appealing. A web-based tool would also be ideal for officers and players who can't fire up the WoW client at work but might have time to log in to the website during the day. Of course, many guilds (including my own) already have their own websites with forums and DKP tracking, so the question will be whether this tool will be compelling enough to replace or augment home-grown systems already in place. A hosted solution like Rupture might be a great solution for a new or smaller guild to access a central management space without requiring someone to have the tech-fu (and the time) to hack something together via PHP Nuke and EQ DKP, etc. What do you guys think -- does your guild get along just fine with your current management systems? Is there a market for this kind of tool?[Thanks, Undying]
Rob Pardo and the Success of Warcraft
Joi Ito has a post up about Rob Pardo and the success of World of Warcraft as a casual game. And, while a lot of people (myself included) believe the game stops being so "casual" when players hit level 60, the experience up to that point is much more casual and accessible than in other games of this nature. And even at level 60, the raiding experience can be casual as well - if you can find, or build, the right type of guild.
Business Lessons in World of Warcraft
While some wonder if we're learning the right things from WoW, others wonder if we aren't paying attention to the right things - specifically how World of Warcraft can teach us how to work together in a business environment. Tech entrepreneur Joi Ito (whom we've mentioned before) spoke this weekend at the ScreenBurn Beta Festival on the lessons businesses might pick up from managing a Warcraft guild. I personally have to wonder why Warcraft is chosen as the example when any multi-player game can have the same teamwork and guild management issues - perhaps its massive popularity is just starting to make these parallels obvious as business-oriented people are pulled into the game world.Update: Ito has a lengthy blog post discussing the topic, as well. Good reading!
