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The future of VastPark looks bright
Sandbox virtual worlds are becoming the newest thing these days following the success of Second Life and the anticipated success of Metaplace, but VastPark has recently announced a partnership with a few companies that will serve to improve their spot among the ranks. First there was the agreement they signed with NICTA, Australia's Information and Communications Technology Research Center, and now they've formed a relationship with TurboSquid to access their catalog of over 195,000 3D models. This combined with the announcement that they'll be running their virtual economy through Twofish's economic Element engine.What's this mean for the players? It means a much more flexible economic system where you are in control of your own currencies, the value of your goods and the management of your markets. This basically means that each player-created world will have it's own economy. VastPark founder and CEO Bruce Joy explained, "This is a new step in bringing economic power to the masses. We also see it as a fundamental way for us to build value in our platform, as it allows for the creation of realistic, responsive and highly customizable virtual worlds."
Twofish to make microtransaction economies easier with middleware
Gamasutra notes that a new middleware company is offering online game developers tools to manage their in-game economies. Twofish is the name of the startup, and their offering (Twofish Elements) is intended to plug directly into the backend of any in-development Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Their product seems to be geared at allowing indie developers to offer a microtransaction economy similar to the one Nexon uses in Maple Story.The company was founded two years ago, in part by Lee Crawford - a veteran of Yahoo! Games, Shockwave.com and Segasoft Networks. In order to prove out their technology they're also developing an online game to utilize it. Entitled Edgeracers, the offering will feature "the culture of car customization and casual racing", and should release within the next few months. Crawford has a few comments featured in the announcement writeup, and (along with many players) views the move to microtransactions as a rough road for games and developers. "We see Twofish Elements being a way to help independent publishers and developers compete on a level footing ... In our view, the world is moving towards the mass-market consumer and, ultimately, the hardcore player going to free-to-play with microtransactions," Crawford said.
