GDC08 Highlights: Freaky Creatures, Habbo and Love
Freaky Creatures
"This is like Pokémon, but far, far cooler."
Drive to toy store. Buy cool monster action figure. Discover flash drive buried in packaging. Use it to upload a digital version of your creature and then pit that bad boy in head-to-head combat against other players and their pet arsenal online. That, my friends, is Freaky Creatures. Don't pretend you're not drooling to learn more. %Gallery-16481%
Habbo Hotel
Habbo Hotel devs talk niche markets
Sulka Haro, lead designer on the wildly popular Habbo Hotel virtual world, gave the Worlds in Motion summit audience an in-depth half-hour rundown on the Habbo phenomenon. At its core, the Sulake company project is a meeting space for teens - a place to hang out and be someone else for a few hours. The fact that the company can boast millions and millions of unique users worldwide, though, speaks to something many have grasped for and few have succeeded at: a virtual world where people feel truly comfortable.
Love
Experimental MMO ftw
Every once in a while you have one of those unique experiences where you catch a glimpse of inspirational human intelligence. We were lucky enough to have such an experience at GDC in the hour we spent with Eskil Steenberg, the gifted programmer behind the fledgling one-man MMO project, Love. Once you get past the stage of incredulity at the idea that anyone would even attempt to create a massive game as a solo effort in the age of WoW-sized development and content teams, you start to get a window into exactly why this work in progress is unusual, preciously unique and extremely exciting. %Gallery-16906%
Next: The future of Virtual Worlds and the end of GDC08
