A World is Popular Because...

Moderator: OpenSim Hypergrid Managers

Post Reply
User avatar
Nalates
Member
Posts: 437
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:50 pm

A World is Popular Because...

Post by Nalates »

I've been curious about what makes worlds like Uru and WoW popular with players. Feeding into that curiosity new World Notes just rant an article comparing SL, Facebook, and their competitors. Ginsu Yoon, LL VP of Corp. Dev. until 2009, is quoted as is Farhad Manjoo in Facebook Now in Similar Position With Consumers and Competitors as Second Life

The more I use Facebook the more I see the similarities with SL.

The recent issues around OHBot and privacy are given another point of perspective in Manjoo's article. Giving up Facebook because of a lack of privacy and then using Twitter to announce they are quiting Facebook? No grip... no grip at all...
Yoon wrote:One lesson in all of this for me was that most critics and competition never really understood our business. Our operation was so multifaceted and complex that every competitor only focused on the one or two things that they believed were important, and individually or collectively they never assembled a cohesive whole that could challenge our market dominance.
I expect the above to be a facet of development in Open Uru. Programmers and story tellers as well as age builders focusing on what they think is important or enjoy. None of the individual pieces will likely be that popular. Cyan pulling all the parts they think are good and improvements will likely make their shard the more popular one. Some shard operators will likely do something similar.

Until someone finds the key to game popularity for Uru I expect it to stay a small niche game. Social networks like Facebook and to some measure SL have what Yoon refers to as 'an overriding service reason' that makes them popular. LL is looking to adopt Facebook book features and move beyond Facebook or at the least for now integrate with Facebook. Uru is growing some of the basic social tools, WhoM - who's on, for instance. A Twitter tie in...

It will be interesting to see how Uru changes and which of the more fun ideas make it into MQO and from MQO to Uru. Just as we play with ideas in SL & OS we may find Uru being a bit of a test platform for MQO and future Cyan games. Some where a long the way we may find the magic combination that provides an balance between entertainment and an overriding service reason.
Nalates
GoW, GoMa and GoA apprentice - Guildmaster GoC - SL = Nalates Urriah
Post Reply

Return to “Worlds Index”