Virtual Worlds

There.com to add Mac support and Facebook plug-in

The virtual world, There.com, appears ready to reach for some new and broad audiences, announcing Tuesday night that it would finally be offering support for Mac OS X, as well as a new Facebook plug-in and an instant message application that can communicate directly with anyone on the Internet.

In October 2003, There, as it's known, launched to big headlines and heavy expectations.

One of the first 3D social digital virtual worlds, it presented users with a rich and complex environment complete with a functional economy, the ability to create content and even flying hoverboats for five.

But … Read more

AMC decides to allow fans' 'Mad Men' Twittering

It looks like wiser heads--or at least those who could be made to recognize a great PR opportunity--have prevailed at AMC.

If you're one of the many hooked fans of the cable channel's hit show, Mad Men, which chronicles the goings-on at a fictional 1960s New York ad agency, and you're also a Twitter user, you might have found yourself eagerly following tweets from folks like Don Draper, Roger Sterling, or Peggy Olson.

And getting people to follow the show's characters probably seemed like a clever way of using Twitter for marketing.

Except that AMC had … Read more

Serious games for serious people

In a paper titled "It's Time To Take Games Seriously," Forrester analysts TJ Keitt and Paul Jackson came up with a new phrase to describe video games:

"The phrase the industry should rally around is 'serious games' to bring together the numerous disciplines. However, Forrester recommends identifying individual games with the underlying goal of the game, for example, calling Volvo Car UK's game an immersive learning simulation. We don't see this being an issue in a few years, as the old guard in the workforce is replaced by younger colleagues. As this happens, doubts … Read more

'Sims 3' coming on February 20

Electronic Arts has announced that the third installation of The Sims, that game that rivals World of Warcraft in the "I got so addicted my boss almost fired me" department, will be debuting on February 20, 2009.

That's a worldwide release date for both in-store purchases and digital downloads. EA has famously devoted an entire division (or "label") to the blockbuster Sims franchise, in which players create their own families of virtual characters (or "sims") and let their lives unfold. The game was designed by Will Wright, whose new game Spore is hitting … Read more

Q&A: Will Wright talks 'Spore,' 'Sims,' science

His all-time favorite movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey and as a child, he aspired to be an astronaut so he can form colonies in space and help solve world overpopulation.

Now 48, Will Wright has yet to make it to the Milky Way, but he can take some pride in having created the best-selling PC game franchise of all time, The Sims. First released in 2000, the video game has sold over 100 million copies across the globe.

Developed at Maxis, which was co-founded by Wright and is now part of Electronic Arts, The Sims shot the American game designer to fame, earning him widespread recognition as one of the most important figures in the realm of video games.

Wright was in Singapore for the first time this week as part of a global promotional tour for EA's much-anticipated simulation game Spore, slated for mass release September 7.

During a game demo, he said the concept for Spore was spawned from a desire to encapsulate everything else that The Sims was unable to--leading to his initial moniker for the game, "SimsEverything."

His inspiration for the game also came from the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, an organization that aims to explore the origin of life and seek potential life-forms in the universe.

Wright explained that the fundamental concept behind entities such as SETI and the Drake Equation all seek to answer one simple question: "Is there somebody out there?" Developed by astrophysics professor Frank Drake, the Drake Equation attempts to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the galaxy.

With these in mind, Wright laid the foundation for Spore. Set in the backdrop of space galaxy, the game lets players develop civilizations and create species, allowing these creatures to evolve from a unicellular organism into intelligent social beings.

Described by Wright as a unique hybrid of single-player and massively multiplayer online games, Spore can be played as a standalone single-player game, as well as an online real-time strategy game where players can develop and share their own user-created content.

… Read more

'WTF?!' parodies 'World of Warcraft'

Over on Boing Boing this evening, I read about WTF?!, a terrific-sounding sidescroller role-playing video game that is a spot-on parody of World of Warcraft.

In his post about the new game, Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow linked to games guru Greg Costikyan's own entry on WTF?!, which drew the parallels to the massively successful WoW and an image like the one above: "It's a World of Warcraft screenshot, right? Well, no--it's a screenshot from WTF?!, a Flash-based sidescroller parodying WoW. And it's note-perfect, too--every interface element and the backgrounds and characters look like they'… Read more

'EA Land' closing just weeks after debut

Earlier this month, I wrote that Electronic Arts had made an announcement to members of its long-running but poorly received virtual world, The Sims Online, that it was re-branding the service as EA Land.

On Tuesday, however, EA announced on the official EA Land blog that it is now planning to shut the service down altogether.

"It is with mixed emotions that today we are announcing the EA Land experiment will soon draw to a close," the blog entry read. "Since 2002, EA Land/(The Sims Online) has attracted a very special group of players...and we … Read more

Virtual-world funding continues to flood in

Still dubious about whether virtual worlds can make for real businesses? The numbers may convince you otherwise.

According to a report out Tuesday from Virtual Worlds Management, the trade group that puts on the Virtual World conferences, a total of $184 million was invested in such businesses in the first quarter of 2008.

That money was spread across 23 companies, the report said.

The biggest investment listed in the report was $100 million from Temasek Holdings in a company called 9You, which is in the virtual-world and casual-games space.

Other notable investments included $7 million for EveryScape from a series … Read more

'The Sims' franchise hits 100 million units sold

If you lined up the boxes of the 100 million units of The Sims products that have sold since Electronic Arts' monster-hit franchise first launched in 2000, they would stretch from New York to Moscow.

Forgetting for the moment that many of those boxes would become awfully soggy if lined up like that, it's worth giving a curtsy of respect and admiration to EA and The Sims franchise for reaching the 100 million units sold mark, which EA announced Wednesday.

Originally, The Sims was a not-well-loved stepchild of Will Wright's hit games, Sim City and its brethren. But … Read more