The MMO 2.0

Posted by Dan on October 12, 2008

Tokyo Game Show keynote speaker Jim Crowley, CEO of Turbine Entertainment, believes that MMORPGs are going to have a “web 2.0″ style experience. Speaking to an overwhelmingly Japanese audience, he said “the intersection of social networks, games, and virtual worlds are “core” MMOs such as Turbine’s titles or World Of Warcraft”.

Crowley suggested that “MMOs’ thematic structures work well, but their models “need to evolve” to meet the needs of the born digital generation” and that “the MMO must step out of its shell… and start reaching a much broader and deeper audience,”and called for MMO experiences on consoles.

He also called for a real-time layer of Web 2.0-style social tools available both in and out of the game, by mobile access as well.

Crowley announced the “My LoTRO Page” system as the first “step” of that, which features player profiles, friends, character achievements, blogging, player videos, screenshots,and web based advertising.

This is a system very similar to one of my new favorite toys, Raptr.com, which integrates with your games to track your acheivements, friends lists, in-game items and character growth, and lets you communicate via a very clean Facebook style interface.

In essence, Crowley got beat to the punch by Raptr.com. Raptr is doing what he described, but better, across more games, with a cleaner interface, and with less intrusive corporate advertising, and you don’t have to buy a game you may not like to utilize it.

You can become friends with GamesLaw.net through Raptr at our profile, and track exactly what games I’m playing (and sucking at).

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