Metaplaces

Ok, I'll admit it. Im jealous. Envious and jealous. And a bit sad.

It was a few weeks ago that I stumbled over this article on MMO population crises . It made sense. It was well written (which I find hard to come by sometimes when it involves games and social behaviour), and it brought up valid points on both the mammoth machine and industry standard WoW has become, and how the industry can't seem to shake it. But here's the thing, by the end of it, I couldn't even keep the subject on my mind.

Why? Simply because of the mention of Raph Koster and his new little endeavour, Metaplace.

For one, I grew into MMO's under Koster's creations. I was weaned on Ultima. I learned how to analyze game structure in Galaxies. I read his site, his philosophies, everything, which in turn molded my view on gameplay. I've always had a gamer crush on anything he touched. The EQ style of gaming won in the end with WoW, but still...there was more to Koster's games. And metaplace is no exception.

Metaplace is a potential melding pot of many different subjects of study. Its a community, much like MySpace or YouTube, but its a community that makes metaversal communities. In that sense, it's not only reactionary to it audience, but its audience potentially has reactions based on what it interacts with, since that audience is also creators of like media. Other members may end up developing games differently through learning and interacting through the community. As such, it not only is a community that grows and feeds on itself, but it might prove to be a lucrative testing/learning center for larger MMO firms in development philosophy.

It's low budget, with easy entry into an otherwise cost-prohibitive market. which opens up the market further. Much like opening beta-testing of games to gamers is a cost-saving module for developers, Metaplace can be a like savings grounds for games development. You have gamers developing games and ideas free of startup cost to companies. It not only allows for pretty open testing on a focus group, but it also gives companies a screening method to find new talent for developing all sorts of games.

And to top it off, it'll be a hotspot for intellectual property debate. Because, if a game gets good and has a big following...who's the owner? Who reaps the rewards? If a game makes enough followers in a focus group such as metaplace would be, it may be financially viable to look at expanding it into a subscription based game. With most games asking 15$USD a month to play, a small grassroots game can gain a profit fast if it catches on.

But thats only one (albeit the one with the most money at stake) facet. Gold farming is rampant in major MMOs, while some cope by selling in-game money to beat third party sellers and capture the market. If one or both become apparent in any of the games, will it be legal? Or for that matter, who decides if its legal?

But all this has nothing to do with my jealousy or sadness mentioned above, only my interest in the matter. The former all stems from "why didn't I think of that?" (which always is one of my gut reactions to anything I think is overly interesting and/or addictive...it's my admission that something in the gaming world is outright great in my mind) and the much more important "Dammit! I missed alpha signups!" . The whole idea plagues me now, because I'm on the outside looking in, wondering. In due time however, I have a feeling I'll get to see a lot more and analyze what happens, because this looks too promising to fall off the face of the planet any time soon.