Posts Tagged ‘World of Warcraft’

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Fail: Worlds.com – Patents FTW!

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

In what may very well go down as the WTF of 2009, Worlds.com CEO Thom Kidrin has put the entire Virtual Worlds industry on notice.  He claims that his company patented and owns the IP rights to scalable virtual worlds.  Let’s let that soak in for a moment. ….and we’re back.  In essence, what Kidrin and Worlds.com are doing is threatening the livelihood of an entire industry.  And yes, this lawsuit and IP infringement applies to the big boys as well, including Second Life and World of Warcraft.

It's a Whole New Worlds - of LawsuitsAnd while I thought Atari and Codmasters legal assault on gamers was pretty up there on the ‘say what now?’ scale, Kidrin and Co. may have just taken the number one spot.  Worlds.com is already taking action against NCSoft, creators of City of Heroes and Guild Wars, filing in East Texas, an area know for it’s plaintiff friendly rulings in intellectual property cases.

Speaking to Eric Krangel from The Business Insider, Kidrin said that he “absolutely” intends to pursue follow up suits against Second Life and WoW.

But let’s take a step back and find out where all of this is coming from.  Back in December ’08, the then relatively unknown Worlds.com claimed to be holding a patent on virtual worlds ideas from 1997.  This patent originated from a developers work on a Steven Spielberg backed ‘Starbright World’, a part of the Starlight Starbright Foundation’s work with seriously ill children.  Wanting to protect the privacy and relative closed network feature of the virtual world, the Starbright folks, rightfully so, kept the project quiet.

Fast forward 10+ years, and a number of Starbright’s patents pass from the original creators to Worlds.com.  And while these patents do not cover ‘Virtual Worlds’ per se, and how we view them today, they do cover an architecture for enabling thousands of simultaneous users in a 3D virtual space.  Lawyers from General Patent Corporation pointed at this patent to the Worlds.com management, and encouraged them to pursue licensing deals.

Kindrin asserts that he’s not out to take any companies down and put them out of business, it’s just that he wants to get paid for what he and the Worlds.com management see as their lawful intellectual property.  Ummm, right.

Given the amount prior art available, chances are that this patent lawsuit is already moot.  As WoW Insider deftly points out, the same case could be made around the term ‘Cyberspace’.

However, let’s take a look at the definition of Cyberspace. It was first used in William Gibson‘s 1982 story “Burning Chrome” and again used in a few of his books, with “Neuromancer” being the most popular. Gibson’s definition for Cyberspace reads:

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.”

Now there are a few interesting parts there, in that the Gibson created a fictional representation of a world that was shared graphically with billions of legitimate operators. Sound familiar? It’s exactly what WoW is: a graphical world shared by millions of legitimate operators, abstract data that is unthinkably complex, arranging lines of light in the nonspace of the mind, and teaching children mathematical concepts (ie: threat, gear statistics, etc…)

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UC Irvine lands $3M for further study of Virtual Worlds

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Billed under the title ‘Can the same technologies you use to play hard also help you work hard’, The University of California at Irvine has recently been awarded a $3M grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study emerging forms of communication.  The study will incorporate elements of MMO’s and Virtual Worlds including World of Warcraft and Second Life, and aims to help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in a global marketplace.  This new grant ups the ante from previous UC Irvine studies, as they were granted a $100K grant from the NSF last year for an ethnographic study of World of Warcraft.

“Many technologies have come out of computer-based games, and their concepts appear to have real potential,” said Richard N. Taylor, director of UCI’s Institute for Software Research, which is conducting the three-year study. “This grant will determine how emerging technologies can be used or modified to support serious group work.”

As a flailing economy sees more and more companies opening the doors to worldwide collaboration, Virtual Worlds are looking more and more attractive to these businesses.  To grow and promote efficiency and productivity, these companies are turning to virtual worlds as a place where workers can collaborate thousands of miles apart from each other, while still being in the same ‘virtual’ room.  The UC Irvine study aims to help in this area, applying lessons learned, and yet to be learned in large-scale multiplayer online gaming, social networking, and file and media sharing.

In order to keep feet and minds grounded here on planet Earth, UC Irvine researchers will gain ‘real world’ perspectives by collaborating with five organizations from aerospace, telecom, transportation and electronics sectors, along with the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana.  Some of this real world perspective could make it’s way into virtual world testing, as Irvine scientists are already speculating about plugging real world engineering specifications into virtual worlds like Second Life to test and develop personal rapid transit systems.

“Advanced information and communication technologies can lead to breakthroughs in productivity and boost morale, but they can also be problematic and unsuccessful, leading to wasted investments,” said Walt Scacchi, senior research scientist and project leader. “One goal of this research is to understand the conditions that lead to failure or success.”

UC Irvine scientists Walt Scacchi, senior research scientist and project leader, and Richard Taylor will be joined by Alfred Kobsa, Cristina V. Lopes, Gloria Mark, Bonnie Nardi and David Redmiles in their studies.

Ed. Note: This announcement couldn’t have come at a better time, as PC World’s Darren Gladstone recently published a piece regarding including your game playing skills as a resume builder.  Give it a read here.

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Free-to-play Maple Story ranks among top moneymaking MMO’s of 2008.

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

DFC Intelligence is gearing up to publish a comprehensive study of MMO worlds next month, according to GigaOm.  Wagner James Au got a special preview of the report and shares some initial estimates.

DFC’s David Cole says that the 2008 numbers are on the “very conservative” side, indicating that the 2008 numbers are still being crunched, and more exact numbers will be reflected in the February 16th reports.  “We indicate ranges because these numbers are estimates for 2008 based on where we think these products will end up,” said Cole.  And while the numbers are still being tallied, Cole estimates that the rankings should stay more or less the same, with “maybe a slot here or there” changing.

And while it shouldn’t come as a shock that the Blizzard powerhouse World of Warcraft takes the number one spot, Cole believes that if viewed from a pure profit margin, WoW wouldn’t be taking home the gold.  Asian MMO’s, which are traditionally developed at far lower budgets, have a much higher profit margin.  “Profit margin on Asian games is incredibly high,” says Cole, noting that Asian MMOs charge on or around 5-6 cents per hour with prepaid usage cards, a business model that has yet to proliferate the western gaming market.

What’s interesting to note in this projected report is the high ranking of Nexon’s free-to-play Maple Story (supported by microtransactions, prepaid cards, and international licensing), and the catalogue of Shanda’s games (Virtual item sales, prepaid cards, and freemium subscriptions).

1. World of Warcraft, launched 2004
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG; client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Monthly subscription, retails sales, prepaid cards (in Asia)
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $500 million-plus

2. Fantasy Westward Journey, launched 2004
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG, client install with 2.5D graphics
Revenue sources: Prepaid cards
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

3. Maple Story, launched 2003
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG for kids, client install with 2D graphics
Revenue sources: Microtransactions, prepaid cards, international licensing
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

4. Shanda (company, includes Legend of Mir and World of Legend series), launched 2003
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG, client install with 2.5 graphics
Revenue sources: Prepaid cards, virtual item sales, freemium subscriptions
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

5. Lineage I and Lineage II , launched 1998 and 2003
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG, client install with 2.5 graphics (Lineage) and 3D graphics (Lineage II)
Revenue sources: Subscription, prepaid cards
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

6. Runescape
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG for kids, web-based with 2.5D graphics
Revenue sources: Premium subscription, prepaid cards, real-world advertising
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

7. Club Penguin, launched 2006
Genre/Platform: Virtual world for kids, web-based 2.5D graphics
Revenue sources: Premium subscriptions, prepaid game cards
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

8. Lord of the Ring Online
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG, client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

9. Warhammer Online
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG, client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

10. Age of Conan
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG, client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

Wagner continues his conversation with Cole around the most popular, in terms of active players, MMO of 2008.  To answer this question, we’ve got to go even a bit further out on the speculation branch, but Cole points out that Fantasy Westward Journey registered 2-3 million concurrent players back in August.  And although Warcraft likes to beat it’s own drum regarding their estimated 11 million+ players, “You’re lucky to get 5-10 percent [of them] playing at the same time,” says Cole.  Minho Kim, developer of Maple Story said in December that the title has 87+ million registrations, but wouldn’t comment on how many of these registered users were/are active monthly users.  Joost van Dreunen from DFC’ estimates the number to be more in the 13 – 17.4 million regular Maple Story players, roughly 15-20 percent of Kim’s estimation.

Cole admits that this year’s list looks remarkably similar to the 2007 list with Conan and Warhammer being released in 2008.  And while only 2 of the top 10 contain some type of microtransaction support, I’d estimate that this list might look very different one year from now with a number of highly anticipated (think Free Realms and Battlefield Heroes) free-to-plays coming online in ’09.

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Big Stage seeks to make You Portable

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Riding high from their first success: The Digital You, Big Stage Entertainment wants to help you create your perfect avatar and then carry it around with you, cross platform.

As Dean Takahashi from VentureBeat reports, Big Stage uses a 3D facial modeling system to render a rather convincing 3D version of a person from 3 digital photos take from slightly different angles.  This image can be created in roughly two minutes, so no complex know-how is necessary.  Once your perfect digital you is created, the Big Stage technology will then allow you to carry this avatar with you from one application to another, provided that the platform conforms to Big Stage’s API.  While this API is still proprietary, the long-term goal at Big Stage is to make this API an industry standard.

The portable avatar is currently available at Big Stage.com and interfaces with Facebook and MySpace.  But Big Stage has larger aspirations, with speculation about using you digital you in MMO’s such as World of Warcraft and Star Wars.  IBM took point on opening discussions with a number of virtual worlds, but the going hasn’t been easy.  The first virtual world that will make use of Portable You is Icarus Studios, a white label virtual world creator.

“The idea could catch on because it fits with the theme of personalization that is taking over everything, from YouTube personal video channels to social networks,” says Big Stage CE Phil Ressler

And Big Stage isn’t just limited to social networking and games customization.  The Venue Network is already using Portable You in its VenueGen virtual conference product that is slated to hit the streets in 2009.  What’s more, Big Stage has secured a deal with Lion’s Gate Entertainment, and will run a promotion tied to the upcoming film, The Spirit, where users can create their Portable You avatar and insert it into key scenes from the movie.  Who needs Keanu Reeves to do all the cool stuff when you can simply insert yourself?

Ressler says that the company plans on monetization via microtransaction based avatar customizations including glasses, different hairstyles, etc.

The South Pasadena, California company currently has 20 employees on staff and was founded in 2007.  The company grew out of an advanced stereo reconstruction technology R&D project at USC funded by the CIA and other government grants.  Big Stage Entertainment has raised $7.9 million in funding from investors Mission Ventures, Selby Ventures and Tech Coast Angels.

Having a cross platform portable avatar does have a number of appealing aspects, so long as it’s an option and not a requirement.  For example, I’d rather keep my bad @$$ looking orc face on my warrior, rather than plaster my mug all over it.  Something about leading a raid with my baby face might not exactly inspire confidence in other players.  On the other side of the coin, watching my face battle through some highflying space battles with Han Solo at my side would be pretty darn cool, I have to admit.  Cross platform avatars, what’s next – a cross platform currency for microtransactions?  If only there was a company that could accomplish that.  Oh wait….there is!

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Free to Play Cross Fire places CounterStrike in the Cross hairs

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

10,000 closed beta keys gone in 10 hours?  Wow!  That’s what SilverBirch Inc. and G4Box Inc. are claiming regarding the recent launch of their premier free-to-play, first person shooter, Cross Fire.

The closed beta went live on November 7th, and runs for approximately one month, during which time, fraggers can participate in one of Cross Fire’s four hair raising game zones.  Cross Fire is looking on target for a January 2009 commercial launch, but gamers can continue to download the game for free at www.crossfire-en.com.

“The response to the English version of Cross Fire has far exceeded our expectations,” said Kevin Astle, Interim President and CEO of SilverBirch. “Cross Fire’s fast-paced action, superb graphics and compelling features have already made it a hotly anticipated game among English-language gamers.”

While already a hit in Asian markets, Cross Fire has received 1.9M hits leading up to the November 7th launch, two-thirds of which coming from right here in the US.  The Asian market version has received millions of registered players, and has an excess of 500,000 users regularly playing the game together online at any given time, all within a short nine month time period.  Not Bad.  Not bad at all.

“Cross Fire has been a huge success in China, Japan, Vietnam and other Asian markets,” said Howard He, CEO of G4Box, noting that the game is now more popular in Vietnam than World of Warcraft. “Based on the positive initial response from North American gamers, we look forward to replicating this success for the English-language version.”

The Game

Cross Fire is a CounterStrike killer in more ways than one.  The storyline focuses around two international mercenary forces duking it out for domination.  Players chose their side; either Black List terrorist or Global Risk mercenary.  They then join an online team of fellow FPSers and must work together to complete objective based scenarios.  The game features four game modes: Team Death Match, Team Match, Annihilation Match, and the new Ghost Match.  Players receive xp points based on game play and performance and are promoted through various military ranks.

The Cash

SilverBirch and G4Box will monetize the free-to-play title via a microtransaction based in-game item shop.  Here, players can customize their characters to their heart’s delight including appearance and equipment.  Both companies forecast revenue generation shortly after the January 2009 official release.

Interested players should head on over to FilePlanet to obtain an exclusive closed beta key.  Cross Fire is even sweetening the deal by offering current participants the ability to invite up to 10 friends to join them on the battlefield.  Grab this one now while it’s hot!

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KinsIsle Entertainment brings microtransactions AND subscriptions to Wizard101

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Want to plunk down your monthly fee and play as much as you want?  That’s fine.  Want to use microtransactions to buy individual pieces and areas of the game?  That’s also fine.  Texas based KingsIsle Entertainment has set out on an interesting experiment whereby they’re now offering players of Wizard 101 the option to play via a subscription payment OR utilize microtransactions to purchase additional areas of the game.

The game’s main features will remain free-to-play but players may now either pay a monthly fee of $6.95 – $9.95 per month to access additional gameplay, or pay as little as $1/ transaction to open smaller, bit sized portions of the game.  Here’s a perfect example of players with plenty of time to play (subscription players) AND casual players that don’t want to commit to a subscription, but still want to enjoy the same level of gameplay (microtransaction players).

“We looked at our feedback and found that half the people liked subscriptions and another group wanted micro-transactions,” said Elie Akilian, chief executive of KingsIsle

Wizard101 is a spell-casting adventure and card-style game.  The game has family focused play style (lining up perfectly between parents and teens), a chat system with a number of options and a character name selector.  The game contains no blood, and characters do not die if defeated in a duel of spells – they are simply returned to a safe area to regain health.

In a recent interview with Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat, Akilian said that the teen niche hasn’t been well served by the game industry.  He points out that games such as World of Warcraft feature plenty of blood and gore, where players can run rampant, while on the opposite side of the spectrum, there are other games with much tighter controls, Disney’s Club Penguin for example.  Wizard101 is rated for everyone 10 and old, and KindsIsle has seen a number of families playing together.  The switch to a flexible pricing model shout increase not only the number of teens playing, but also the number of overall players.

Wizard101 currently features approximately 300 hours of playtime in four worlds.  KingsIsle plans on expanding this content over time.  The game currently features 170 different spell combinations, but has limited pvp combat; presumably do to the kid/family friendly rating.

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THQ to bring ‘Dragonica’ to North American market

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

It looks like THQ is wasting no time in getting the new Shanghai office into the game.  They’ve recently announced a joint venture in cooperation with ICE Entertainment to bring Dragonica to the North American market in 2009.

Dragonica will be a cartoony, sticky sweet, side scrolling game that is free-to-play and supported by pay-for-content micro-transactions.  The game was developed by Korean design house Barunson Interactive Co.  Dragonica has spent sever years in the development shop, and is finally ready for it’s coming out party.  With 3D rendering, new cartoon characters and scenery modeling, Dragonica promised to raise the bar on traditional side scrolling games.  The game mixes elements of action and arcade, and creates various skills to enhance play.  ICE realized the potential of Dragonica, and has the exclusive rights to operate Dragonica in China.

ICE’s CEO Sun Tai is the former CTO of Chinese major player, The9, a leading operator of Chinese online games including World of Warcraft.  This joint venture will combine ICE’s online operating expertise and THQ’s product development and retail experience to create a new platform for the North American market.

“We are extremely excited to be working with ICE Entertainment to bring this free-to-play, micro-transaction-based online game to the robust yet largely untapped market for online casual gaming in North America,” said Doug Clemmer, president of THQ’s casual gaming subsidiary. “We are even more pleased to be building a strong and mutually beneficial relationship, which we hope will lead to additional opportunities to deliver online gaming content globally.”

“We are looking forward to combining THQ’s extensive marketing and retail expertise with our advanced technology and proven online game operating know-how to deliver a great new casual gaming experience for North American consumers,” said Sun Tao, chief executive officer, ICE Entertainment. “We also look forward to working with THQ more closely to develop new games and explore future publishing opportunities in both markets.”

Current estimates of the North American casual game market peg it at approximately $2.2 billion by 2013 (DFC Intelligence).  In 2007, China’s online games market clocked in at a whopping $1.7 billion, and reached 42 million gamers.  According to Niko Partners, this market is expected to balloon to $4.2 billion by 2010.

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Wicked Interactive launching Korean free to play titles in North America

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

More and more North American publishers are beginning to realize the benefits of free to play, micro transaction or ad supported business models in the North American market.

Venturebeat’s Dean Takahashi reported yesterday on Wicked Interactive, a Toronto, Canada based company that will shortly be launching new free to play titles in the North American market.  Wicked Interactive will publishing a number of popular, free, ad-supported games from South Korean online game publisher Yedang Online.  Wicked’s chief executive, Stanley Yu said that his company has private funding from angels and institutions, and has 15 staff members.  Prior to Wicked, Yu served as the head of TrekLogic, a Canadian information technology outsourcing firm.

Wicked plans on publishing three of Yedang’s top titles; “PristonTale”, “Priston Tale 2”, and “Ace Online”.  Priston Tale 2 already has 1.5 million registered users in Asia, and was developed over 4 years at a cost of $10 million.  While Yu acknowledges this growing competition in the free to play market, his hope is that Wicked will differentiate itself from others by delivering high quality free to play titles.

While Yedang’s most popular game “Audition,” a dance title with over 100 million registered users worldwide will not be in Wicked’s lineup, Yu said that the company is working on additional licensing agreements over the next few years.  To put Audition in perspective, one of the world’s most popular MMO titles, World of Warcraft, has just over 10 million subscribed users.

Wicked and company face a growing number of competitors, with Outspark’s growing catalogue of free to play titles, along with OGPlanet importing and modifying popular Korean titles for the US market.

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Blizzard to introduce cross game Achievement System in WoW, Starcraft, and Diablo

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

World of Warcraft lead designer Jeff Kaplan recently revealed Blizzard’s plan in introduce an achievement system in conjunction with the Wrath of the Lich King launch.

“Eventually, our plans are for the Achievement system to become an account-based system,” he explained.

“It’s basically a gamerscore,” Kaplan said, when I made reference to Xbox Live’s Achievement system. “For now the points are just a ‘WoW’ character score. As we graduate to that Blizzard Account system, which is right on the horizon, it will switch over to a Blizzard Level.”

“Your ‘WoW’ score would be just one factor that will go into your Blizzard Level. And rather than call it a ’score,’ we just wanted it to be like you’re leveling up on Blizzard games… You’ll have this Blizzard identity, and you’ll be able to see things like ‘Oh, this guy was great at Diablo III, but he never played Starcraft and he was mediocre in WoW. That sort of thing,” says Kaplan.

Beta testers of Wrath of the Lich King have already gotten a taste of the new Blizzard Account system.  Beta players have been required to temporarily create a Blizzard Account that’s tied to the WoW accounts.  However, this beta is just that, a test account, and will not function as actual ‘Live’ Blizzard Accounts, and will not count towards purchases in the Blizzard store once the real system is active.

While achievement systems are nothing new to the gaming industry and games themselves, this is however a highly significant move from Blizzard.  Blizzard has bucked the trend for years now, firmly ignoring the growing trend in free to play, micro transaction based MMO’s, favoring the traditional subscription based model.  With the introduction of a pan-Blizzard product database, could there be a weakening of this philosophy?  Would it be possible someday in the near future to equip my Orc hunter with a new gun or outfit based on achievements?  And if I can get these items through an achievement system, how far off are we from dropping a dollar here, and a few dollars over there to grab that purple version of the gun and match it perfectly with newly acquired epic flying mount?

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