World Fodder

Before I rant, I should say that the Engage Expo is a conference in the Javitz Center focusing on virtual goods, microtransaction/RMT, and youth games. Having looked at the schedule and seen plenty of sessions on the microtransaction model, as well as an investor meetup, I decided it was worth it to attend.

Again, for those of you who have read my past networking blogs, and for those that didn't, I can't stress it enough- especially when it's in your home town. Being in Brooklyn, it doesn't take me long to get to Manhattan and get into the conference (but they sure did open doors early!).

To keep it simple: The sessions were worth their weight in gold. I have six and a half pages of notes from them in my book, as well as 30+ business cards and a few email addresses from the networking and investment events (more on that in a minute). The general gist of the sessions were that the Free2Play model is coming on strong in the US, and has been the standard for years in Asia. Another trend I saw was an absolute explosion of game-in-a-browser plugin vendors (the sticky thread is set for a nice update). There was at least a half-dozen, and most were flash-based, but many of them also offered back-end solutions that linked up with both Flash and Unity, among other engines. Data metrics and reporting vendors were also present, including one that worked with Torque.

Networking went probably better than I had thought. Initially not, since I went and broke Interrogative the night before (I really wanted to get a trivia demo set up and jacked it up instead), but I got it fixed and put some quick content into it by lunchtime, so over the last day and a half, about ten or so people have seen Interrogative in (quite a bit, but not all of) it's glory. The response so far has been encouraging- and that's more than encouraging to me, since Interrogative is the single riskiest piece of the Epic Frontiers puzzle.

The investment panel went as well as it could have. Four investors talked about much of the same general information I've blogged about before, and I flubbed my presentation twice, and a third wasn't interested in the game space, but rather tech (someone's got to invest in tech). They listened though, and I didn't make a total ass out of myself (fractional? maybe). But again, many investors seem to be looking for your project to be either in or close to beta with some sort of following, which means that if you're looking for any kind of A/B round or seed funding, it's rough going. But since I was going to the conference, there was no reason not to try!

Now, aside from the usual conference goodness, I noticed a trend I wasn't personally fond of. Aside from the artificial separation being wedged between MMO's and Virtual Worlds (VW's), the VW's seem to be going down the path of that of a digital lobster trap: Create a social network/virtual world hybrid, draw in as many crustacean-like teens/young adults with disposable income as you can with the bait of traditional media (tv/movie/music content), and then slam the lid shut by monetizing them with frilly cosmetic virtual goods.

Okay, so I'm all for VW's, and crustacean-like teens/young adults with disposable income, and virtual goods, and even social networks. But while all of that is okay, it looks to me as though the money is the big draw of the world. Usually, I'm cool with that too, since I'm a fan of Capitalism as a principle. But Cynical Capitalism (just like Cynical Anything), puts me off, and creating empty worlds to draw people in just to make money- and then complain that it's too hard to create content for them unless the user does it... ::SHUDDER::

It was a bit ironic then that as I demo'ed Interrogative, someone commented on MMO's as being the "old" VW's. But even as much as I view current MMO's as having stale content- at least they have some, and that makes them quite more advanced than the empty VW's people want to push now. A good example is a session on the future of narrative that I attended today. The first example was a standard 3-act story of a fairytale. Pronounced as stale. So naturally, my ears perked up as the prospect of gleaning more knowledge of how to take my own narrative features to new heights. So what comes next?

The same stale narrative chopped up and put into the context of real-life stars acting out the story in a combination of webisodes, links to music, a movie, and gossip run in print media, all accessible through at least two or three sites that are in turn accessible from a virtual world designed to bring people in to "interact" with this- and then be monetized by outside brands.

So naturally, I raised the question of that itself being stale and why VW's did not seem to be even trying to create their own content. The answer I received from the person who brought that example forth said that it should be done, another proposed user-generated content, and the third told the audience that it was "really hard" and that when someone did it, then everyone would be doing it.

Ever hear the story about Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody?

So for everyone out there looking to create an MMO/VW: Please, do not become World Fodder!