Right, and that gets into the "need more things to *do*" problem.
The way to make *serious* money here would be if they had sufficient tools to let people design stories. That's getting into some of the problems mentioned above -- you probably need good AIs, you certainly need the ability to automate worldspace, and you probably need a mechanism for genuine conflict (in the conceptual sense: that doesn't necessarily require guns and swords). Combine that with the ability to require payment for access to those areas (probably a fairly flexible mechanism required, so people can try areas out), and you start to get into a proven money-maker.
From the descriptions, they're maybe a quarter of the way there. I'll be curious to see whether they go down this route at all, or simply consider it a non-sequiteur to their plans. Regardless, they *need* to create more compelling in-world content if they're going to survive in the long run, preferably by giving players the tools to create such content themselves, and the best gauge of "compelling" is whether people will pay for it...
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Date: 2006-12-13 10:47 pm (UTC)The way to make *serious* money here would be if they had sufficient tools to let people design stories. That's getting into some of the problems mentioned above -- you probably need good AIs, you certainly need the ability to automate worldspace, and you probably need a mechanism for genuine conflict (in the conceptual sense: that doesn't necessarily require guns and swords). Combine that with the ability to require payment for access to those areas (probably a fairly flexible mechanism required, so people can try areas out), and you start to get into a proven money-maker.
From the descriptions, they're maybe a quarter of the way there. I'll be curious to see whether they go down this route at all, or simply consider it a non-sequiteur to their plans. Regardless, they *need* to create more compelling in-world content if they're going to survive in the long run, preferably by giving players the tools to create such content themselves, and the best gauge of "compelling" is whether people will pay for it...