User interfaces are the root problem that holds back 3D MMOs from mass appeal – as in 300 million people playing them. Today’s interfaces were designed by 1st generation gamers who had limited research to support their designs and that have since been incrementally improved and expanded.
TG Daily reports that Microsoft’s share of the Internet browser market has fallen below 70% after peaking at almost 97% share in 2003. This massive shift in browser share over just that last 4 years has huge implications for video game companies that have any kind of web presence.
In a great presentation on the state of innovation in video games, veteran game designer and consultant James Wallis walks us through a brief history of modern interactive narrative and how it has influenced today’s video games including the MMO World of Warcraft and the recent FPS hit Portal.
Built with state of the art thin client techniques Balsamiq brings powerful WYSIWYG design to browser based development of online game user interface mockups
10 ways for developers to bring their video game and virtual world design into the Web 2.0 world
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Posted 13 November 2008
† Ron Williams
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Free to Play Business Model § Marketing § Online Games § Virutal Worlds
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Tagged: buzz generation, community management, design, free to play, Free to Play Business Model, Guitar Hero, iPhone, Marketing, MMO video games, Open Source, operations, Web 2.0
Microsoft has announced they are embracing Web 2.0 for their new Microsoft Live portal. While not surprising, the move does shine a spotlight on web properties and video games that are not Web 2.0 enabled today.
Slashdot notes that IBM was just issued patent #7,447,996 on creating an instant messaging avatar with a gender set by the analyzing the name the user provides. At first glance this is a simple thing but a read of the patent points to a fairly sophisticated system that supports multiple user cultures and languages including Hindu and Chinese. However IBM may have some difficultly defending the core part of this patent as there is prior art in some video games and online sites already albeit with limited name recognition databases.
