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Metaplace!September 18th, 2007 |
It is an amazing relief to finally get to talk about what we are making.
It’s been interesting to see the reactions everywhere. Lots of folks “get it,” some don’t (and that’s fine, no need to persuade everyone with just a FAQ and an eight minute demo!). Lots of folks saying “exactly what I predicted!” — which is fair. 
For me, the bottom line is this: man, I have never had as much fun working on something as I have had working on this.
Even in an eight-minute demo and the FAQ, I can only get across a fraction of what we think we can do with what we have built. It’s just large, hard to convey in soundbites. That’s why I am so excited to see what people do with it.
Some of my daydreams:
- Someone gets a simple cell phone client working during the beta.
- We see someone teaching classes with it.
- Someone makes an MMO bigger than WoW in it.
There’s things that I worry about as well, of course. Like, I see some of the MMO gamers worried already that this isn’t “for them.” But it IS. This is how we get the variety and diversity of games that you have wanted. This is how we get experimentation back. You know a lot of us are oldschool MUD guys, and we have missed the days when new stuff was getting tried all the time. To some degree Metaplace is about bringing that quality back.
We fully expect most users to be players, not makers. That’s just how it is. So for us, fun is absolutely key. I’m putting my money where my mouth is on that point, too. Yes, we have a new MMO we’re working on. And yes, we’re doing it in Metaplace.
I am still here at TechCrunch, and we’re mobbed, so I can’t write more. But I will be back — I am sure there are many questions!
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