• The Hernandez case in Florida, where IGE is being sued for damaging the WoW gameplay experience, is trying seeking class certification. This was always their intent, so I suppose really, I am just pointing out that the slow gears continue to grind on.
• In other legal news, a Legend of Mir 2 player is suing Shanda, trying to get monetary damages for the value of the in-game items that they lost due to some sort of technical glitch. In other words, a “virtual property” case. The player had been buying these items, and Massively did the math, working out that the guy had spent almost $30,000.
• SmallWorlds is about to launch — basically, it lets you make isometric multiplayer apartments and embed them on pages and link them. They are apparently planning on lots of Hollywood tie-ins. It will be interesting to see how this goes, given the similarities to Whirled, which has not set the world on fire yet despite being very cool. Using the “open big” estimation method and eyeballing their curve using the numbers they report on the site, they look to be on track to peak around 20-30,000 users unless they manage to crack another market or go viral. Naturally, we’re watching all this kind of closely since Metaplace bears some similarities to both of these.

I’m not sure there is, at least as we understand it. Not at the moment, anyway.

When we speak of “casual” we mean a cluster of things. Sometimes we mean targeting a different demographic, one not excited by the hardcore fantasy-and-sci-fi fictions we concoct. Sometimes we mean shorter play sessions. Sometimes we mean things like not requiring grouping in the worlds, which makes it easier for a less dedicated player to have fun.

More “casual” experiences often have a connotation of being shallow. One thing that is clear, though, is that it doesn’t matter how casual you make an experience, some people will use it in a hardcore manner.  And that means that it must have hidden depths of some sort. A shallow experience simply doesn’t tend to keep people.

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