So, I am sure that by now everyone has seen the news about the Sony Playstation 3 Home service that is getting added this year to the PS3. In short, it looks to me like There.com (not Second Life, IMHO, despite what everyone is saying) added into the PS Live network — multiuser public space and private spaces that display the equivalent of achievements, etc.
So this is a nice development: Project Darkstar, which is Sun’s online game platform, just went open source under GPL — the annoucement apparently happened today here at GDC. It’s a pretty robust solution — you can write clients in whatever, you can use stuff other than Java with it, and you can make darn near any sort of online game with it — yes, including MMOs. It’s interesting to see something this complete offered up open source to the general public.
Three Rings (puzzlepirates) income = $100K per month from subs. $250K from microtransactions.
Other tidbits from the casual games summit at GDC here:
# sessions attended: 0/8 POOR!
# interviews completed: 2/2 GREAT!
# planned meetings completed: 2/2 GREAT!
# chance meetings in the hallway that led to lengthy conversations: 5 BONUS!!
# Badges collected: Ben Ceverny, Sande Chen, Greg Boyd, Steven Davis, Gordon Walton, Darius Kazemi, Bob Bates, Jeff Ward, Steve Mereztky, Zack Karlsson, Chris Early, Marty Poulin, Andre Vrignaud
# alcohol intake: LOW
Game completion: 20%
Lives remaining: uncertain
Welcome to level 2.
The march of the branded worlds continues, as Lego taps NetDevil, makers of Auto Assault and Jumpgate, to create a virtual world about, well, Legos.
It should be interesting to contrast this to Roblox, which is, well, also an online block building environment.
BTW, I am here at GDC, and my schedule looks like hell. Constant meetings. We shall see how much blogging I manage to do. I did do an interview for f13 today, about the games biz and whatnot — and one for Business 2.0 about my laptop (hey, it’s for their “gear” section). Now I am off to dinner, which is another business meeting. I think I will barely get to go to any sessions. *sigh*
