24: WGE MAG
fully realized. Another angle is that this world will ultimately be your world, and player participation could both help me its crafting as well as clearly communicate its depth long before its ready. So, we will see. Likely a mix of secrecy and sharing will be the right path to tread.
Here is what I feel is safe to say: Lord British’s Ultimate Role Playing Game, which may be called ‘Akalabeth’ or may be called ‘New Britannia’ or may be called a name I cannot yet say as it describes the setting I am considering and think I should keep secret at least until I know if it’s likely true, will be an Ultimate RPG. You will have customized Avatar homesteads and real roles to play in a deep, beautifully realized highly interactive virtual world. It will have virtues and the hero’s journey reflected back to the player. It will have the best of synchronous and asynchronous features in use. Fiction will support your arrival from earth into this new world. I even hope to make maps, coins and other trinkets available to players of the game.
BH: Everyone talks about the tablet as the future platform replacing consoles but it still has some major limitations for doing what you are talking about.
RG: Well, there are both great opportunities and great new challenges but I clearly believe that the opportunities far outweigh the challenges. I remember when I first saw ‘Spider’ on an iPhone and you could drag the little spider around, make him jump and make webs. That was the first time in my mind I thought it’s going to work; there is actually a mobile platform where you can do high quality user interface, high quality graphics, the frame rate works, the game play works. Hallelujah, the future is finally here! That was a watershed moment in my consideration of mobile platforms. I actually think one of the only real struggles with mobile platforms is really just some screen size issues. Sure there is no joystick, etc. but it’s got a full touch screen, a virtual joystick. So I became a believer that mobile devices are ultimately going to replace console units and it will be very special seeing it on my living room television wirelessly.
BH: Portalarium seems to be pushing the OpenLife open source social game ecosystem concept while staying
“I actually think one of the only real struggles with mobile platforms is really just some screen size issues. Sure as there is no joystick, etc. but it’s got a full touch screen, a virtual joystick. So I became a believer that mobile devices are ultimately going to replace console units...”
on top of the ever-changing Facebook API. How much time will you spend fighting standards battles versus just hammering out games?
RG: Well, we are platform-agnostic. Because of our MMO legacy, we believe very much in the power of multi-player and the power of remaining connected with your true friends. The thing about the MMO era was that you weren’t playing alone, you actually were playing with other people you met who were willing to come online every night at 5pm, every night for weeks and months so you stayed at the same level, making it even more powerful with real true friends. But not everyone has that luxury. We need a new kind of set of features to do that. And my hat is off to early creators like Zynga for not only discovering this vast untapped market but also creating lots of ways to grow and monetize these new kinds of features. That said, we feel that most early adapters have missed one key piece, which is the social graph across social networks so you can move as your friends move from experience to experience across other games as well. Meaning, there is a huge opportunity to retain you within an ecosystem based on your social graph.
BH: That makes sense, everyone talks about the ‘social graph’ but give me a simple example....
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