Comments on: Virtual World Money in '08 Targeted Kids, Kids' Wallets

By: christefano

christefano — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:18:18 +0000

@Moose, we recently launched Digital Dollhouse for a client in California and just published an article and case study about how we did it. Digital Dollhouse uses Drupal as a front- and back-end engine and Flash for the primary front-end game play.

http://knurl.us/url/obko9s4

I’d love to know what you think!

By: World markets rise as bank stocks rebound | Digg PhotoBlog

World markets rise as bank stocks rebound | Digg PhotoBlog — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:48:05 +0000

[...] Virtual World Money in ‘08 Targeted Kids, Kids’ Wallets GigaOm ,January 22, 2009 A total of $594 million was invested in 63 Virtual Worlds in 2008, according to Austin-based trade show company Virtual Worlds Management. … [...]

By: Moose

Moose — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:08:24 +0000

I agree that a platform would be successful, yet at the same time I agree that its not going to make anyone fabulously wealthy. I would love to see something on the order of Joomla or Drupal for virtual worlds.

By: Wowgoldfan

Wowgoldfan — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:21:19 +0000

I don’t think they will be able to defeat World of Warcraft, maybe not for the next 5 to 10 years. They’re making a lot of money out of those kids (with parents spending money for them) and adults that may sustain to maintain the game.

By: Wyatt

Wyatt — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:14:47 +0000

I doubt that there’s all that much money to be made in a platform. Platforms tend to perform pretty averagely – look at Ning, for example. I think this occurs for a number of reasons:

- There’s no distinction between platform-based systems – either it’s so variable that there’s no point in a platform at all, or else it’s so straightforward that all systems based on it are essentially the same
- It requires constant maintenance – often systems reinvent the wheel because the wheel needs reinventing, current technology will only be current for a few years, then the system will need to be rebuilt, along with all apps based on it

Not to mention, in essence a platform for a virtual world is a combination physics and graphics engine, which people do license. Anything more limits the freedom of world design.

By: WoW Gold

WoW Gold — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:07:05 +0000

World of Warcraft still raises the bar when it comes to ‘mainstream’ virtual worlds. It can be hard for newer and smaller companies to take a piece of the pie when the big 800lb gorilla is evolving with you.

By: Rob Steenwyk

Rob Steenwyk — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:48:18 +0000

Has there been any increase of investment into companies that are trying to make a virtual world platform, as opposed to just one-off “Virtual World With Cat Avatars” and “Virtual World With Dog Avatars”? It seems to me that whatever company can create a easy to develop for virtual world platform, could make serious money. So much of the development costs for creating a MMORPG seem to be in re-inventing the wheel over and over, chat system, network code etc.

Is there any work going on in the FOSS world with regards to a virtual world platform?