A few years ago we would have shaken our heads, wished them good luck, and figured we would probably never see that game released. Today there is a far greater chance that these folks can bring the next MMO to market. What’s changed? The arrival of specialized Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings. In a nutshell, a PaaS allows an entrepreneur to focus on building their cloud application, avoiding upfront capital expenses through outsourced management of their IT infrastructure to a third party.

This is a level up from the cloud itself, which provides outsourced compute power in a more raw fashion. PaaS providers offer database as a service (MongoLab, MongoHQ) or runtime environment as a service (Heroku, Nodejitsu, AppFog), for example. A PaaS can also deliver even more advanced capabilities. StackMob, for example, puts in place a suite of PaaS offerings that radically streamline mobile application development, launch and hosting by providing in one integrated package an environment to code up, host, and run in the cloud mobile applications.

What’s more, a PaaS can even be taken to the point where it eliminates almost all technology skill requirements. GameSalad allows designers to quickly design and publish game applications that even include animation purely using visual design tools. Eliminating technological complexity serves to eliminate a critical barrier to innovation and new company foundation. We’ve all met someone who felt they had a great idea for a new application of some sort. “And I’m looking for a developer or a CTO,” is inevitably the next thing out of their mouth after they pitch the idea.

If that same great idea could be built far more easily and quickly with a far smaller tech team and nominal capital expenses, then, logically the cost of bringing that idea to market drops considerably. This is the value of the PaaS. And its not just a value to guys with no tech chops. Someone that is a very solid designer and front-end coder may be highly technical but may not be comfortable at all with designing and managing a NoSQL database.

Even highly skilled developers with both front-end and server-side chops usually turn to network engineers for help with load balancing, DNS and other infrastructure aspects that are critical to ensuring a cloud-based application runs fast and clean on any device anywhere in the world. Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare, is fond of explaining that as soon as he got funded, he hired an ex-Googler to completely recode his app to keep it from breaking. If Dennis had been building Foursquare in the present, he could have probably built a more reliable, faster app by leveraging a far more robust PaaS ecosystem to remove many of the software development and infrastructure management requirements that probably caused Foursquare to be so buggy and break all the time in its initial inception.

How many more kids like Dennis are out there with whizbang innovations that could be the next WoW, the next great service for medical records delivery, or the next amazing tool for crowdsourced scientific problem solving? We don’t know but we are a lot more likely to find out in a new era of PaaS-fueled cloud innovation.

Lisa Petrucci is the VP of Global Marketing at Joyent. She started out as a network engineer for Lotus and has held senior sales, marketing and business development roles in enterprise computing companies for the past two decades at companies including IBM and SixApart. 

Image courtesy of Flickr user ansik.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Emerging trends in the non-relational database market
• A near-term outlook for big data
• Amazon’s DynamoDB: rattling the cloud market

The Business of Play

First, note that even RIM is reluctant to frame the device as a direct iPad competitor. The press release for the PlayBook emphasizes its business appeal, citing “advanced security features, out-of-the-box enterprise support” and a brand new development platform aimed at IT departments. BlackBerry knows where its real strength lies, and it seems to know to avoid Apple’s, too.

RIM didn’t create the PlayBook to storm the consumer market. It did it because it had to, or face losing enterprise customers to iOS. Since a tablet is definitely useful in a business setting, people are already buying iPads for enterprise purposes, basically because they don’t have a choice. It’s probably true that most would prefer a BlackBerry option, so that’s what RIM’s providing. That also accounts for the timing of the announcement. RIM showed its hand early, but it’ll stop some businesses from making an IT buying decision until it can bring a device to market.

Early to Rise, Early to Bed

RIM may be retaining some customers on the enterprise side by announcing early, but it definitely isn’t doing itself any favors in the consumer market. First, Apple and other competitors know exactly what’s coming in six or so months, making it very easy to plan product updates that surpass the PlayBook’s hardware specs. Second, savvy consumers can tell that the PlayBook’s specs are on par with the iPad now, and perhaps beat it in some areas, but they also know Apple updates its devices at least yearly.

That means consumers are expecting an iPad with Retina Display and probably at least a front-facing camera with FaceTime at around the time the PlayBook arrives. The iPad revision’s upgrades will probably make the BlackBerry look decidedly last-gen.

The App Lead

Even if the BlackBerry PlayBook launches with a terrific development framework, and App World gets a significant update that makes it much more appealing to users, Apple’s lead in the app game is basically insurmountable at this point. That’s bad news for RIM’s hopes in both the consumer and the enterprise arena.

Forced to Follow

So is the PlayBook revolutionary? No, it’s a bitter pill RIM CEO Lazardis and Co. were forced to swallow, and it’s being rushed to market to defend a market segment that’s traditionally belonged to the BlackBerry maker. But RIM will continue to succeed in business, for the same reasons that it always has.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

• Mobile Operators’ Strategies for Connected Devices
• Why RIM’s Future (Unfortunately) Hinges on BlackBerry OS 6
• Transient Apps: The Consumer Influence on Enterprise Mobility, Part 2

For 90 percent of my daily toil, OS X is the best platform for me. I use it during my day job, freelance writing, school, graphic design, and the usual goofing off everyone does. However, there is one glaring desire missing: I play Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs), and the Mac-native offerings are slim. I’ve had to result to running games in emulators, virtual disks, and Boot Camp partitions, and after running some numbers I thought I’d share my findings with you.

The Games

I play the following MMOs: World of Warcraft, EverQuest 1 and 2, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Of these, only WoW and Warhammer have native clients. Which means I’m forced to use some sort of emulation to play them. A commenter  on Liam’s Windows 7 piece said, “You bought an Apple computer so use the Apple software. If you want it so bad go buy a PC.” For me, Apple and OS X are fantastic for my productivity needs, but when it comes to gaming, sadly, it’s still a Windows world.

The Emulators

Fortunately, all is not lost. Once Apple went to Intel chips, running Windows in some sort of emulation became possible. For a gamer like myself, it became a saving grace that let me enjoy OS X for my daily usage, but lets me have my games and play them, too. For the purposes of testing, I played games in the following programs:

• CrossOver Games 8.1.3. CrossOver is a Wine-based emulator, so you’re not actually running any Windows code; it’s all handled via the app.
• Parallels Desktop 4 version 4.0.3848 with a Windows 7 virtual,
• Windows 7 running in Boot Camp on OS 10.6.2. Unfortunately, Parallels can only access a Boot Camp partition officially supported by Apple, so I was unable to test Parallels directly accessing Boot Camp.

These were all tested on a 2.26 GHz 13″ MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and at native 1280×800 resolution.

The Results

Costs
For Boot Camp, Windows 7 Home Professional is $199.99. CrossOver Games is $39.99.  Parallels is easily the most expensive. Windows 7 Home Professional is $199.99 and Parallels is $79.99.

Setting Things Up

Boot Camp: This is the easy one. Since Boot Coomp runs Windows natively, installing all the games tested was very easy — albeit time consuming since they each had to be downloaded off the net.

Parallels: Again, very straight forward. The process takes a little longer since it’s running in a virtual environment, and Parallels needs to install the Parallels Tools after the setup. I had no issues installing the games. Really, for all intents and purposes Parallels is just like running Windows.

CrossOver: Well, the install is quick — you just install CrossOver like any OS X program. Getting the games to run…well, that’s a different story. While there’s a decent compatibility listing on Codeweaver’s site, since CrossOver is a Wine emulator results are very mixed. If an app has a Gold rating from Codeweaver, it’ll install and run well. Unfortunately, none of the games I tested received Gold ratings so installation was challenging. With DDO and Lord of the Rings, the actual installer won’t work; you’ll have to download the full client off a third-party site. After that, a program called Pylotro is required to launch the game — it’s a custom front end someone wrote to handle the launcher duties. There’s no guarantee an installed game will keep working, either; a previously working EQ2 broke in a patch of CrossOver.

Load Times

Frankly, the load times were the biggest source of agony during my tests. Not because of the load times, but because the results were hard to sort out because of a lot of variables. Every game is an online-based game, so, to get my character in the game I had to pass an authentication server, several load screens and a character select. Therefore, Internet latency and a whole host of issues come to play.

Here’s how I got the numbers. I loaded all the games and timed from when I started and stopped when I was able to control my character in-world. With Parallels and Boot Camp I also added the boot times of the required OS to the chart. I did this three times and averaged the results.

I did notice an odd thing in Parallels: if I rebooted my Mac, the load times for both the OS and the game were significantly longer. However, after further testing I noticed that if I loaded Parallels/Windows 7 and immediately launched a game, the load results were almost double the value above. If I let the OS “sit” for a few, the load times were normal. Rather than report those numbers, I’ll just say this: a watched OS never loads — go get your beverage and snacks while Parallels loads and by the time you’re done the game will load faster.

In-Game Performance

Boot Camp: Unsurprisingly, the performance here was the best. At high I was getting around 40 FPS, and the game just flew. No issues.

Parallels: I’m actually amazed gaming performance under Parallels was decent. With graphics settings on High (but shadows turned off) I was getting around 20 FPS average. Turning down options like view distances got the FPS closer to 30. I noticed no major issues outside of a slight stutter when loading a crowded area. Both windowed mode and full-screen worked fine. As an added bonus, you can set Parallels to share your OS X and Windows home directories, so any screenshots I took went right into my OS X Documents folder for easy viewing.

CrossOver: The performance was about half-way between Parallels and Boot Camp. I was getting just over 30 FPS in the games. There were, however, some significant trade-offs. Neither DDO or LotRO handle windowed mode well — once the window loses focus, you can’t click inside the window when you get back to it. Also, there’s a big issue with LotRO where the screen will go black forcing a reboot. I was able to get around both issues by forcing the virtual to run in a window. The game would think it’s full screen, but the OS treated it as a window. This way I could have access to Skype and if LotRO crashed it didn’t take the entire OS down with it. As I mentioned earlier, a previously working EverQuest 2 install broke with a recent patch release of CrossOver.

Conclusions

I used to be a huge fan of CrossOver due to its overall speed and low footprint. However, I’ve had enough and will be deleting the files. The final straw was EverQuest 2 breaking. While it’s cheap, getting a lot of games running is a gigantic hassle and there’s no guarantee they’ll keep working. As an aside, the community on the official forums is very helpful, and just about every issue someone’s had is at least addressed, even if there’s no solution.

For now, I’m running my games in Parallels. While the performance isn’t as great as in Boot Camp, the convenience of not needing to reboot is a big bonus for me. Often, I’ll game when taking a break from a project and I’d like to not have to reboot. As an added bonus, it’s very easy to resize the virtual disk in Parallels. It took less than 5 minutes to add another 32GB to the virtual disk (in Boot Camp, I’d have to repartition and reformat). I’m really surprised at how well these games ran in Parallels. Version 5 claims to add better support for Shader Model 3, so I’m planning on upgrading.

I’m not deleting the Boot Camp partition, though. Once Apple releases official support for Windows 7, I plan on re-paritioning it to a 100GB partition and have Parallels access that directly. That’ll cover me for the best of both worlds: for every day gaming, I can load Parallels, but if I need it, I can reboot and use the same install files in Boot Camp.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How do developers ride the Siri wave?
• Connectivity means making the machine disappear
• Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost

Why? In the case of Warcraft, its continued, unprecedented growth in subscribers suggests it’s a category killer in its particular sub-genre of virtual world, the subscription-driven, 3-D fantasy MMORPG. Subsequent rivals in that space have fallen far short of WoW’s 12 million subscriber base; most of the major game publishers are now focusing their energies on non-fantasy MMOs like Star Wars: The Old Republic, or experimenting with non-subscriber worlds, like Free Realms, largely leaving WoW alone in its own sub-genre. In the case of Second Life, while it’s earning tremendous revenue, its user base of some 750,000 monthly uniques makes it a midsized world at best, behind some dozen or so MMOs with regular users in the millions. Second Life’s particular sub-genre, a 3-D, dynamically user-created virtual world, has yet to attract any major competitor.

Meanwhile, numerous other virtual worlds are more popular than Second Life or even World of Warcraft, successfully operating on different platforms and revenue models, targeting various demographics. Consider, for example Zynga’s YoVille, an MMO that can be played only on MySpace or Facebook. Web-based and cartoonish, it’s not 3D and immersive like Second Life or WoW, but a virtual world all the same, offering users a simulated contiguous space with real-time interaction via avatars. It’s also tremendously popular: Just 14 months after its May 2008 launch, it now counts 8.5 million monthly active users on Facebook alone. But perhaps the most surprising thing isn’t its size; it’s that other MMOs, such as Maple Story and Habbo, are even larger. World of Warcraft and Second Life may be the most visible makes in the display window, but don’t forget the many other high-performance models on the show floor.

Wagner James Au is the author of The Making of Second Life (HarperCollins) and a member of the GigaOM Analyst Network. His complete discussion on trends and opportunities in the virtual world industry is now available on GigaOM Pro: “Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities” (subscription required).

Trademarks courtesy Linden Lab and Blizzard Entertainment.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities
• Social 2013: The enterprise strikes back
• Social third-quarter 2012: analysis and outlook

After this weekend, however, I think O3D deserves a closer look from MMO makers. Here’s why:

O3D To Be Fully Integrated Into Google Chrome This Year

Vangelis Kokkevis, O3D’s tech lead, spoke at the Metaverse U conference in Stanford, making his API’s case to the virtual world developers in attendance. While it’s still just a plug-in for IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Camino, Kokkevis said the “next goal” for the team is to fully integrate it into Google’s browser by the end of 2009. Since launching last September, Chrome has gained a slightly bigger slice of the browser market, and an aggressive marketing campaign could help it build momentum. If O3D is integrated on schedule, virtual world developers would gain a potential audience of Chrome users who can launch their products without having to pre-install a plug-in.

COLLADA Converter Makes O3D Compatible With Leading 3D Graphics Formats

At Metaverse U, Kokkevis emphasized O3D’s COLLADA converter, which translates graphic files made with industry-standard graphics software like Maya, Max, and Google’s own Sketchup. That makes O3D much more attractive to studios already working with these tools; by way of demonstration, he showed off a graphically rich platform video game built in Max and converted to O3D, he told us, within a couple weeks. COLLADA’s code is managed by the Khronos Group, which the O3D team is also participating in; Kokkevis even suggested that O3D’s efforts could be merged with Khronos. As he put it, “We want a 3D API for the web browser, whatever the flavor.”

Google Wave Plus O3D Plus Chrome = Virtual World Win?

Virtual worlds are hardly just about graphics, however; at least as important are communication channels between avatars and their groups, both asynchronously and in real time. After I got back from Metaverse U and read early reviews of Google Wave, the product suddenly struck me as a potential complement to a virtual world running O3D, especially within Chrome. Rather than implement a third-party chat/instant-messaging system or create one from scratch, MMO developers working with O3D could use Wave to perform those services (assuming they’re compatible, to be sure.)

After his presentation, a group of developers surrounded Kokkevis, peppering him with tech-heavy questions. He told me there weren’t any companies creating MMOs in O3D yet, but he raised the possibility that Google might port Sketchup and Google Earth into O3D, “once we become part of the browser.” (Both have been implemented for MMO-related projects.) Still, the debacle with Lively has left in its wake some distrust of Google’s commitment to virtual worlds; one Metaverse U attendee openly challenged Kokkevis on that point: “What makes you sustainable?”

“I really cannot tell you what the future can be,” Kokkevis replied. “We’re hoping it’s going to be successful.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• Disruptapalooza 2011: how Amazon’s Kindle is changing the portable media game

Has Sony’s kid-friendly effort succeeded? Based on my first-hand look at the beta version of Free Realms, I’d say yes — at least enough to prove that the big game developers can play in the space. However, I’m not convinced that Free Realms can capture attention away from Habbo, Club Penguin, and other scrappy pioneers in this field just yet. Here’s my take.

The Good

Unlike most kids’ MMOs, which are web-based, Free Realms streams the world to a downloaded client. Still, it’s nicely integrated with the official web site, which gives each player a social network-style profile page; that’ll surely appeal to kids already used to such features on their virtual world or social network of choice. The web-to-world integration also happens in the other direction, most notably with a button that uploads gameplay video footage directly to your YouTube account — a great tool for sharing and telling stories.

Since Free Realms is billed as an open-ended world, I was surprised how easy it is to have a classic MMORPG experience. You can, if you choose, slay monsters, search for treasure, and so on — but it’s also made clear in the orientation stage that you can jump between entirely different experiences in the game, too. Be a chef who gains achievements by playing a series of cooking-themed mini-games, then go back to bashing monsters if you like (or not.) The result is an interesting and fairly unique mix of fantasy MMORPG gameplay and casual virtual world fun that could appeal to players of existing tween MMOs who want a more involving game experience, as well as to MMORPG gamers who want a lighter alternative to the typical “level grind” they’re used to.

The So-So

Despite its kid-friendly trimmings, Free Realms is a full 3-D game. This is another departure from the established market, because most virtual worlds popular with kids are 2.5D. And since Sony has expressed a desire to make Free Realms appealing to girls (who are embracing virtual worlds in droves), opting for full 3-D seems like a big mistake. In a Georgia Tech study of 13- and 14-year-olds gaming preferences, 70 percent of boys studied opted for a 3-D game, while 70 percent of girls in the study opted for 2-D.

Beyond that, there’s a premeditated quality to Free Realms that could hurt Sony’s chances to create a passionate fanbase; little room seems left for the unique quirks and personality evident in the look and feel of the biggest tween MMOs. Next to the retro videogame graphics of Habbo or the irreverent, anime-flavored Gaia Online, Free Realms seems sleek, generic, and aggressively eager to please.

With millions of users each, the Habbos and Gaias of the industry have a huge head start. If Sony hopes to catch up, it may need to lean a little bit less on its market research, and take more creative risks — giving kids not only what they ask for, but also what they weren’t expecting.

Image courtesy FreeRealms.com.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities
• Takeaways from connected consumer’s second quarter

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities
• Startup growth and the new recruiting ecosystem
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012

Launched in May of last year, YoVille’s user growth rate is faster than that of any virtual world I’m aware of, quickly putting it in the upper ranks of other web-based MMOs, such as Gaia Online, launched in 2003, which reported 7 million monthly actives last Winter, and Habbo, launched in 2000, which reported nearly 10 million monthlies last June. Even more surprising to me, YoVille is only accessible as an app on Facebook and MySpace (where it currently counts 2.8 million users.)

How did it get so successful so fast? “Many casual social network users were hungry for a virtual world, and YoVille was the first to deliver that experience,” YoVille developer Justin Waldron speculated in an email interview. He also credits a design emphasis on play among friends for the site’s rapid growth.

One of many successful social games from San Francisco-based startup Zynga, YoVille invites players to create cartoonish avatars, customize their appearance and apartments, socialize with other users, and add them as friends. (Sort of like an animated, synchronous version of Facebook within Facebook.) Waldron tells me its user base has a demographic that’s 60 percent female and 40 percent male, mostly in the 13-35 year old range. Like many social games, YoVille has its own virtual currency, and that’s even led to some emergent user-created content: Zynga’s team was surprised to discover some players using the world’s virtual whiteboard object to draw and sell artworks to other users.

The company currently earns revenue from YoVille through banner ads, lead generation, and direct user purchase of YoVille cash. With such a spectacular growth rate, it’s likely we’ll see other developers attempting Facebook-based virtual worlds of their own. Waldron’s advice? “Be sure to listen to your users. You get a ton of useful feedback on social networks.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities
• Social 2013: The enterprise strikes back
• Social third-quarter 2012: analysis and outlook

App Quick Stats

With Watchmen arriving at movie houses around the globe, the iPhone game attempts to brings the grim world of the costumed hero to you.

There’s a whole heap of Marvel in my comic collection but, I’m afraid, not so much DC. I preferred my heroes to have hyphens and make cheap puns. Plus, Batman just ain’t a superhero, however you cut it: real heroes have powers.

Shielded from the darkness of the DC-universe, I never read Watchmen. Never got to bask in New York’s crime-ridden ’80′s underbelly. Failed to experience a mankind-enveloping conspiracy unfolding, page after page, the distinction between hero and villain smudged like a fresh inkblot test.

And so, in preparation for the iPhone game — a massively multiplayer online adventure — I purchased the Watchmen graphic novel. Now, having read this classic book, I’m ready to shine my healing torch of justice into an ocean of violence and crime, representing all that is good and just. I am The Ambassador.

New Frontiers

The idea behind Watchmen: Justice is Coming seems to be to take the MMO experience — think World of Warcraft, Age of Conan etc. — and transport it to the iPhone. It’s a seriously compelling prospect: forming your own crime-fighting syndicate and entering a dark, bustling fictional New York, teeming with hidden evils.

Having just read the graphic novel, everything seems almost real to me — the source material is so rich, setting the stage for a vast online adventure. Therefore, there’s much at risk and much that could be wrong; like more paranoid members of the Watchmen contingent, I got the feeling that there would be something awful waiting for me.

Before donning costume and taking up residence in the rotten core of The Big Apple, as The Ambassador, the first thing I had to do was set up an account. It’s fairly standard character-generation stuff, choosing skin color and a name, but there’s a clever twist thrown in with the Rorschach inkblot test — determining your hero’s personality type.

Vigilante Stuff

However, there’s no palpable impact as a result of the setup process. The Ambassador popped up on a New York sidewalk, wearing civilian clothes, nothing particular heroic about him and the result of the Rorschach test seemingly rendered irrelevant.

Moving around the streets is easy enough — pressing and holding your finger on an area of the screen starts your character walking in that direction. Unfortunately, you’re just another guy, wandering the streets, getting your drab city clothes soaked through in the everlasting rain, rifling through dumpsters in search of new clothes.

Indeed, aside from fighting, that’s how you up your XP and acquire new costume pieces: dumpster diving. Before you’re even ready to start fighting, it seems your first mission is to saunter around the curiously deserted back-alleys and street-corners in search of garbage.

Maybe it’s a tip of the hood to Rorschach’s trashy drop-off point in the graphic novel (a can rather than a dumpster), but it just doesn’t seem appropriate. We’re heroes — we get our hands dirty handling criminal scum, not digging through garbage for cast-off costumes.

Sham Crusade

The Watchmen graphic novel didn’t seem to be about fighting, or violence, or good vs. evil per se; the story seemed to be something a step ahead of traditional comic book fare. It’s a shame therefore that the MMO eschews all of this and seems to boil down to fighting.

The city streets seem to be empty much of the time. Maybe it’s because it’s early days for this MMO, occasionally though you’ll pass by another player and they’ll pick a fight with you. If you agree to fight, you’re thrown into a mini-game — an odd little affair which involves tapping a couple of buttons, no skill is apparently needed.

Another option for those of a violent disposition is to go hunting for Knot-Tops and other criminal rogues. These fights with computer-controlled characters can be accessed by locating floating red exclamation marks on the streets — something else which just doesn’t sit right, detracting from the atmosphere of the Watchmen universe.

A Perfect Grid

Despite the fact that the game plays out on an isometric grid — harking back to the old days of adventure games, an impractical viewing angle that I’ve never appreciated — the atmosphere is something which it almost gets right.

The New York of the graphic novel is grim, falling to pieces under the weight of fear, criminality and hysteria. The New York of the iPhone game — while devoid of the hustle and bustle — is a forlorn, broken location. It’s totally appropriate and feels just right. Or just wrong, as the case may be.

Walking the streets, I wandered past the Gunga Diner and kissing silhouettes nearby. I stood next to the Newspaper stand so often visited by the reader in the graphic novel. There was even a visit to the cemetery, where I paid my respects to The Comedian. It’s all, quite pleasingly, present and correct.

Graphically, the game is undeniably impressive, certainly drawing comparison to early PlayStation titles, even reminding me of the original Metal Gear Solid at one point. Although there don’t seem to be any sound effects, the soundtrack swoops and moans, dripping with melodrama and intrigue.

Under the Hood

Unfortunately, all the melodrama generated by the dark soundtrack and the aptly depressing scene-setting achieved by the graphics doesn’t help the game’s cause. In actual fact, this grim atmosphere feeds in to the frustration felt because of the game’s many bugs and flaws.

Other players seem to always want to pick a fight. This is a world of heroes and, although it’s mentioned in the graphic novel that heroes frequently end up in combat the first time they meet, it just doesn’t sit right. Why should all the heroes be fighting each other? There’s no scene-setting, no grand over-arching plot. (There is a plot, but it hardly seems to explain why there’s a proliferation of violent heroes on the streets.)

Plus, I’ve frequently been thrown in to a fight that I wanted to walk away from: the yes/no option is broken, it doesn’t work and it’s so frustrating. Once a fight starts loading, you’re taken off the streets, in to fight mode. This mode frequently doesn’t load, there are usually connection issues, and the game either locks up, disconnects, or takes around five minutes to reconnect you to the street server.

The game falls asleep too. So while you’re waiting to be reconnected to the streets, if your iPhone goes to sleep, it may not actually connect when it finally does wake up. It just feels unpolished, rushed and, frankly, rude on the part of the game developers.

The interface is clunky, it’s frequently unclear just what is a clickable object or button and what isn’t. Plus, there’s no visual or audible feedback from pressing buttons or interacting with objects. It’s disconcerting that from source material teeming with so much vitality and expression, can come such a lifeless and, at times, dull game.

Summing Up

I enjoyed the graphic novel so much, plus I’ve been waiting for an iPhone MMO, something with a compelling narrative and real mass appeal. Unfortunately, this isn’t a worthy companion to the graphic novel and certainly not the iPhone MMO I’ve been waiting for.

The game feels rushed and, as is a trend with games based on movies, is most probably a hastily created cash-in. It seems to have very little relation to the universe it’s based upon; instead it’s probably best described as a lazy, bug-ridden chat-room with pretty graphics.

With more players and less bugs, this could really be something special. For now though, The Ambassador is packing up his costume and retiring. Perhaps he’ll return when the world is ready for heroes like him.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What to watch in mobile in 2013
• Takeaways from mobile’s second quarter
• Defining the mobile wallet: what it is, why it matters

It still remains to be seen whether consumers really want to explore the web together as avatars. But I’m watching this launch closely for several reasons. Of all the many “It’s an MMO but played on the web itself” pitches I heard last year, RocketOn struck me as the most compelling and likely to go mass-market, and the millions of eyeballs these new partnerships bring will help put that to the test. And while this sub-genre is unproven, Hoffman sent me some impressive beta user stats that suggest a vibrant and unique worldwide user community poised to grow.

Since launching last August, according to RocketOn’s internal stats, it now has 114,000 active monthly unique users, and their demographics mirror those of many successful virtual worlds. RocketOn users skew very young: 71 percent are under 18, comparable demographically to popular web-based MMOs like Habbo and Gaia Online. 67 percent of RocketOn users are female, and that’s also very promising; successful virtual worlds like those two have a gender makeup that’s about balanced or skews toward young females. (And according to a recent NPD presence, rates of female participation in virtual worlds are likely to grow.)

RocketOn also has some very surprising (and, to me, exciting) user stats: Ethnically, 17 percent describe themselves as African-American, slightly more than the U.S. population share of 13 percent. This may be the first MMO where African-Americans are over-represented, at least that I’m familiar with. (It’s an industry truism that whites and Asians are disproportionately represented in this space.) Hoffman speculates it might be because one of RocketOn’s default avatars is black. “We did this to make it clear that we’re multiracial,” he said. Commitment to racial diversity is admirable — but it’s also good business sense: Since much of RocketOn’s revenue will come from co-branding deals, a diverse user base should broaden its potential partner base, too.

RocketOn’s diversity is also striking when you look at users based on national origin: Almost as many unique visitors are from India as the United States. Here again, Hoffman isn’t entirely sure why this is. “It’s funny how you catch on in certain countries without really trying,” he said. In this case, he adds, it’s a fortunate alignment, because PayByCash, his company’s payment gateway partner, is selling “Ultimate Game Cards” in more than 200 Indian stores. Players can use these to redeem the MMO’s currency, Rocket Dollars, “so this will help us a lot in monetizing those Indian users.” If these six Western partnerships launch successfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if RocketOn started announcing deals with India-based web sites too.

RocketOn-on-Hypster screen capture courtesty RocketOn.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013
• How HR can make the case for workforce analytics
• The 2013 task management tools market