Artificial Life Plans MMRPG

V-Disco by Artificial LifeArtificial Life — of V-Girl and V-Disco fame — is apparently planning a massively multiplayer role-playing game for mobiles. The Java game is due to be released in the fourth quarter and will “let players explore a virtual city, enter imaginary buildings, chat with each other’s bots, and even go out on virtual dates”. (The name of the game hasn’t been revealed, but I’m guessing something like V-City)
“The future for mobile entertainment and games lies in this kind of sophisticated massive multiplayer games, pretty much as is the case for online games,” said Artificial Life CEO Eberhard Schoeneburg. However, people tend not to spend a long time playing games on their mobile phones, normally they play just to fill in some spare time — one analyst put the average game-time at 11 minutes. Still, the game only has to be sold to a tiny proportion of mobile users in a given market to be considered a success, and operators will appreciate the ongoing increase in average revenue per user (ARPU) it would create. Artificial Life limited the game-playing time of V-Girl to one hour a day to prevent people getting hooked, I wonder if it will do the same here…
Some western analysts are dubious of the games appeal, one is quoted in the article as saying: “That game sounds like a disaster to me,” said Michael Pachter, a research analyst who covers games for Wedbush Morgan Securities. “You really have to be a loser if the only way you have to socialize is to play a game on your cell phone.” Of course, that’s what was said about many massively multiplayer online games which are now very successful … I don’t think the epithet “just” can be applied to a figure of 200,000 when we’re talking about a game that people spend a lot of time involved in.
People were also skeptical of the appeal of Vivienne, the Virtual Girlfriend, apparently missing the point entirely and mistaking the game as a replacement for a human girlfriend.
I don’t know whether this attempt will be successful, but it would be worth looking at because of Artificial Life’s sophisticated technology, and I’m sure they’ll get a couple of telcos to promote it…
Related stories:
Artificial Life Releases V-Girl Version 2.0
V-Disco Website Launched
Artificial Life Launches 3G Products With Taiwan Mobile

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