From July 1 to 14, online game portal Gamescampus.com will host a closed beta test for MMORPG Concerto Gate, preparing for the Square Enix-produced game's North American release.

Concerto Gate is the sequel to Cross Gate, which was launched in Japan in July 2001. Though never introduced in the U.S., Cross Gate claims some 23 million registered users in Japan, Taiwan and Korea, and Concerto Gate features an updated game system and improved graphics.

Said Kevin Kim, CEO of OnNet USA, which runs Gamescampus.com: "I am thrilled and excited to introduce Concerto Gate to American players. Square Enix is, without doubt, one of the most famous developers in the world, and I believe the features of this game surely live up to their reputation. Concerto Gate is a terrific addition to Gamescampus.com, the leader in item-based games."

Square Enix producer Noriaki Watanabe added: "It is our pleasure to introduce Concerto Gate to American audiences through Gamescampus.com. We hope now that even more players can experience our game's revolutionary world and its exciting, new features."

Health service organization CIGNA HealthCare has announced the development of a 3D virtual health care community in the form of a Second Life island. The project hopes to provide visitors with seminars, interactive displays, educational games, and virtual health consultations to help foster help foster real and sustainable behavior change that improves health.

Developed by brand experience agency Method, the community welcomes arriving users with an avatar, which greets and leads them to the virtual seminars. The interactive presentation will allow users to participate in a variety of activities, such as learning about nutrition in the "nutrition zone" and voting on the fat content of particular food items.

Interactive games will also be available, such as "The Fridge," in which users click on food items to display their nutritional labels, and "Whack-a-Food," where players compete to test their knowledge of healthy foods.

Said Keith Dixon, Ph.D., president of CIGNA's health solutions unit: “As a health service company, we are always looking for new and creative ways to reach people with important messages about living a healthy and productive life. With a social interactivity that extends beyond geographic boundaries, and an exciting and appealing visual experience, CIGNA's virtual community enables us to reach an entirely new group of people that might not respond to health education messages delivered through more traditional channels.”

Analyst firm Gartner's vice president Carol Rozell added: “Companies are seeing measurable returns from using virtual worlds to create a more engaging communications experience with their employees and customers. The key to launching and maintaining a successful virtual world is to clearly identify a targeted audience, determine their needs, understand how they learn, and design a user experience that encourages interactivity.”

Webcasting and virtual events solutions provider ON24 has announced ON24 Virtual Show, a platform allowing companies and organizations to host trade shows, job fairs, conferences, and training summits in virtual venues.

ON24 Virtual Show customizable user interfaces, integrated webcasting and show reporting, profiles and message board discussions for professional and social networking, "smart booths" offering personalized content based on attendee's profile, and multilingual support.

ON24 believes that its service can help organizations reduce costs while decreasing the amount of time needed to plan and hold an event. Companies can also use the Virtual Show platform to extend physical trade shows with a virtual component.

Said ON24 president and CEO Sharat Sharan: "ON24 has a history of providing our customers with reliable solutions that work every time with global customer-centric service. With ON24 Virtual Show, we are transforming how organizations leverage webcasting and virtual events for their global communication and demand generation needs."

Following up his speculation that virtual worlds are heading for a severe downturn, The Digital Space Commons president and CEO Bruce Damer has outlined several ideas for creating a healthy and sustainable virtual worlds industry and promoting mainstream adoption.

He suggests that "small worlds" might eventually dominate the space, defining small worlds platforms as "easy to install and run programs or plug-ins serving lightweight spaces hosting a small number of users. The small worlds would exist parallel to the web, embedded in and drawing traffic from social networking sites. This would contrast more traditional virtual worlds, or "big grid-iron" worlds as Damer describes them, which exist in isolation from the web.

Damer believes that the industry should concentrate on the platform with the biggest footprint of potential adopters: "Social interaction both random and purposeful is the big user footprint available to virtual worlds especially when embedded into high-trafficked web-based social networks."

He adds that the platform also has to have the lowest barrier: "The small world form factor using already ubiquitous front end technology would naturally be the lowest barrier to entry to these users."

Though Damer recognizes that builder behind large grid-based virtual worlds with proprietary and heavy browser technology will likely not be interested in this approach, he notes, "The big grid-iron worlds approach may be enough sustain a company or two, but this is not sufficient to create a healthy industry."

He concludes: "One could envision inviting key players to a common poker game where the payout at the end of the evening might be a common small world platform tuned to the biggest user footprint and adopted by the biggest trafficked social networks? The stakes in this game are a new medium and a healthy industry and… social virtual worlds everywhere!"

The original creators of Neopets have founded their own company, Meteor Games, and announced production of an unnamed youth-targeted virtual world project, which features MMO-style gameplay and will benefit from the lessons learned from Neopets, according to CEO Adam Powell.

Neopets was originally founded in 1999 and acquired first by private investors and later acquired by Viacom in 2005 for $160 million.

Meteor Games is headquartered in West Hollywood, California, and is headed up by the two original creators of the Neopets franchise, Adam Powell and Donna Williams. Powell serves as Meteor's chief executive officer and and creative director, while Williams takes the role of chief operating officer and president.

According to the statement released by the company, its games will "cross the appeal of social networks, web-based casual games and traditional massively multiplayer online games." To find out more, Gamasutra talked with Adam Powell about Meteor and where it will take its new world.

Why did you choose now to found a new company and work on a new product?

Adam Powell: A lot of factors came into play, really. Personally, we're in a situation where we are able to make this company happen while at the same time, the industry has been going through such amazing growth. A lot of the trends we’re seeing – merging social networks, web-based gaming and MMO popularity – play well into our experience creating worlds and games. We just felt it was the right time for us to use our experience to create something new.

Cartoon Network New Media, cable television channel Cartoon Network's online publishing division, has announced Mini Match, a new 3D virtual world focusing on multiplayer match-ups and social gaming.

Players create customizable avatars in Mini Match, exploring environments based on adventure themes in Cartoon Network shows, such as Ben 10 and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. They will also play multiplayer games featuring characters and content from the channel's programs.

In the virtual world, players will be able to chat with one another using a custom dictionary loaded with only kid-appropriate words and phrases. By chatting, players can work together to solve puzzles and discover more about the Mini Match world, earning new avatar gear and in-game abilities.

Mini Match will be joined this fall by Cartoon Network's other MMO in the works, Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall. Developed by Seoul, Korea-based studio Grigon Entertainment, FusionFall will focus on getting players to work in groups, featuring lots of platformer elements and a multitude of Cartoon Network characters.

Said Paul Condolora, senior vice president, digital for Turner Broadcasting System Inc.’s Animation, Young Adults and Kids Media Group: “Mini Match opens up a whole new world of gaming to our online audience. The action-adventure theme complements some of our most popular shows and provides kids with a safe virtual destination for social gaming. Kids can come and enjoy the multiplayer games or insert themselves into the fabric of the Mini Match story by joining the ranks of ninjas, pirates, space pilots and other characters, customizing their ‘Minis’ with the gear those adventurous characters bring.”

Social gaming site Playfish has raised $1 million in bridge financing from venture capital firm Accel Partners, according to VC news weblog VentureBeat.

Headquartered in London - with offices in Beijing and Tromso, Norway - Playfish has produced titles such as "Who Has The Biggest Brain?" and "Word Challenge," both featured in Facebook with in-game advertisements. The company boasts that its games are played 100 million times each month and have picked up over six million players.

PlayFish intends to use its new funding from Accel Partners to "make contacts while continuing to develop new games." The studio launched in October 2007 with $4 million in funding and backing from Accel Partners.

China-based online game developer and operator Giant Interactive has announced that it has acquired a 25% stake in Chinese social networking service provider Five One Network Development Co., for approximately $51 million.

Founded in 2005, 51.com claims approximately 120 million registered users, with 31.4 million monthly unique visitors logging in 18 times per month on average. Its average daily page views are as high as 350 million, while its average monthly page views exceed 10 billion.

Giant Interactive's catalog of titles include free-to-play MMORPG ZT Online, which was voted the most popular online game in China in 2006, according to International Data Corporation. The company has three other forthcoming titles, King of Kings III, Empire Sports, and Giant Online, the last of which began open beta testing in March 2008. Giant maintains a nationwide distribution network to sell prepaid cards and game points for its games.

Said Giant Interactive chairman and CEO Yuzhu Shi: "With this strategic investment in the largest independent social network service provider in China, we are positioning Giant at the forefront of the trend towards increasing convergence between online games and social networking communities. Enhancing the community-building and social networking aspects of our online games has been one of our key strategic initiatives."

He continued: "The combination of Giant's online game platform and expertise at free-to-play game monetization with 51.com's social networking business provides a unique opportunity to broaden our player base, expand our community-building opportunities, reinforce user stickiness, and extend the lifecycles of our games. The 51.com management is a well-known team of industry pioneers with strong operating capabilities and a deep understanding of their customers. We believe this investment has the potential to create significant long-term value for both Giant and 51.com shareholders, and will help us to remain at the vanguard of the online game industry in the coming years."

Organizers for the Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2008 have announced three virtual world conference sessions for the event, which will take place August 10 - 12 at the Edinburgh International Conference Center.

The first talk, "Inline Transactions," will be delivered by Karl Mehta, CEO of of publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network PlaySpan. He plans to discuss how virtual world economies impact real-world economies through real money transactions.

Hemisphere Capital's Matt Rothman will host a session on “The 3 MMO’s– from Content to Community,” in which he will moderate a panel looking beyond technology to address "what it takes to build these new forms of entertainment." Redbedlam (RomaVictor) president Kerry Fraser-Robinson, Monumental Games (Football Stars) CEO Rik Alexander, and NiceTech CTO (Tronji-The Happy Lands) Toby Simpson are scheduled to participate.

For the third session, “Real Politics invade Virtual Worlds– dealing with social and economic issues in EVE online,” Redbedlam executive director Fred Hasson will interview Eve Online's lead economist and head of research and statistics, Eyjlfur Guâmundsonn, on the social and economic consequences of in-game communities.

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

We're mixing it up in the Worlds in Motion Online World Atlas this week, by choosing to look at the browser-based (and largely single-player!) RPG Kingdom of Loathing. However, it's not completely off-topic, as the game features in-game chat, player stores and other community aspects. We go in-depth after the jump.

Celebrating the fifth anniversary of MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, publishers Lucasarts and Sony Online Entertainment have announced the Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game.

The first release for the online trading card game, Champions of the Force, is scheduled to debut late summer 2008. The game will be available exclusively to users with valid and active subscriptions to Star Wars Galaxies.

Subscribers will receive five free booster packs per month and will be able to purchase starter decks and additional booster packs through Sony Online Entertainment's Station Store.

The trading card game offers decks for both the light and dark sides of the Force, enabling players to fight virtual matches for the Rebel or Imperial factions. Players will also be able to collect cards within the MMORPG to add to their collection. In addition, “loot cards” can be redeemed for virtual items usable in the Star Wars Galaxies game.

Beginning July 22nd, Lucasarts and SOE will throw virtual “Empire Day” festivities which will include appearances by Princess Leia, regularly scheduled Imperial parades, in-game fireworks, performances by the Max Rebo Band, and the debut of two new statues for the Emperor and Yoda.

Furthermore, Star Wars Galaxies subscribers will also be rewarded with in-game items, such as a Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back virtual poster and wearable goggles inscribed with a “V.”

Hoping to separate its site from "virtual plush" communities, representatives for forthcoming street racing virtual Revnjenz have added a new twist for its registration requirements - kids will need to first purchase a "collectible" driver's license card from participating retailers to receive a code for registering a Revnjenz account.

Once users enter their driver's license code, they'll create a virtual version of the vehicle pictured on the cars, enabling them to play games, chat with friends, participate in races, and earn BoostBucks, the virtual world's in-game currency. Revnjenz targets the 'tween demographic, boasting content tailored for both boys and girls, such as car modifications and accessories available to purchase with BoostBucks.

The company behind Revnjenz is currently inviting retailers to put in pre-orders for the driver's license cards, promising their delivery for late summer to early fall 2008.

Think tank Virtual Policy Network intends to hold a two-day event titled Virtual Policy ‘08: A conference on innovation and governance in virtual worlds. The conference aims to define the virtual policy agenda for UK and Europe.

Scheduled for July 22-23 at the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform’s conference center in London, Virtual Policy ’08 will bring together industry veterans, policy makers, and academics to discuss the public policy implications of virtual worlds from a European perspective.

Key themes which will be examined at the event include intellectual property rights, financial transactions, governance frameworks, issues regarding kids in online spaces, and new models and tools for learning in virtual worlds. The conference will also cover innovations in brand promotion, virtual meetings, and online learning.

Designing Virtual Worlds author and University of Essex professor Richard Bartle will deliver a conference keynote, as will Technology Intelligence Group CEO Christian Renaud. CCP's (EVE Online) Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, Linden Lab's (Second Life) Dr. Jim Purbrick, and Department of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform's Leigh Jackson will also be speaking at Virtual Policy ’08.

Said Virtual Policy Network founder Ren Reynolds: "This is the ideal time for a mature debate about the relationship between public policy and virtual worlds. Virtual Worlds are not new, having been invented in the UK almost 30 years ago, but today’s scale of use is unprecedented. With figures such as Habbo Hotel’s 90 million registered users and World of Warcraft establishes itself as a pastime for millions people around the world - virtual worlds are forcing themselves onto the policy agenda. This unique event will focus on the whole range of policy implications of this fascinating and rich global cultural phenomena .”

Australia-based middleware developer BigWorld Technology has upgraded its MMO technology suite, which includes BigWorld Server Software, Content Creation Pipeline, 3D Client Engine Package, and Live Management Tools & Instrumentation, to version 1.9.

The update contains new features such as an advanced terrain engine that enables support for unlimited texture layers, higher level of detail, and configurable height/shadow/normal/texture map resolution. In addition, the suite includes optimizations and improvements to patrol paths, web integration, skybox and weather systems, and its support for SpeedTree and Umbra partner technologies.

BigWorld Technology 1.9 also comes with support for Perforce, SVN, and CVS control systems. Both Mandarin and English languages are supported in the development tools user interface and art pipeline

The company's current MMO and virtual world licensing partners include Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, which is currently developing MMORPG Stargate Worlds, and 38 Studios and Sierra Online, which are both working on unannounced online PC titles.

Said BigWorld CTO Simon Hayes, "BigWorld customers and developers currently evaluating the technology are very excited by this release as it enables them to implement some pretty amazing scenery in their games that would otherwise be difficult to achieve."

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape. You can view Part 1 of our investigation here, and Part 2 here.]

Kingdom of Loathing is the latest online game we're looking at as part of our Online World Atlas, and it's pretty unusual, because most of the time is spent in a single player RPG. However, this browser-based title has MMO aspects -- in-game chat, player stores and clans, for example – and we conclude our findings on its strengths and weaknesses after the jump.

Electronic Arts has announced that it will bring MySims, which was originally released for the Wii and Nintendo DS in September 2007 and has sold 2.8 million copies worldwide, to the PC in October 2008. The new edition will add new characters, items, and online features.

Based on Maxis' The Sims franchise, MySims enables users to personalize their in-game character, build relationships with their neighbors, and design homes, shops, restaurants, and more.

The PC edition will feature “shared online game spaces” in which up to eight users can populate the same online neighborhood. Players can chat, play games, construct buildings together, and share their creations with each other. In addition, players can send their creations to each other through email or instant messages.

Electronic Arts also plans to release a follow-up for the spin-off series this fall titled MySims Kingdom. Planned as a Wii and Nintendo DS exclusive, the sequel will challenge users to revitalize the fantasy kingdom of King Roland.

Said The Sims Label studio head Rob Humble: "MySims, made for the PC, opens up the world of MySims for you to explore, play and share with up to seven other friends that are online with you. For the first time, you can express the creativity of MySims with others in a collaborative way, as you create and live in a shared town with your friends online.”

He continued: “With MySims, made for the PC, it's a whole new world of interaction with personalized creations, buildings and towns to share, along with furniture and other tailored creations that you and your friends can trade. Players who enjoyed MySims on the Wii and Nintendo DS will view this as a great way to connect with friends in an online PC game and those new to MySims will find this a fresh and exciting game."

The Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology will receive a $500,000 grant from the New Zealand government's Encouraging and Supporting Innovation fund for a new project exploring the potential of virtual worlds as an educational platform, according to a report from daily newspaper The Nelson Mail.

NMIT will be conducting its research through Second Life, where the polytechnic has maintained a presence for 18 months. The organization purchased an island in the virtual world last year, christening it Koru and renting out the land to five other polytechnics and Massey University.

Though NMIT will be leading the project, Otago Polytechnic, the Wellington Institute of Technology, and the Open Polytechnic will make contributions as partners. IBM will also provide support and advice as the groups study the educational possibilities for audio and visual interactive presentations.

Speaking on whether virtual worlds can offer value to education, NMIT information technology tutor Dr Clare Atkins predicted, "We believe that they do, even though it's early days and no one knows how to use it best. It's a brave new world ... The big part really is identifying the teaching methods that are likely to be most suitable to Second Life."

Shanghai-based online game operator The9 Limited has announced an agreement with Korean online game developer T3 Entertainment (Audition series) to establish a joint venture, further strengthening their game development and publishing partnerships.

The9 manages the operation and distribution for several popular MMORPG titles, including Ragnarok Online 2 and World of Warcraft and its expansions, in mainland China. Previously, The9 revealed that it had acquired a minority stake in T3 parent company G10 Entertainment with a cash investment of approximately $38 million. The company has also licensed the rights to operate Audition 2 in mainland China.

In addition to supporting the development of T3's Audition series, the joint venture will develop online games targeting international markets in the near future.

Commented The9 chairman and CEO Jun Zhu: "We are very pleased to further partner with T3 to strengthen The9's game development capability, especially on casual games, to a new level. Through the joint venture, The9 will be more proactively involved in the development of Audition 2 as well as other games in the Audition game series. The joint venture will also facilitate tighter cooperation and communication between the two companies, adding customized and healthy China-specific colors to the games we're developing."

T3 CEO Kee-Young Kim added: "We are much excited to set up the joint venture with The9, which is already an important partner and strategic investor for our company. The joint venture will focus on developing top-notched and fine-tuned games for the Chinese market, and we believe it will prove to be a very strong alliance between the two companies whose resources and strengths well complement each other."

Speaking with Silicon Valley newspaper the San Jose Mercury News, Hewlett Packard's Innovation Program Office head and Personal Systems Group CTO/VP, Philip McKinney, predicted that Second Life-like communities will eventually be as common for workplaces as it is for recreational use.

He noted one specific advantage virtual business meetings have over other forms of distance collaboration: "You can schedule a meeting on a particular topic, but you miss out on casual conversation. That's a role Second Life can play. Some companies are using it as a virtual water cooler."

McKinney adds that as companies begin to use online as a business tool, the virtual worlds will need to gain legal status: "If I get in a virtual collaboration with somebody in another country and we invent something, what creates the basis for ownership? If there becomes a dispute, where do you take that dispute? That's going to have to be addressed."

Also, on the topic of the "gray wave," or consumers aged over 55 years old, McKinney stressed that an important opportunity exists in adapting conferencing technologies for older markets: "Everybody is out there chasing the 18- to 25-year-olds. The problem is the 18-25 market segment is shrinking by 6.5 percent a year. Over 55 is growing 8 percent a year. Fifty percent of all disposable income is in the 55-and-older category. So it's not a bad category to be thinking about."

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

We recently looked at Build-A-Bearville, and this week we look at one of the most established kids brand's foray into the MMO space, Barbie Girls from Mattel. According to Mattel this browser-based MMO has a huge userbase (over 13 million registered users) and recently launched a subscription V.I.P. service, so we thought we'd check it out.

Name: Barbie Girls

Company: Mattel

Established: April 2007

How it Works: Barbie Girls is experienced on the web through html and Flash. It requires no installation and navigation and gameplay are accomplished via mouse and keyboard input.

Overview: In Barbie Girls, players create an avatar, design their room and can then explore a virtual world where they can ean "B Bucks" play games, watch videos and chat with other girls in a safe environment.

Payment Method: Barbie Girls is free to play, but offers a V.I.P. subscription package starting at $5.99 a month, which allows users access to a larger world, the ability to own pets, and more. Access is also expanded for players who own Barbie Girl MP3 players.

Key Features:
- Girl-orientated virtual world attached to a popular established brand
- Customizable avatar and home, with clothes and items to buy
- Safe environment with several levels of moderated chat (B Chat, Secret B Chat, and Super B Chat)
- World is extended for users who purchase Barbie Girl MP3 players or subscription packages.

Useful Links:
Barbie.com

Website syndication provider Conduit and virtual world Habbo have released the Conduit-powered Habbo community toolbar, a new browser tool for delivering community features to Habbo's users.

Built on the Conduit Website Syndication Platform, the toolbar enables Habbo users to see their friends, messages, and community news from anywhere online. The customizable tool also accomomodates a variety of applications for accessing chat, forums, feeds, and My Habbo homepages.

Teemu Huuhtanen, Habbo EVP of business and president, North America, said, "Habbo's teens are invested in our virtual world --they interact, play games and develop self-expression here, but they also want to know what is happening when they are not in their Habbo community. Thanks to Conduit's technology, the Habbo community toolbar allows Habbos to stay connected in many ways. The functionality lets members see their friends, messages and Habbo news from anywhere online: It's a constant reminder of the community that's waiting for them, and therefore encourages them to keep coming back."

Conduit CEO Ronen Shilo commented: "Habbo knows that their members want to be active in their virtual lives every day and so they have made it even easier for them to get there. The secret for capturing the attention of the discerning and tech-savvy audience? Delivering personalized content, services, and cool technologies in one, convenient location that suits their Internet lifestyles."

3DXplorer developer Altadyn has announced the appointment of Greg Milliken as its vice president of marketing. His primary duties include increasing market awareness and adoption of 3DXplorer following Altadyn's release of the web3D platform's V3 beta in January.

Previous to Altadyn, Milliken served as CEO of 3D CAD software developer Alibre, Inc. Prior to that, he was vice president of marketing at Knowledge Revolution, a developer of mechanical motion simulation software eventually acquired by MSC Software.

Billed as "the only plug-in-less, browser-based web3D platform for building and visiting 3D virtual worlds, web sites, and web applications," 3DXplorer enables users to view 3D environments almost immediately on all major platforms and browsers without having to install and client software or plug-ins. The platform is free of charge for development, authoring, and display (on small or mid-size websites).

Said Altadyn CEO Darius Lahoutifard: "We are pleased to welcome Greg to the Altadyn team. Greg's wealth of experience and past successes in a variety of 3D technology businesses, as well as his background leading marketing in emerging technology companies, will complement our current team and help us achieve our goal of establishing 3DXplorer as the leading web3D platform."

One to One Interactive research arm OTOinsights has released a report entitled
"Serious Games for Marketing: Learnings from Corporate and Amateur Efforts in Second Life," a free-to-download study comparing Second Life's ten most popular user-created sites with the ten most popular corporate branded locations.

In its study, the firm noted that overall, the top user-generated sites are more popular than the top corporate sites in Second Life. "Perhaps the explanation for this disparity is that corporate sites offer different content or experiences than user-generated sites, and builders of user-generated sites are more effective at offering the content users want. Or perhaps the corporate sites offer similar content, and the reason is that Second Life users are simply resisting corporate influence as a part of their hipster ethos. "

In the report, OTOinsights provides five insights for building future branding- and marketing-oriented sites based on its analysis:

1. Invest less in production quality and more in social interaction design.
2. Avoid virtual suburban sprawl and encourage people to gather.
3. Offer robust, high-quality shopping at multiple price points.
4. Promote builds by advertising events across in-world and out-of-world media channels.
5. Offer regular, hosted social events to drive and maintain traffic.

Said One to One Interactive president and co-founder Jeremi Karnell: "OTOinsight's t=zero initiative is an industry-academic collaborative research project between One to One Interactive and Indiana University's School of Informatics. Our objective is to determine useful measures of user engagement and experience with digital and social media. Our first publication, focused on Serious Games for Marketing, is meant to take a step back and objectively evaluate what worked and did not work in the rush to establish early footholds in Virtual World spaces. Our hope is that these findings will help guide future efforts as we see new entrants and innovations in that space."

Animated avatar site Meez has teamed up with Flash games broker FlashGameLicense to present a contest inviting Flash developers worldwide to compete for $20,000 worth of prizes by creating games using the Meez Inside Avatar API.

Launched in February, the Meez Inside Avatar API allows developers to create Flash games which can be hosted anywhere online and which enable users to import their customized 3D Meez avatars. Meez and FGL plan to run the contest from July 8 to September 8. Entries will be judged on their ability to integreate avatars with creativity, addictiveness, sound, graphics. and polish.

The grand prize winner will receive $10,000, while the second and third place winners will receive $5,000 and $2,500 respectively. Five Honorable Mention winners will be rewarded $1,000 each.

This competition follows Meez's mid-June launch of Meeznation, a new virtual world built specifically for its custom avatars. The new space accompanies Meez's virtual rooms application released for Facebook earlier this year.

Said Meez CEO Sean Ryan: “Gaming is a big draw for the Meez community, and we know that our personalized games are always the most popular ones. We’re pleased to be partnering with FlashGameLicense on this contest and excited to see what results from harnessing the creativity of the Flash game developer community to provide a personalized game experience for a wide range of gamers, not just those on Meez.”

Rocketon is a new online avatar service currently in closed alpha, which intends to allow users the ability to treat the web as "a parallel virtual world" with each site an interactive destination on which users can meet, socialize and play.

Founded by Steve Hoffman (CEO) Eric Hayashi (VP Marketing & Business Development), and Naomi Kokubo (COO), Rocketon is based in San Francisco with 15 employees and a studio in the Ukraine, and we talked to Hayashi andHoffman about the service, how it works, and its place in the market.

So what's the point of Rocketon?

Eric Hayashi: Rocketon transforms browsing into a social experience -- individual sites can be lively virtual destinations that players can explore and interact with. Imagine every single website as its own virtual world that is interconnected with other virtual worlds, where people can jump from one to another with the click of a button. ESPN.com will become a sports-themed virtual world, MTV.com a youth-oriented virtual space and GAP.com a virtual clothing store.

Internet giant Google has announced Google Lively, a browser-based online world which is embedded in major social networks such as Facebook, and has been speaking to Gamasutra about the surprising announcement.

As the Lively help center explains of the application: "You're about to embark on a chat experience in which you can communicate and express yourself using avatars in your very own space. Choose an avatar and use it to make friends and chat. Create rooms, decorate them to your liking, and make sure to invite your friends over."

Speaking to Gamasutra ahead of the announcement, Google's Mel Guymon, head of 3D operations for the company, explained that the project has been in development for over two and a half years, and that the goal was to create a "true persistent space" for social network users.

He suggested the application, which runs in a webpage plugin using elements of Emergent's Gamebryo game engine, could be compared to existing applications such as Second Life and Scenecaster, but does several things differently.

The application is closely integrated with social networks including Facebook and the OpenSocial standard, with a MySpace integration coming soon - Guymon explained that "...what we've done is got back end connectors that allow us to work directly with Facebook".

This means that, if a lively user is signed into Facebook, you don't have to sign in to Google to use the application, which is an approximately 10 megabyte download, and works with a PC that has either Windows XP and Vista installed.

Essentially, each person using the plugin will have their own avatar and virtual room which they can design and their friends can visit and chat in. According to Google's Guymon, people can leave you notes and add things to your room, and all of the rooms are connected.

Thus, you can click around within the plugin window and visit your friend's rooms, without leaving the webpage you were currently on - essentially creating a "continuous virtual world" to browse around.

The company has posted a trailer for the service on its official Google YouTube feed, as follows:

Detailing the project further, Guymon revealed to Gamasutra that the project had been in development for at least two and a half years, and that it constituted a "huge investment on the content side", with a number of in-house employees and more than 200 contractors helping to create the "couple of hundred thousand items" that make up the Lively object catalog.

Interestingly, monetization for the service has not yet been revealed - right now, all of the in-world objects are free, and Guymon said that the goal "is to get as many people using [Lively] as possible."

He noted that there were a lot of other products in this space, but "what's going to stand out for us is that the aesthetic bar is very high." A team headed by Jeff Matsuda, formerly at Warner Bros and the Batman cartoon series, worked on the aesthetic look from Google's Irvine office.

Guymon's closing thoughts? He believes that "Google is uniquely poised to validate this space for the mass market... this is not for geeks - this is for everyone."

Responding to Google's launch of its new virtual world, Lively, avatar and 3D virtual spaces platform IMVU's president and CEO Cary Rosenzwieg commented that while the search giant will likely find success quickly due to its resources and ability to leverage of "billions of visitors," the virtual spaces category is big enough for both platforms to thrive.

He went on to draw comparisons between the two services: "The core of Lively content are: avatars, rooms and catalog. This is true for IMVU as well, though IMVU offers home pages, groups, forums and more. In particular, Lively chose the IMVU-like metaphor of the virtual "room" instead of a sprawling virtual world. So, people might start thinking of the virtual world space with IMVU and Lively at one end, focusing on avatars and rooms, versus Second Life and others with large tracts of virtual land."

The CEO then noted that the similarities between IMVU and Lively are predictable considering that Lively's head of 3D, Mel Guymon, was one of IMVU's five co-founders. According to Rosenzwieg, Google offered to buy IMVU in October 2005, right about when development on Lively started. All of the co-founders rejected the offer except for Guymon, who later left the company to work at Google.

Established four years ago, IMVU did not come out of stealth mode until just a few weeks ago, announcing that it had reached over 20 million registered users and that it now offers 1.7 million items in its virtual goods catalog. According to VC firm Menlo Ventures, IMVU generates $1 million in revenue per month through its micro-payments economy. The service offers virtual credits which users can purchase and spend on user-created goods.

Google's backing of Lively represents serious competition for IMVU, however: "Google is rich and powerful. As an Intuit veteran, I have first-hand experience in this kind of battle. At Intuit, we fought off waves of product attacks by Microsoft against Quicken, TurboTax and QuickBooks. We always won because we were fanatically devoted to consumers, and so our products were simply better. In this case, Google is formidable. They are likely to be extremely successful quickly because they are rich and can leverage seemingly billions of visitors. The category will be big enough for both of us to succeed."

Rosenzwieg concluded, "We believe in giving our customers lots of choices. We assume with Google's power, Lively should catch up with IMVU soon."

Virtual worlds ad agency Millions of Us and immersive spaces company Rivers Run Red have both announced that they are participants in Google's Preferred Developer Program for the search giant's recently revealed Lively virtual world.

Lively by Google is a product that lets people create and share persistent, virtual spaces on the web. As a lightweight application fully integrated with the web, Lively rooms can be embedded on websites and blogs all over the web with just a snippet of code. Lively users can also stream their own content, such as videos and photos, directly into their rooms.

In Lively, users can create, customize, and share persistent spaces, embedding them onto websites, social networks, and blogs with a snippet of code.

Millions of Us has partnered with the National Geographic Channel to deliver branded content for the network's L.A. Hard Hats series. The television show follows the development and construction of EVO, a 23-story eco-friendly high rise structure, from the perspective of several tradesmen.

As part of its agreement, Millions of Us will set up a virtual building in Lively's National Geographic center. The skyscraper will be under intense construction and will evolve with the TV series' episodes. Visitors can explore the building, its features, and the complex work required to build the tower.

Said Millions of Us vice president of business development Ted Tagami: "Facilitating NGC's entry as the first brand in Lively by Google is a landmark achievement for our company, and our objective going forward is to help seamlessly integrate additional brands into this very promising online space. Through customized 3D online spaces and avatar-based socialization, our clients will benefit from the earliest possible access to our rooms built in Lively by Google."

Rivers Run Red wasn't specific about what branded content it will be providing for Lively, but the company states that it has a new design team in place to meet the high level of demand for companies looking to incorporate the new virtual world into their digital strategies. So far, the team has created a demo 3D space in Lively called "Avalon" for visitors to explore.

Said Rivers Run Red CEO Justin Bovington: “In the last five years, we have encountered high demand from companies looking to provide 3D experiences for their communities on the web. Lively by Google is a promising solution for web-based 3D environments and will only help to make the prospect of the 3D Web a reality.”

Cartoon Network New Media, cable television channel Cartoon Network's online publishing division, has teamed up with Crisp Thinking to integrate the online child protection services provider's NetModerator system into its upcoming MMOG, Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall.

Developed by Seoul, Korea-based studio Grigon Entertainment, FusionFall features a multitude of characters from Cartoon Network shows, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Dexter's Laboratory, and Ben 10. The MMOG has been designed primarily for kids aged 8-14 years old and is scheduled to launch in fall 2008.

Safety features built into the game include moderated character names, parental approval required for "open chat," chat filtering and monitoring, and forum filtering and monitoring. FusionFall will be the world's first MMOG to bear Crisp Certification, a standard indicating to parents that their children are being protected with Crisp Thinking's child safety measures.

Said Crisp Thinking CEO Andrew Lintell: "By making Crisp's NetModerator an integral part of FusionFall, Cartoon Network has become the industry leader in ensuring children can enjoy the excitement and entertainment of online worlds. Parents can rest easy when their children are playing FusionFall because Crisp's NetModerator is active in the game."

3D virtual community Worlds has announced an agreement with hip hop pioneer Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels to develop and host a 3D virtual community named DMC World.

Launched in 1994, Worlds enables users to create avatars and navigate through virtual worlds as well as build their own worlds on a P2P network. The company is ramping up to release an updated version of its 3D platform with a new rendering engine and micro-economy platform.

Worlds CEO Thom Kidrin hopes to open up 3D virtual communities to a new market of rap fans with the partnership. He believes that drawing and maintaining an online community won't be tricky at all with D.M.C.'s "street cred" and creative vision for developing the 3D world.

McDaniels, who also goes by D.M.C. (Devastating Mic Controller) in seminal hip-hop group Run-D.M.C., added: "We broke new ground with Run-D.M.C., and I continually look to get involved with new concepts in entertainment. Virtual worlds are on the forefront of social media and entertainment, so my friends - I consider all my fans 'friends' - should be able to experience 'everything D.M.C.' in the most innovative immersive 3D virtual environment available."

With the recent launch of our new Worlds In Motion Job Board as a standalone board complete, complete with its own RSS feed and unique URL, every week, we will be highlighting the latest posted jobs relevant to our readership of professionals creating online worlds.

The listings cover a wide range of companies and open positions, so everyone seeking jobs in the MMO/online/virtual world industry should find the board useful.

- Areae.net (Sand Diego, CA)
Flex Developer and Senior 3D Client Engineer
("Areae is on a mission to revolutionize virtual worlds and MMOs. We are a venture-backed company in beautiful San Diego, and our investors share our passion and vision for the future of online gaming. Our core team includes veteran MMO developers with deep experience from online leaders like EA, Sony Online, and NC Soft, and we have developed and launched some of the world's most successful online games to date including Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and EQ2.")

- Carbine (Aliso Viejo, CA)
Sr. Systems Programmer
("Carbine Studios is looking for talented individuals to be a part of a team focused on making high-quality, cutting-edge, and conceptually innovative Massively Multiplayer Games. We offer a casual work environment, comprehensive benefits, and competitive salaries. Carbine Studios is a division of NCsoft Corporation, the world’s leading developer and publisher of online games.")

- Cryptic Studios, Inc. (Los Gatos, CA)
Games Programmer, Audio Programmer, and IT Analyst
("Cryptic Studios, a leading developer of next-generation MMOs, is looking for a full-time IT Analyst. Are you brilliant, capable of nigh-Herculean feats of IT wizardry and are super cool to top it all off? If you answered yes to these questions, we've got a great opportunity for you!")

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

Barbie Girls is a browser based MMO that Mattel original developed to accompany a range of physical MP3 player devices aimed at pre-teen girls, but which has since added a subscription V.I.P. service. We take a look at its free-to-play experience after the jump.

Online publisher True Games Interactive has announced that it has hired K2, Namco, and Vivendi vet Peter Cesario as its director of new business and product development, where he will oversee the launch of its forthcoming free-to-play MMO title.

True Games recently announced it would be partnering with Star Wars: Empire At War/Universe At War developer Petroglyph to create a free to play, microtransaction-funded PC online game, which as yet is still undetailed.

True Games was founded by two former K2 Network executives, bringing together expertise in micro-transaction operations and global publishing. The company is based in Orange County, California and plans to launch its initial title in Q3 of 2008.

Cesario, too, joins the company from K2, where he worked as its director of product development, following production roles at companies like Namco, Vivendi Universal and 20th Century Fox Interactive, overseeing titles including Hellgate: London, The Lord of the Rings franchise, the Peanuts franchise, Curious George and Alien Vs. Predator.

Said Cesario in a statement, "I am excited to join True Games when it is just beginning its climb to the top. I have worked with the key management personnel who started the company and I have the utmost respect for their experience and knowledge of the industry and am proud to be part of their team."

[The preceding article by Brandon Boyer originally appeared on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]

[In this editorial, Game Developer magazine EIC Brandon Sheffield discusses the fascinating South Korean game market, explaining why a visit to Seoul's Gstar game expo opened his eyes to a vibrant and different market - from IP ownership to microtransaction dominance.]

Some time ago, I went to South Korea to attend the GStar expo, and met no fewer than 13 different Korean game developers, either at the show or in their offices - and I had the very distinct impression that I'd just been schooled.

It's easy to feel like you know what's going on in the world. I've been following the Korean market since 1999, when I picked up my first Game Infinity (representing Korean game companies as a whole) brochure at E3.

I've long had faith in the region's entertainment industry, and time has proven me right in that regard - but actually going there, meeting the developers, visiting the studios, and feeling the vibe, there turned out to be a whole lot I just didn't know.

Different Environments

The first developer I visited was Blueside, the biggest console developer in Korea, with titles like Kingdom Under Fire and Ninety-Nine Nights under its belt. Shockingly to me, the office is incredibly small, with over 100 people crammed into a small space that was clearly a normal paper-shuffling office before they occupied it.

Publisher 2K has announced that it will be working with Cryptic Studios to bring the City of Heroes/Villains developer's forthcoming MMO Champions Online to Windows and Xbox 360, based on the original pen and paper RPG.

First announced at GDC 2008, the developer says the game "give players the power of total customization of their hero experience while they explore a vast universe of richly detailed 3D environments."

The Walt Disney Company has administered several executive changes and revealed that WDIG International head Mark Handler will be retiring after working with Disney for 24 years, according to an internal memo sent by DIMG president Steve Wadsworth and posted by digital content business site PaidContent.

This news follows the merging of two of Disney divisions, the Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG), the digital media unit behind Disney.com and Club Penguin, and Disney Interactive Studios (DIS), the video gaming unit behind Nintendo DS online world DGamer, to form Disney Interactive Media Group (DIMG).

Disney hoped that the consolidation of the two groups would develop "a unified Disney-branded experience and community across all connected devices." The new unit has been given global responsibility for developing and distributing "all Disney-branded interactive digital media and entertainment for all digital interactive platforms.”

With the integration and its exec changes, Disney announced that current WDIG International head Mark Handler will retire after 24 years with the company and 8 years with the WDIG organization. Handler was instrumental in the development of Disney’s international digital business, helping expand its online presence in 24 international territories and mobile business in 70.

Wadsworth revealed in the memo that the new unit will operate under two global lines of business in order to provide greater coordination on global content and global business execution: Disney Interactive Studios (DIS) and Disney Online (DOL).

Disney Interactive Studios will focus on developing and publishing video games on home consoles, PCs, handhelds, and mobile devices. The group will also be tasked with developing a cross-platform casual game studio capability. Current Disney Interactive Studios EVP and GM Graham Hopper will continue to run DIS on a global basis with expanded responsibilities.

Disney Online’s priorities will be on the company’s global web properties, such as Disney.com and Family.com, on all media platforms. The business line will also focus on the development and operation of virtual worlds, including Club Penguin, as well as Disney’s broader community/connectivity capabilities. Current Disney Online EVP and GM Paul Yanover will run Disney Online on a global basis.

Lane Merrifield, the co-founder and current EVP and GM of Club Penguin, will lead all virtual worlds development and operations as part of Disney Online. Disney mobile content EVP Larry Shapiro will be responsible for global strategy, business development, Corp Communications, and legal for Disney Interactive Media Group, working directly with the lines of business and regions.

Said Wadsworth: “As you will see, we are organizing around the global development of interactive media products and content with the ability to focus on local distribution and local content requirements.”

He continued: “In addition, we will be poised to take advantage of continued convergence between the game console platforms and the online/mobile platforms as technologies and consumer behaviour rapidly evolve. We are positioning ourselves to maximize the upcoming opportunities and putting the organization on the path to accelerate significant long term growth.”

Toy company Mattel has launched Parents Place, a BarbieGirls.com area educating parents about online play and safety, empowering them with settings and controls appropriate for their children's online play in the virtual world.

Parents Place includes several useful and interactive tools for parents, such as "B Smart Pact," a serious of questions and scenarios for parents and kids to complete together. The "B Smart Pact" activity guides families through a conversation about protecting one's privacy online, chatting safely, online etiquette/being nice, and length of time spent playing online. It also allows parents to input individual rewards and consequences for rules, as well as write their own personal family rules.

Since BarbieGirls.com introduced Parents Account, a feature allowing parents to control their child's chat settings, over 250,000 parents have created accounts. According to Mattel, the site has so far picked up over 14 million registered users worldwide.

Said Mattel Brands Girls Division's general manager and SVP Chuck Scothon: "Since its launch as the first-ever global virtual world introduced exclusively for girls, BarbieGirls.com leads in delivering safe and fun experiences for kids, and now leads in offering an unparalleled experience for parents. Online content is today's new toy, and we believe it is vital to inform and equip parents with the tools and information they need to become familiar with the new online playground. We want parents to be supportive of where and how their child plays, particularly as BarbieGirls.com has recently moved to a subscription model."

Online game distributor and publisher MMOSmart has opened offices in Beijing and Shanghai, China, adding on to its headquarters in North America (San Jose, CA) and offices in Europe.

Boasting 11 years of experience in the North Amercan online gaming industry, the company claims that the additional local staffing will enable MMOSmart to provide its game development partners throughout China 24/7 marketing, distribution, and publishing support.

Most recently, the MMOSmart announced a partnership with Suzhou Snail Electronic to bring the Chinese publisher and developer's titles stateside, including Age of Armor.

Said MMOSmart founder and CEO Steven Wade: “Staffing offices in China just makes sense. That's where some of the most exciting games are coming from today and we needed to go direct to the source to bring these games to new audiences in the fastest way possible. It's a competitive business, and we want to remain on top.”

Meteor Games, an independent studio recently founded by Neopets founders Adam Powell and Donna Williams, has licensed the BigWorld Technology Suite for its first project, an unnamed youth-targeted massively multiplayer online game.

Australian middleware developer BigWorld Technology recently upgraded its MMO technology suite, which includes BigWorld Server Software, Content Creation Pipeline, 3D Client Engine Package, and Live Management Tools & Instrumentation, to version 1.9. The update included various optimizations, improvements, and new features, such as an advanced terrain engine.

BigWorld's previously announced MMO and virtual world licensing partners include Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, which is currently developing MMORPG Stargate Worlds, and 38 Studios and Sierra Online, which are both working on unannounced online PC titles.

Based in West Hollywood, California, Meteor Games aims to create titles which "cross the appeal of social networks, web-based casual games, and traditional massively multiplayer online games."

Said Meteor Games CEO and creative director Adam Powell: "BigWorld's technology provides us with an extremely powerful and highly flexible game engine, which can be tailored to the specific needs of our upcoming MMO. More importantly, BigWorld's game engine allows us to focus on game design, gameplay innovation and overall creativity rather than core technology development, thus ensuring our new MMO delivers an experience unlike any other."

With the 2008 Austin Game Developers Conference coming this September 15-17 and registrations now open for the Austin, Texas event - which includes both 'Online Gaming' tracks and a special Worlds In Motion Summit for businesspeople and brands looking to get into virtual worlds, it's time to continue highlighting a few of the already-announced lectures:

- Turbine Business Development VP Robert Ferrari, CCP CEO Himlar Veigar Pertursson, Funcom Business Development VP Nicolay Nickelsen, Nexon America director Min Kim, and ImaginVenture SA COO Jessica Mulligan will all come together for an assuredly enlightening panel on Evolving Business for MMOs. The all-star talk will cover what has changed with the business of MMOs, what has worked, and, most importantly, where the business is going.

- Continuing the discussion on our evolving market, K2 Network CEO Joshua Hong, Crossover Technologies managing director Eric Goldberg, and ImagineVenture SA COO Jessica Mulligan will be discussing MMO business models, specifically Subscriptions Versus Free-to-Play. The moderated panel will look at the rising trend of MMOs shifting away from monthly subscriptions to free-to-play models and whether selling virtual items can make up the difference from a lack of subscriptions. Anyone interested in the future of MMO business models is invited to attend.

- Kaneva game producer Jonathan Hanna will deliver a lecture on going beyond just testing your product and features with an online game beta. Titled Online Games Under Construction: Run Your Beta Right, the session will describe how companies can turn their betas into an effective part of their marketing and community building efforts, helping grow the game's potential audience more than traditional marketing alone.

For more information, including a number of other key already debuted lectures that we'll be highlighting weekly here on WorldsInMotion.biz, alongside further new Worlds In Motion Summit/online keynote specifics as they happen, check out the official Austin GDC 2008 website.

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape. You can view Part 1 of our investigation here, and Part 2 here.]

Toy-related MMOs are a bigger segment of the market than ever before, and increasing its share. Mattel's Barbie Girls takes one of the biggest brands aimed at pre-teen girls and takes it into the MMO space and has just added a subscription V.I.P. service -- but what do we think of it?

San Jose-based Gaia Interactive, the company behind teen-targeted social network and MMO Gaia Online, has picked up an $11 million Series C round of venture funding from VC firm Institutional Venture Partners.

According to Gaia Interactive, over five million users participate in the community every month, with 350,000 logging into Gaia Online each day. Research group Hitwise also claimed in an April 2008 report that the service had the highest average visit time among social networking websites.

Previously, the company raised $12 million in Series B in March 2007 to finance the free-to-play MMO. According to CEO Craig Sherman, Gaia Interactive intends to use its new capital to grow and develop new site elements for Gaia Online.

Said Institutional Venture Partners General Partner Norm Fogelsong: "Gaia Online is one of the most exciting companies that we have seen in the online social community space. The breadth of activity available on the site and the level of engagement of the users are truly extraordinary.  It is a privilege to be involved with such a strong management team, one that is leading the way in virtual goods transactions.  We feel that Gaia Online is poised for explosive growth."

Free-to-play online game publisher K2 Network and Singapore studio Boomzap have entered a co-development partnership for an unannounced social game.

Scheduled to debut in early 2009, the social gaming title will be K2's first original, co-developed release. The game will be available on K2's GamersFirst.com portal for casual and free-to-play multiplayer online games, such as Knight Online and New World: Granado Espada.

Developer Boomzap's founders, Allan Simonsen and Christopher Natsuume, have over 15 years of experience working on casual titles for PC, PS2, Xbox, and NGage. The company employs developers from locations such as Malaysia, Germany, and the USA in addition to local Singaporean talent.

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

Following our previous decision to look at the most interesting "non-traditional" MMOs (starting with Kingdom of Loathing) we're looking at ForumWarz, a polished and popular browser-based RPG that satirizes internet culture while including community features such as leaderboards, clans, forums and player vs. player challenges.

Name: ForumWarz

Company: Crotch Zombie Productions

Established: February 2008

How it Works: ForumWarz is experienced on the web through html and was written using tools including Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Haml, memcached, script.aculo.us, Prototype, Mongrel and NGINX. It requires no installation and navigation and gameplay are accomplished via mouse and keyboard input.

Overview: In ForumWarz, players choose one of three classes and begin a largely single player adventure to gain levels, earn Flezz (the world's currency) and "pwn forums". Each player is allowed a limited number of forum visits per day. Players who choose to can take part in multiplayer aspects, including clans, "Forumwarz Domination" (a player vs. player challenge), building new forums or Incit, a mini game about creating amusing text to accompany images.

Payment Method: Forumwarz is free to play, and earns revenue through donations, which grant players special in-game items.

Key Features:
- A very polished and technically accomplished browser RPG
- Multiplayer features for players who wish to compete and also co-operate
- Live chat, forums and clans

Useful Links:
About
Official Blog
Official Wiki
Official Forums

Meteor Games, the new studio recently founded by the original creators of NeoPets, have finally pulled the curtain on its youth-targeted virtual world project, Twin Skies.

According to the recently posted site, Twin Skies will feature 3D graphics ("fully 3D DirectX 9") and a professional soundtrack. The game mixes fantasy MMORPG elements - such as creating characters from a selection of races and classes to battle against monsters - with trade skills, social interaction, mini-games, and "lots of hair styles."

Meteor will also release separate casual flash games which will not only include high-score tables and achievement trophies, but will eventually communicate with the MMO, potentially changing weather in a certain zone, spawning a monster, or unlocking a chest full of treasure.

Though Twin Skies isn't available even in Alpha form yet, Meteor Games will be showing the title at the Penny Arcade Expo in August of this year. The company plans to announce an updated schedule, hand out plush toys, and give away limited spots for its upcoming Beta test at the event. The site's forums are also scheduled to be available on the site late July or early August.

As for Twin Skies' business model, the company feels that ads would be distracting and is looking into a charging for subscriptions instead. Meteor Games admits, however, that nothing nothing has been finalized yet.

Social game distribution platform Social Gaming Network has announced that Bezos Expeditions, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' personal investment fund, has invested in the company for an undisclosed amount.

SGN announced in May 2008 that it had secured $15 Million in Series A funding, reportedly the largest first round for any social gaming or application company. The round was led by Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, Columbia Capital, and Novak Biddle Venture Partners.

Previously Bezos Expeditions revealed a similar investment for social Flash game portal Kongregate, offering up $3 million dollars. Kongregate announced that it would use the funds to continue to scale its site. The Bezos portfolio includes investments in Pelago, Twitter, TeachStreet, Powerset (acquired by Microsoft), ChaCha, and 37signals, with a total fund value of nearly $70M.

The Social Gaming Network specializes in publishing and providing a development platform for social games, such as Warbook and Jetman. Since the company's inception, its games have attracted over 1 billion page views, 54 million installs, and nearly 1.1 milion daily active users across social networks Facebook, Bebo, hi5, and MySpace.

Said SGN CEO Shervin Pishevar: "We are proud to be announcing the Bezos Expeditions investment. Mr. Bezos' knowledge and experience lends itself to the growth and expansion of the social gaming ecosystem. His participation in our funding will allow us to continue capturing new demographics in gaming by distributing the highest quality games available on the social web."

Disney Interactive Studios has announced that it is developing Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force, a Nintendo DS spin-off of Disney's popular kid-targeted Club Penguin virtual world.

Developed by 1st Playable Productions (GoPets: Vacation Island, Disney Princess: Magical Jewels), the handheld game will introduce kids to new adventures in the Club Penguin world, enabling them to complete secret agent missions and solve mysteries as a covert agent in the Elite Penguin Force. Players will have access to gadgets, accessories, and vehicles while investigating strange events.

As with The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, also a Nintendo DS release, Elite Penguin Force will include Disney’s DGamer service, which kids can use to jump into a secure online community, dressing up their avatars and chatting with friends.

In addition, players can connect the Nintendo DS game to the virtual Club Penguin world to unlock special features and upload coins to their online penguin account.

Said Disney Interactive Studios SVP of global marketing Craig Relyea: “Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force on Nintendo DS will perfectly complement the truly dynamic and robust online environment, making it more accessible for kids who love the game and want to constantly stay in contact with aspects of the Club Penguin world. We strive to bring innovative and compelling gameplay experiences for our entertainment franchises to kids on the platforms they play.

Webcasting and virtual events solutions provider ON24 has announced that it has secured over $8 million in an equity round led by U.S. Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, and Rho Ventures, and an expansion capital financing round led by Gold Hill Capital.

This new financing brings ON24's total capital raised to over $46 million. The company intends to use the funds for "global expansion of the sales, marketing and client services organizations," as well as product development initiatives, such as ON24 Virtual Show, its platform allowing companies and organizations to host trade shows, job fairs, conferences, and training summits in virtual venues

Announced earlier this month, ON24 Virtual Show features customizable user interfaces, integrated webcasting and show reporting, profiles and message board discussions for professional and social networking, "smart booths" offering personalized content based on attendee's profile, and multilingual support.

Said ON24 CEO and president Sharat Sharan: “Our customers are experiencing increased ROI as a result of using ON24 solutions for demand generation and corporate communications. With rising fuel costs and the economic downturn, we have seen increased demand by organizations to leverage our solutions to hold online events as a cost-effective alternative to in-person events. We’ve raised this funding to accelerate our growth while being well capitalized during the economic downturn."

Officials for R.O.S.E. Online have announced that the Korean-developed MMORPG will be doing away with its subscriptions, switching all of its servers to a free-to-play business model, effective July 29th.

Brought online in the U.S. in December 2005 by publisher Gravity Interactive, R.O.S.E. Online has been running on monthly subscription plans, with a single month's non-recurring subscription priced at $12.99.

Existing subscriptions will be canceled, and users with subscriptions will be compensated with in-game currency. R.O.S.E. Online features an Item Mall in which players can buy in-game items.

According to R.O.S.E. Online's officials, the MMORPG is switching to the subscription model to "attract more users than ever before."

San Francisco-based developer Vivaty has announced its virtual spaces platform, Vivaty Scenes, has entered public beta.

An application for delivering 3D virtual spaces through web browsers, Vivaty Scenes is embedabble in Facebook and also available as an application module for AOL's instant messenger.

Worlds In Motion talked with former Electronic Arts vice president and Vivaty's CEO, co-founder, and president Keith McCurdy, about the company's virtual spaces platform and what makes it special; benefits over the "2D" Facebook experience; future developments and what he thinks of Google's entrance into the space.

Introduce Vivaty.

Keith McCurdy: We're a young company, founded last year and based in the bay area and we're basically focusing on doing two things: what we've recently launched, our Vivaty Scenes application, and the platform on which it is based. The Vivaty platform is a client/server tool that allows the creation and deployment of a wide variety of 3D virtual worlds in a web browser.

We can build all sorts of applications on top of this platform, but the first one we're launching is Vivaty Scenes, and you can think of Vivaty scenes as a personal profile page -- a scene that you get to control who accesses and what is in the scene, the objects in it, videos in it.

There will be more applications coming down the line later.

Publisher-sponsored in-game commerce platform PlaySpan has acquired PayByCash, an alternative payment system for online games, virtual worlds, and social networks.

Established in 1998 and supported in over 200 gateways, PayByCash provides a network of 70 different payment methods. The service handles all payment-related customer support, foreign exchange complexity and risk, fraud protection, and maintenance of payment system integrations, while providing reporting and accounting to its merchant clients.

PayByCash will continue to operate independently with offices in Charlottesville, Virginia and Cincinnati, Ohio. The company intents to release PaxGuard, a new offering for fraud protection, in August 2008.

Based in Silicon Valley and backed by a $6.5 million investment from Easton Capital, Menlo Ventures, STIC, and Novel TMT Ventures, PlaySpan delivers in-game search, commerce, and micropayment technologies to game publishers and developers. Gaming platforms, such as K2 Networks and Gala Net, have selected PlaySpan as their official marketplace for virtual goods commerce.

Said PlaySpan CEO and founder Karl Mehta: “PayByCash’s 10 year reputation in the global game industry, operational experience of millions of transactions each year and the trust of millions of gamers make the service a great addition to our in-game marketplace platform. We are excited about the synergies of our businesses and will continue to promote PayByCash’s global payment platform to our publisher partners worldwide.”

MMO game publisher OGPlanet has announced that it has received funding from venture capital firm DFJ Athena. The company, which is expected to reach profitability shortly, intends to use the funding to support its growth and bring additional games to the US market.

Founded in 2005, OGPlanet licenses titles from Korea and markets them in the US. Its MMOG portfolio includes Cabal Online, Rumble Fighter, Albatross18 and La Tale (due Q3 2008), all of which are operated under a free-to-play model with in-game item purchases available through a microtransaction system.

Said DFJ Athena managing director Perry Ha: "OGPlanet has proven itself as a leading publisher of online games and has distinguished itself from others with its operational excellence. We are impressed by their strong growth and we are pleased to support their further growth."

Publisher Codemasters will include a "one of a kind horse card," which can be activated on Bella Sara's web site and virtual world, with each copy of its upcoming Bella Sara Nintendo DS and PC games, according to a report from video game website GameSpot.

The bundled cards will be similar to other cards available through Hidden City's Bella Sara trading card series - children purchase packs and use the redeemable codes printed on the cards to activate new horses in the Bella Sara virtual world. Card packs contains 7 different cards each and can be bought at retailers such as Blockbuster, Target, Toys ‘R’ Us and Wal-Mart.

The DS and PC titles will have players taking part in a variety of mini-games to complete quests in Bella Sara's North of the North setting. They'll also collect in-game cards to unlock new horses in the game.

Animation software developer NaturalMotion has announced that 38 Studios, a new developer and publisher founded by baseball pitcher Curt Schilling, has licensed the company’s morpheme animation engine for its upcoming PC MMO game.

NaturalMotion says the morpheme middleware is "designed to give developers and animators unprecedented creative control over the look of their final in-game animation by allowing them to author and preview blends, blend trees and state machines in real time."

The package is available for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC, and, with version 1.3, was integrated with Epic's Unreal Engine 3.

38 Studios also recently announced an agreement to license BigWorld’s Technology Suite for the MMO.

Said 38 Studios chief technology officer Jon Laff: "When selecting middleware we are very careful to find solutions that enable us to focus our attention on our game. morpheme allows us to create very high-quality character animations quickly, cutting down on a lot of intensive animation design and implementation time.”

As part of today's Sony roundtable Q&A at E3, SCEA president Jack Tretton has been discussing the state of the Home online world for PlayStation 3, suggesting there was "a lot of learning... and a little naivete" in its construction, but that the "worst thing" Sony could do was look at Microsoft's new Xbox 360 avatars and try to react based on them.

According to Tretton's comments at the roundtable, the apparent delays to its Home PS3 application are down to complexities that perhaps the company did not fully understand up front.

The online world application has been delayed multiple times, most notably from late 2007 to Spring 2008, and still doesn't have a formal release date. Tretton explained:

"Home is not [just] a software title. It needed a lot of hardware engineering support. It didn't get built up beyond what you'd expect from a software title until very recently... there was a lot of learning recently and a little naivete about how we'd build it.

It took us a while to figure out what it was and how you'd build it. I'd rather ship it two years from now and have it be filled with a lot of great stuff than open it up as a ghost town - so I think we've got to do a good job of populating it. The shell is there, but we have to get all the good destinations."

Virtual world advertising firm the Electric Sheep Company has announced WebFlock, a "private-label," Flash-based virtual world application for online social interaction, media consumption, and multiplayer casual gameplay.

WebFlock has been designed so that each implementation is separate and customizable, so that companies can control factors such as user registration, quality and safety of art content, monetization options (e.g. advertising, micro-transactions), web content integration, and other settings.

The application allows for users to create unique avatars, chat, interact with scripted objects, and play casual games. WebFlock's implementations can reside on a web page or be syndicated on social networks like MySpace and FaceBook.

The Electric Sheep Company intends to charge a monthly application services fee, which is based on concurrent users, to cover access to the software, hosting, technical support, and maintenance. Customization services, such as art creation, game design, or systems integration, are priced separately. A basic implementation with 12 months of application services fees goes for "under $100,000."

The firm has already announced Showtime television drama The L Word as its first customer. The Electric Sheep Company previously worked with the show to create am Emmy Award-winning "L Word in Second Life" online community in 2007.

Said The Electric Sheep Company CEO Sibley Verbeck: "We have spent years creating virtual experiences for media companies and brands, and have struggled to match available technology with the needs of our clients. That struggle led us to create WebFlock, and we are thrilled to work with SHOWTIME again as one of our first customers for the product."

Australian-based MMO distributor and middleware developer BigWorld has announced that in addition to expanding its presence in both the Japanese and South Korean markets, it has appointed former Online Game Services Inc. (OGSi) founder and CEO James Hursthouse as its director of business development. The company has also brought in Yoshikazu Furuhata as its new account executive.

With the establishment of a direct presence in Japan and Korea, BigWorld hope to emphasize the importance it places on working directly with local developers, publishers, and agents to understand and support those markets.

The company recently upgraded its MMO technology suite, which includes BigWorld Server Software, Content Creation Pipeline, 3D Client Engine Package, and Live Management Tools & Instrumentation, to version 1.9. The update included various optimizations, improvements, and new features, such as an advanced terrain engine.

Previous to BigWorld, Hursthouse set up OGSi in 2004, which served as an infrastructure provider to the online game industry, offering solutions for hosting, billing, customer support, and market development consultancy. In January 2007 he sold OGSi to hosting services provider GNi and worked there as global director for games and entertainment services at GNi. James is currently the advisory board chairman for the ION Game Conference and was previously chairman of the IGDA’s Online Games SIG.

Yoshikazu Furuhata has experience in both the online game business and dedicated server hosting business in Japan, having developed an extensive network of contacts among online game related companies, both in Japan and Korea.

Said CEO Gavin Longhurst: "2008 has been a fantastic year for BigWorld. Working with an ever increasing number of licensees around the world has helped cement our position as the middleware engine of choice for the development and operation of MMOGs. One of our major titles, NetEase’s (NTES) Tian Xia 2, recently launched in China, fully supported by our local office.”

San Jose-based Gaia Interactive has announced that it will host the "Rejected Olympics," a humorous interpretation of this year's Olympic Games, as a free event in social network and MMO Gaia Online from July 21-27.

In its Rejected Olympics event, users will be able to take part in 100 offbeat games, such as watermelon chopping and connect the dots, all while socializing with other Gaian Olympians. Participants will also earn in-game gold and a chance to win daily virtual prizes. Virtual gold, silver, and bronze medals will be rewarded to the three top scoring teams at the end of the week-long event.

Earlier this week, the company announced that it had picked up an $11 million Series C round of venture funding from VC firm Institutional Venture Partners. Gaia Interactive intends to use its new capital to grow and develop new site elements for Gaia Online.

Said Gaia Interactive vice president of creative and user experience Scott Kinzie: “The Olympics are an aspiration for millions of our users, and we think the Rejected Olympics is a fun, irreverent way to bring the energy and enthusiasm around Olympic competition to our community. We’re continually looking for ways to provide our users with online experiences that take their real-world interests to a whole new level.”

The organizers of the Worlds In Motion Summit at Austin GDC have announced the full schedule outline for the market-leading conference on virtual worlds and social gaming, to be held on September 16th and 17th following its successful debut at Game Developers Conference in February.

The Summit will take place at the Austin Game Developers Conference in the Austin Convention Center, and will map the broadening of the worldwide business market through the expansive and growing social game networking space.

The Worlds in Motion Summit, presented by Think Services’ leading media outlet in the space, WorldsInMotion.biz, is of particular value to those looking to successfully leverage their content and brands into interactive online worlds.

The schedule for the two-day Summit is as follows:

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16th

First Day Keynote
The Worlds In Motion Summit’s first day will be kicked off by a signature, yet to be revealed keynote from a major, high profile online world provider – watch for an announcement soon.

In-World Advertising Case Study
Speakers: Teemu Huuhtanen (President, North America, Sulake Inc), Jonathan Epstein (CEO, Double Fusion)
Advertising in online worlds is an increasingly important part of monetizing games – with possibilities including in-game billboards, contests, and more. In this case study, we’ll hear from the creators of Habbo and their advertising partners at Double Fusion, uncovering how in-game advertising works for them, how to reach your audience without turning them off, and all the advantages and pitfalls of advertising in this new medium.

Panel: The State of Facebook/Social Network Gaming
Speakers: Frank Lantz (Creative Director, Co-founder, Area/Code), Charles Wetmore (Development Manager, Zwinky), Shervin Pishevar (CEO, Social Gaming Network)
Facebook and social network-based gaming are a rapidly burgeoning market segment. But what’s the reality of making games that fit into the infrastructure of existing social websites? What are the benefits and difficulties with creating social games on Facebook and other sites? The creators of standout Facebook title Parking Wars and other notable market experts weigh in.

IBM Metaverse Evangelist Roo Reynolds has announced via his weblog that he is moving on from his position as metaverse evangelist at the multinational information technology company, which he has worked at for ten years, to work as a portfolio executive of social media at BBC Vision. According to Reynolds, he will be developing and executing "BBC Vision’s strategy in relation to social media."

BBC Vision, BBC's in-house multimedia broadcast and production group, seeks to continue its multiplatform strategy and utilize “the two-way nature of new media platforms to transform [BBC's] relationship with license fee payers,” encouraging audiences to create content and “participative experiences.”

As Metaverse evangelist at IBM, Reynolds helped "facilitate the use of virtual worlds both within IBM as well as for consumer-facing events. Prior to that position, he worked at the company as an emerging technologies specialist and as a software engineer.

South Korean social networking and virtual spaces site Cyworld has announced a partnership with "automatic video editing" software developer muvee Technologies to deliver a new video editing service to Cyworld members.

Based in Singapore, muvee offers software and services allowing users to create and share home movies out of unedited video, digital pictures, and music. With the new agreement, Cyworld's reported 20 million users can add music and editing styles to their videos and photos, creating movies which can be displayed on their profile pages.

Said muvee CEO Terence Swee "Years before the term 'Web 2.0' was coined in the West, Korea had already been at the forefront of what we now call social media and virtual worlds. muvee is proud to be Cyworld's chosen platform provider for a service that can both satisfy the ease of use and interactivity demands of discerning Korean internet consumers, and match the scale of Cyworld's service level requirements. This partnership is a strategic addition to our internet business, which complements global partners we have in the PC and mobile space."

Online youth entertainment and media network GoFish Corporation has added financial virtual community MinyanLand to its advertising network of sites, expanding GoFish's reach to over 23 million unique visitors domestically and 71 million unique visitors globally per month.

Launched in February and claiming over 100,000 registered kids, MinyanLand is a free virtual world for kids put together by media company Minyanville Publishing and Multimedia. The community seeks to "engender financial literacy in young people, so a new generation better understands the concepts of basic economics and finance on a real-world level."

GoFish is the exclusive brand advertising partner for its network of youth-focused sites, including WeeWorld, Magi-Nation: Battle for the Moonlands, Whyville, and other properties targeting the six- to seventeen-year-old demographic and their co-viewing parents. The company launched its youth-targeted online media network in February and signed several new publishers in Q1 2008, growing its audience reach from approximately 10 million unique users to over 20 million unique users as of April 30, 2008.

Through its new partnership, GoFish will aggregate and distribute age-appropriate, blue chip advertising across MinyanLand. The firm believes that this agreement will enable finance and consumer brand advertisers to build awareness and influence brand preference among the virtual worlld's youth demographic.

Said GoFish vice president of publisher development David Fisch: “MinyanLand is an ideal addition to our network, which is currently comprised of other virtual worlds including Whyville, Cartoon Doll Emporium, and WeeWorld. The time spent per visit on MinyanLand is characteristic of the sites in our network. The immersive experiences available through our publishers enable advertisers to reach youth and their co-viewing parents in a uniquely engaged mindset.”

Berlin-based publisher Frogster Interactive has announced five MMOG titles for its autumn and winter beta and release schedule, including Runes of Magic, The Chronicles of Spellborn, StoneAge 2, Kickster, and an add-on for Bounty Bay Online.

Of those titles, Runes of Magic, StoneAge 2, and Kickster will all be free to play, presumably utilizing a microstransaction model. A localized version of fantasy MMORPG Runes of Magic will begin its closed beta in September, its open beta expected to start two months afterwards. The launch phase for an English and German version is scheduled to follow at the end of the year. Interested gamers can pre-register for the beta tests at the official site.

The European version of StoneAge 2 (pictured), a "relaxed MMORPG" targeted at kids, is expected to begin its closed beta phase in August and will launch in autumn. Kickster, an online soccer community, is also planned to launch in autumn.

Though The Chronicles of Spellborn will not be free to play, Frogster has yet to announce any specifics about its planned business model. The publisher is, however, considering retail fees, monthly subscriptions and other alternative payment plans. The MMORPG is planned for a release before the end of the year.

Casual game upstart Rebel Monkey has announced that Jeff Kesselman, former head of MMO technology initiative Project Darkstar, has joined the company as its CTO, where he will oversee development of its yet unrevealed "gaming environment."

Founded in February of 2007, Rebel Monkey is headed by former Skunk Studios CEO Margaret Wallace and Nicholas Fortugno, one of the creators of hit casual title Diner Dash. While the company still has not formally announced any forthcoming products, it has announced a focus on "connected, community-focused casual games," and recently secured a million dollar investment.

As previously reported, Kesselman's Project Darkstar was a research effort undertaken by Java developer Sun Labs, aimed at simplifying the process of developing multi-player online games that can be deployed on a massive scale and made available to players using virtually any client device.

Prior to his work at Sun, Rebel Monkey notes that Kesselman has held senior engineering positions at former PC online technology company Total Entertainment Network and game developer Crystal Dynamics.

Said Wallace on the appointment, "We’re delighted to have Jeff join our management team. As CTO, Jeff brings unparalleled experience and technical know-how to the company, allowing Rebel Monkey to deploy its forthcoming web-based gaming environment on a massive worldwide scale.

[The preceding article by Brandon Boyer originally appeared on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]

Hellgate: London developer Flagship Studios has announced that it has shut down its servers for MMORPG Mythos, which was undergoing private beta testing. The company did not disclose any details on when this "hiatus" might end.

Mythos' closing comes only two weeks after reports that Flagship had cut a significant portion of its development team. The studio had also reportedly laid off its staff at online services subsidiary and Mythos publisher Ping0.

A Korean news report translated by fan site Hellgate Guru later added that Hellgate: London's publisher in the region, HanbitSoft, "...is taking full control over the Hellgate: London intellectual property from Flagship Studios," and intends to continue the game using in-house staff.

Flagship responded to the news report with an official statement: "This story is an outright lie. We have no idea where they are getting their information from and have asked legal counsel to pursue the issue... We are mystified by Hanbitsoft’s conclusions and any attempt to take over the IP will be met with a strong and swift response."

There.com creator Makena Technologies has announced that Scion will expand on its marketing campaign in the virtual world, introducing its concept cars - the FUSE, t2B and Hako Coupe - as drivable, customizable vehicles for There.com members to own and drive in-world. Scion is also offering "user enhancements" to its Club Scion virtual nightclub and an expanded line of virtual Scion clothing.

The two companies originally partnered in August 2007, when the Toyota subsidiary opened a "a large-scale, interconnected 'tower'" of the Scion xA, xB and tC car models transformed into nightclubs. Scion then expanded its campaign in November 2007, allowing users to create and submit their own decorative designs for Club Scion's exterior.

According to Makena, 20,000 There.com members have spent almost 3,000 hours inside Club Scion, and 21,000 Scion-branded virtual items have been sold. Interactive Scion kiosks in the virtual world were reportedly accessed 93,000 times, with each interaction lasting an average of nine minutes.

Said Scion Interactive marketing manager Adrian Si: "The marketing potential that virtual worlds offer Scion is truly unique. Virtual worlds fit our target customer perfectly. Makena is a great partner that helps us visualize the possibilities."

Online child protection services provider Crisp Thinking has announced that it has added Myril Shaw to its executive team as its new vice president of business development in the U.S. Working alongside sales vice president Campbell Ferrier, Myril will be charged with expanding Crisp's partners, customer development, and partnership programs.

Previous to Crisp, Shaw worked at Adtron as managing director of international sales. He has also held management and executive level positions at RLX Technologies (acquired by HP), Sequent (acquired by IBM), Cap Gemini, and Tandem Computers.

Headquartered in Leeds, UK, Crisp Thinking offers a variety of child protection solutions for virtual worlds and social networks designed to fend off abusers, predators, and bullies. The company recently announced partnerships to incorporate its safeguards into Xivio and Cartoon Network New Media's FusionFall.

Said Crisp Thinking CEO Andrew Lintell: "The last six months have been tremendously busy for Crisp and we are expanding very rapidly to meet the huge demand, Myril will play a crucial role in helping us to deliver exciting opportunities quickly and effectively."

London-based technology company Qube has announced the first point release of its middleware package Q, adding enhanced scripting and a new, multi-threaded script debugger, as well as new shader and scene redering plugins.

Qube says the scripting comes in the form of a C++ or Java-like language with a multi-threaded script runtime, offering access to the complete Q API and to developers’ own objects and native code from script, and allows script to be embedded within native code.

The accompanying integrated debugger also offers a full-featured debugging environment with breakpoints, step-in/out, threads and watches.

The cross-platform middleware includes capabilities such as background data streaming, arbitrary scene rendering algorithms and n-dimensional animation blending, and features such as a cross-platform data format and a background work queue.

Q also supports special hardware features including custom shaders and platform specific APIs, having been designed to allow its databases and core APIs work on “all platforms,” allowing developers to build, test and debug their game on any one platform before deploying on any other.

As previously reported, the middleware “has been designed to liberate developers by allowing them complete freedom to adapt and add to the middleware in order to make it completely their own,” by acting as a series of modules built around a framework, allowing developers to customize any of the supplied modules, or by adding their own plug-in tools.

Said Q Program Manager Jamie Fowlston, “Not all developers have the time or the inclination to get deep into native code. Scripting and debugging, as well as the additional shaders, are all tools that make Q a better off-the-shelf solution as well as one that studios can customise to their hearts’ content.”

[The preceding article by Brandon Boyer originally appeared on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]

First announced in May, KingsIsle's forthcoming Wizard101 MMO is a fantasy-based 3D virtual world targeted at teens and 'tweens, where players take on the roles of wizard apprentices at the Ravenwood School of Magical Arts.

In it, players can customize their wizard character's outfits and accessories, play arcade-game inspired puzzles and mini-games, adopt magical pets, and learn from seven different schools of magic, with a heavy PVP focus on collectible cards used for card duels alongside and against other players.

Interestingly, the core of KingsIsle staff has roots not in traditional children's entertainment, but in the much darker 2003 Ubisoft MMO Shadowbane, something which development head Todd Coleman told Gamasutra could be explained by the team's more family-oriented mindset, so many years from their first post-college roles.

In this interview, Coleman takes us through inception of the game as a true card-game MMO, rather than an MMO with a card game attached, its Yu-Gi-Oh! and Final Fantasy inspiration, and how designing for teens differs from designing for an older, more hardcore set of gamers.

So KingsIsle has people with a lot of experience on MMOs in the past, particularly Shadowbane.

TC: Yeah, I was on Shadowbane.

Is [Id and Ion Storm co-founder] Tom Hall still there?

TC: Tom runs the other project, so we have two MMOs in development. I run one, and Tom runs the other. Mine just happens to be first, so I'm sure at some point you'll get to talk to Tom about his.

Right now, Tom is also helping me by playing Wizard. His wife and him are a little bit addicted to it. I think he might be a little mad at me right now, because I think I nerfed his character last week.

KingsIsle is a really different and unique culture, because we have the sensibilities of a startup but the resources of a much larger company. A lot of that is because our founder, Elie Akilian, had such a strong and dynamic background in the telecom software space. It's a very different startup story than you'll hear from a traditional game publisher.

MTV UK has announced the beta launch of MTV House, a new flash-based virtual world targeted at younger users. In addition to offering exclusive MTV content, such as videos, reviews, and news stories, the "prefab establishment" will feature competitions, offers, and promotions.

MTV House invites users to create avatars, explore different rooms, listen to music, interact with channel-based characters, and play games. Developer Yomego intends to eventually allow users to produce short videos with their personalized avatars, audio files, background, and text.

Unlike vMTV's network of virtual worlds, which include Virtual Laguna Beach and Virtual Pimp My Ride, MTV House is not based on any single brand or program. MTV UK intends to offer companies "bespoke and generic advertising opportunities," such as house branding, themed rooms, and sponsorship.

vMTV offered similar opportunities to advertisers, and a recent case study showed that a significant amount of users had developed positive opinions towards advertised brands as a result of the promotions.

Said MTV UK vice president of digital media Philip O'Ferral: "Mtv.co.uk is about building a community for online audiences that are passionate about entertainment and music, as well as being socially conscious, and therefore our digital activity is evolving and adapting to allow the audience to express themselves more. By carrying out continuous research to find out what our audiences really want, and by introducing an enhanced user experience where the audience can interact with each other and the brand whether that be advice on sensitive issues or sharing great MTV content - we are in turn responding to their needs."

Procedural Inc., a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, has announced that it will exhibit its CityEngine software with a 3D recreation of ancient Rome at the Rome Reborn booth in computer graphics conference SIGGRAPH 2008 (August 11-15; Los Angeles, CA)

CityEngine is targeted for use by a wide range of markets -- interactive and filmed entertainment, architecture, simulation, archeology and the "3D internet." According to Procedural, the software allows developers to create buildings and city scenes ten times more efficiently than existing solutions, saving overhead costs and enabling 3D designers to focus on their creative creation process.

The Rome Reborn project seeks to bring together content providers, graphics technology vendors, and interactive display researchers to recreate a full-scale, high-detail, and historically accurate 3D model of the ancient city. The representation is meant to provide an engaging and educational tour of ancient Rome.

Said Rome Reborn director Bernard Frischer: “The CityEngine is a perfect match for the Rome Reborn project. Our project involves the complete virtual reconstruction of the city at its zenith under Emperor Constantine, when it had about one million residents. To build by hand the corresponding 7,000 apartment buildings, family houses, public buildings and temples would have taken us forever; but CityEngine's power and flexibility made the process amazingly quick without sacrificing detail or quality. This allowed us to concentrate on modeling the unique monuments. The CityEngine also helps to quickly change the model as new scholarship or discoveries warrant.”

Virtual worlds marketing firm TheSLAgency has announced that it will present a panel titled "A New Life for Online Government," discussing innovative ways governments are using virtual worlds at this week's 2008 National Conference of State Legislatures in New Orleans, Louisiana, which runs from July 22nd to July 26th.

Utah State Senate chief deputy Ric Cantrell and experts from the Alabama Department of Homeland Security will join the panel. Governing Magazine editor and deputy publisher Mark Stencel will moderate.

TheSLAgency's vice president of interactive marketing Leigh Rowan intends to focus on how governments are currently using virtual worlds to provide services for and to collaborate with citizens on health, education, public safety and civic life. The presentation will also cover the potential for virtual worlds for interactive job recruitment, emergency planning and scenario training, and virtual collaboration.

The marketing agency has previously worked with The World Bank and The Ontario Public Service to reach new audiences through interactive events and presences in Second Life. Rowan's presentation will cover case studies of their work with both clients and its future plans. TheSLAgency is also launching an associated government-focused microsite for government entities.

U.S. MMORPG publishers may need to offer more free-to-play titles - not games with subscriptions models - to attract new players and grow the market, according to Electronic Gaming in the Digital Home II, a recent consumer study conducted by market research firm Parks Associates.

Of the 2,000+ online gamers polled, only hardcore gamers were found to be interested in subscribing to an MMORPG service, whereas "social, dormant, and leisure gamers all show significant interest in a free-to-play, microtransaction-based model."

The study's numbers show that 14% of gamers currently not playing MMORPGs would be interested in playing them if they could for free, while only 2% of gamers from the same group were interested in playing an MMORPG requiring subscriptions.

According to Parks Associate's director of broadband and gaming, Yuanzhe (Michael) Cai, the barriers to entry with subscription-based MMORPGs, such as time and money, are too high for potential customers. Free-to-play models, however, offer flexibility and enable players to choose how much they want to invest based on interest level and play patterns. Thus, the firm believes that microtransaction models have the best potential to grow the U.S. MMORPG audience.

Said Cai, "World of Warcraft, with over 10 million players, exceeded expectations for subscription-based MMORPGs, but it's unlikely any other publishers will achieve the same in the near term using a subscription model."

For the past ten years, Colorado-based developer NetDevil has focused almost exclusively on MMOs.

Its first project, Jumpgate: The Reconstruction Initiative, a space flight combat MMO, is still in operation. Its second, auto combat MMO Auto Assault, which saw a troubled release with publisher NCsoft, is not.

In addition to the fairly high-profile LEGO Universe MMO it is developing, NetDevil is now also working on a more personal project, a successor to the game its company was first founded to develop.

Jumpgate Evolution, remarkably being produced by a staff of about thirteen, is a sequel to the original Jumpgate and is planned for release in early 2009. We sat down with co-founder Scott Brown to discuss the company's goals for the game, the importance of keeping focus in game design, and what NetDevil learned from Auto Assault.

One thing you talked about is the balance between having a story in the game and having a freely open game. How are you tackling that balance?

Scott Brown: Sure. So, we want people to feel that they're part of a story, so we tried to do some things, like various in-game cutscenes to give you a sense of the flavor of the sector, without leading you too much. We also try to keep the number of missions available to you smaller, so that way at any one time, there's only a few choices, and you can pick the path, and the game will adapt the missions it's giving you based on what you've done.

Talking at Microsoft's GameFest event in Seattle, the company's Cameron Egbert and Dan Kroymann have been discussing the creator of avatars for the Xbox 360, revealing lots of new details on the practicality of developers implementing avatars within their games.

Egbert, a software development engineer for XNA Developer Connection, started by showing his existing GamerCard for Xbox 360 and saying: "It doesn't say much about me".

The he showed a 3D avatar, as being implemented on Xbox 360 later this year, and noted: "This is me. I made him earlier in the week", going onto explain: "Avatars are a new identity for gamers. Somewhat like a gamercard, these can be used to replace the gamer picture if the user chooses."

"It gives them an online presence they did not have before without Xbox Live. It is ubiquitous across the system. Also, you can use them in your games as a replacement for your characters, or in your UI, or whatnot."

Egbert further explained: "You build them from a predefined set of geometry and textures and customize them as you want... to suit your tastes."

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

Whew! We got distracted by E3 and forgot to keep updating our Online World Atlas -- a mistake indeed, especially when we're covering something as interesting as ForumWarz, a polished and popular browser-based RPG that satirizes internet culture while including community features such as leaderboards, clans, forums and player vs. player challenges.

As demonstrated at Microsoft's recent E3 conference, one of the key features of its forthcoming dashboard refresh is the expansion of current group chat into a full 'Xbox Live Party,' allowing users to form groups that expand seamlessly across all aspects of the new dash -- from chatting to photo and video sharing to games.

At Microsoft's ongoing GameFest, Xbox platform engineer Eric Heutchy gave more insight into the Xbox 360's forthcoming Xbox Live Party features, explaining how it would function both in and out of games.

"What is Xbox Live Party?" Heutchy explained, "At its core the feature is eight way group voice chat. It works over all Xbox 360 experiences - all existing games, all new games, the dashboard, movies, media center, everything you can do on the console. The members of your party can each be in a different experience."

"The party members are always connected by voice, and voice chat persists over any experience," he continued, "and it persists over title switches."

Heutchy further explained that "it also has features to help players get together in multiplayer games. There's one button in the guide that allows a player to send game invites to everyone in his live party."

"It is not a replacement for in-game parties that a number of triple-A titles have," he admitted. "Live party is about having a social connection prior to entering that game's party."

Social gaming service Zynga has announced that it has completed a $29 million Series B round of financing lead by venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Institutional Venture Partners. In addition, the San Francisco-based company has acquired virtual world and Facebook application YoVille.

Founded in October 2007, Zynga provides a variety of casual online games with social and multiplayer features, such as Texas Hold'em Poker and Word Twist. The games are available on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and Friendster.

KPCB partner and former chief creative officer and founder of Electronic Arts, Bing Gordon, will join Zynga's board of directors, which also includes LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman, Foundry Group managing director and co-founder Brad Feld, and Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.

Said Pincus: "We are excited that Kleiner Perkins and IVP are joining our terrific investor group. With this new investment, we are doubling down on social gaming, raising the production quality and scaling the infrastructure. We're also excited to have Bing, who has been an amazing contributor even before becoming formally involved, join in an even more significant way."

The YMCA of San Francisco has chosen Dizzzywood, a virtual world designed for children between ages 8-12, to enhance its youth program technology curriculum.

In Dizzywood, players can create, customize, and name a character to explore an enchanted wood. Players can co-operate with others to solve the mysteries of the wood, and can earn rewards, such as items, achievement badges, e-motes, and powers for successful completion of events, or they can just relax and chat with friends, take part in games and explore.

The YMCA is using Dizzywood's virtual environment to reinforce its program emphasis on activities promoting values such as caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility. Children also learn about issues relating to virtual worlds through Dizzywood, such as digital citizenship and online safety. Storytelling and team-building exercises are provided to emphasize creativity, writing, and reading skills, as well as working together to achieve goals.

The program is similar to an elementary school program that Dizzywood completed with the Reed Union School district, in which an interactive workshop used activities to reinforce the school's character pillars and core values.

Said YMCA San Francisco's senior director of community environment Troy O'Leary: “Our goal at the YMCA is to provide children with educational activities that challenge them to learn new skills, develop self-confidence and to ultimately help them be successful in the world. Dizzywood’s unique virtual environment offers our kids a wonderful environment in which they can learn important lessons through activities that require thoughtful decision-making. We hope the success of this program offers a model for other youth programs to follow.”

UK virtual community VizWoz has signed content content deals with movie studios 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney, and Universal Studios, according to a report from interactive media news site New Media Age.

Under the agreements, VizWoz will offer preview clips, trailers, and interviews for movie releases in its virtual cinema. The community is already screening content for Disney-Pixar film Wall-E and a treasure hunt promotion for 20th Century Fox film Meet Dave.

Launched in March, VizWoz added its cinema in April and has been showing content from TV shows such as Pat & Stan. The virtual world has reportedly attracted over 60,000 registered users so far.

Said VizWoz co-founder and CEO Dan Laurence: "Our aim is to offer a one-stop portal where kids can enjoy spending time in a safe and engaging environment that they can rely on to keep them ahead of the game."

Seattle-based developer FlowPlay has announced that it has partnered with casual game developers PlayFirst and Sandlot Games to incorporate their brand properties and games, such as Diner Dash and Cake Mania, into Flash-based virtual world ourWorld.

Launched in April 2008, ourWorld integrates casual games through virtual areas built around the property. For example, with Sandlot's Cake Mania, players can be employed at an in-world bakery, act as customers, and purchase virtual cakes. Integrating PlayFirst's Diner Dash into ourWorld, FlowPlay had added Flo's Diner, an in-world restaurant where players can order burgers or work as servers.

The company believes that in addition to driving a new source of revenue for these casual game developers, ourWorld will expose partner titles to a new segment of casual gamers. FlowPlay CEO Derrick Morton and Sandlot CEO Daniel Bernstein will present a case study on Cake Mania's integration in OurWorld at the Casual Connect Conference in Seattle on July 24th.

Said Morton: "The casual games industry has previously been defined by the downloadable PC game business. This year marks a turning point toward more social gaming with new revenue models and a broader demographic than the middle-aged woman. FlowPlay is on the forefront of this new frontier providing some of the most recognizable casual games in a social environment where players actually interact with the brand, not simply play the game. In addition, we provide access to a more youthful demographic and a microtransaction infrastructure that combines to drive untapped revenue for casual game developers."

Educational software developer Knowledge Adventure has formally announced its appointment of David Lord as president and CEO, who has been brought in to help evolve the company towards a "multi-faceted kids entertainment company with both retail and online virtual world components."

Lord previously served for four years as CEO and president of RazorGator Interactive Group, an event ticket services provider. Prior to that, he worked as CEO and board chairman for Toysmart.com, a venture-backed catalog company for educational, e-commerce, and retail products.

Knowledge Adventure recently released JumpStart Advanced Preschool World, software for teaching 3-to-5 year olds pre-reading, early math, social studies, art, music, computer skills, and critical thinking skills.

The company plans to launch an online component this month with subscriptions allowing users to interact with one another in JumpStart's 3D virtual world, going on adventures, completing missions, and earning rewards while learning.

Lord previously expressed that the developer is interested in bringing its JumpStart brand and other properties to the Nintendo DS, Wii, and the iPhone. Knowledge Adventure is also looking to bring its MathBlaster brand to the 3D virtual world market.

Said Lord: “The virtual world/online gaming market is exploding and we believe there is a tremendous opportunity to bring adventure-based learning into this marketplace. JumpStart has a rich history as the leading brand in delivering learning games to kids over the last 20 years. We will leverage that trusted brand with parents to deliver a rich, safe, and fun virtual world experience while we innovate next-generation games and content for kids 3 to 10.”

With the recent launch of our new Worlds In Motion Job Board as a standalone board complete, complete with its own RSS feed and unique URL, every week, we will be highlighting the latest posted jobs relevant to our readership of professionals creating online worlds.

The listings cover a wide range of companies and open positions, so everyone seeking jobs in the MMO/online/virtual world industry should find the board useful.

- BioWare Austin (Redwood Shores, CA)
Sr. Publishing Manager
("The Senior Manager of Publishing, Online will hold responsibility for developing strategy & overseeing execution of marketing, distribution & consumer adoption efforts for online initiatives within the Hasbro Business Unit. Primarily, this individual will be responsible for driving subscriptions & revenue growth for “light persistent state world” online entertainment services for children age 6-13.")

- Cyworld, Inc. (San Francisco, CA)
3D Artist, Senior Technical Artist, and 3D Software Engineer
("Cyworld is a global social network that helps people communicate with their friends, family and coworkers more efficiently worldwide. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information, individual expression and promotes diversity through the social graph and vivid animated and interactive use of graphics.")

- Disney VR Studio (North Hollywood, CA)
Technical Staff, Gameplay Programmer
("The VR Studio is Disney's Center of Excellence in real-time graphics and interactive entertainment. The studio is currently focused on the continued development of Toontown Online as well as development of their new MMP, Pirates of the Caribbean.")

- EA Redwood Shores (Redwood Shores, CA)
Sr. Game Designer
("Hasbro is looking for a passionate, dedicated, Online Senior Game Designer to lead the next generation of Online Worlds for Kids.")

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape. You can view Part 1 of our investigation here, and Part 2 here.]

We've been trying to look at the most interesting "non-traditional" MMOs, and in our look at ForumWarz, one of the internet's most polished and popular browser-based RPGs, we have to ask -- is it an MMO at all? We debate after the jump.

MMO distributor and middleware developer BigWorld has announced that it will implement MMOG and virtual world learning resources and support services for 2009. The company has appointed Adam Shaw as its education program manager to lead the initiative.

The company argues that tertiary institutions and specialist educators have been teaching their game courses using traditional peer-to-peer game engines which are unsuited for demonstrating "how true MMOG’s and virtual worlds are created."

BigWorld's planned resources and services are designed to enable educators to work with their students on "world-class middleware technology" allowing hundreds of thousands of players to interact simultaneously, rather than on engines restricted by the number of players.

Based in Australia, the company recently announced that it had expanded its global presence to both Japan and South Korea with new offices, bringing in former Online Game Services Inc. (OGSi) founder and CEO James Hursthouse as its director of business development and Yoshikazu Furuhata as its new account executive.

Said CEO John De Margheriti: “We have many months of hard work ahead with educational partners to get this initiative off the ground. The industry as a whole needs to make it easier for motivated young talent to gain experience in using today’s industry standard middleware technology. These games are much more complex to develop for and this is a pro-active approach to prevent an industry shortage of experienced MMOG developers, particularly game programmers and game designers.”

Google's recently launched virtual world Lively isn't intended to compete with Second Life, but is instead seeking to attract social network users away from Facebook and MySpace, according to an analysis piece published by technology research and advisory firm Gartner.

The group described Lively as inhabiting the low end spectrum of virtual world offerings, in between social networking sites and social networking virtual worlds such as Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin. Like IMVU, which shares Lively's virtual rooms metaphor, Google's service offers social networking with a visual flavor, resembling graphical instant messaging clients more than it does a full-blown virtual worlds.

Gartner also brought up several criticisms for Lively, pointing out limited avatar customization options and lacking user-created content development. In addition, the virtual world does not offer any in-world currency or an economy, which could eventually "limit the opportunities for engagement. "

Said Gartner analyst and vice president Steve Prentice in his analysis: "We believe this could mark the start of a transition to a new kind of three-dimensional social Web. Nevertheless, it is too early to predict whether Lively will gain market traction. The ease of integration with social networks would appear to make access easy, but this sector focuses as much on people and communities as it does on technology."

He continued: "To succeed, Lively must build a substantial and loyal user base by enticing millions of users (and their friends) away from their current haunts. That will pose challenges even for a company with Google's reputation and resources."

Online game publisher Outspark has announced Blackshot, a new free-to-play title designed to appeal to players of all skill levels. Gamers can register for the title's upcoming closed beta and view a trailer at the official site.

Due for a worldwide release later this summer, Blackshot will be an MMO first-person shooter similar to Nexon's Combat Arms, which is also scheduled to debut stateside in the next couple of months. Players take on the roles of mercenaries hoping to make a name for themselves in the game's war-torn environments.

Said Outspark founder and CEO Susan Choe: “We’re thrilled to add an innovative, free-to-play FPS game to our lineup. Blackshot offers fast-paced action for casual gamers interested in a quick shootout, while hardcore players will love innovative features like the game’s player-versus-environment mode.”

Virtual item trading platform Live Gamer has announced that the company has added virtual economy authority Villi Lehdonvirta to its advisory board. As a member of the board, she will be tasked with helping Live Gamer leverage academic research on virtual economies, player motivations, and virtual item market dynamics to best meet this objective.

Formerly a game developer, Lehdonvirta currently serves as a researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT), which studies future information technologies and has carried on a multi-disciplinary research effort into virtual economies since 2004. Lehdonvirta’s research focuses on what motivates virtual consumerism and to what extent it can substitute physical forms of consumption in the future.

Live Gamer provides a turnkey solution for MMOG and virtual world operators to enable real money trading of virtual assets. Backed by $24 million in venture funding, the company recently secured an agreement with Sony Online Entertainment to replace SOE's Station Exchange on EverQuest II servers with its web-based Live Gamer Exchange Service. The company's partners also include Acclaim Games and True Games.

Said Live Gamer co-founder and president Andrew Schneider: “We’re honored to have Vili Lehdonvirta, a pioneering thought leader in virtual economics contribute to Live Gamer’s efforts in developing a safe and secure marketplace for the real money trading of virtual assets. Vili’s experience in virtual consumerism adds a new dimension to our knowledge and skill in this area to the benefit of our publisher partners and gamers.”

Cartoon Network New Media, the online publishing division of cable television channel Cartoon Network, recently pulled the curtain Mini Match, a free-to-play, browser-based 3D virtual world focused on delivering multiplayer match-ups and social gaming to kids.

Players create miniature avatars and are sent to a microscopic island, where they explore environments based on adventure themes in Cartoon Network shows, such as Ben 10 and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. They also play multiplayer games featuring characters and content from the channel's programs, all while trying to learn more about the mysterious island.

Creative Director Art Roche spoke with Worlds In Motion about Mini Match's kid-targeted social gaming features and the company's future plans for the brand.

Worlds In Motion: How long has Mini Match been under development?

Art Roche: We have been working on Mini Match for about a year, probably concepting and planning for a little longer than that.

Was this developed in-house or by an external studio, as is the case with FusionFall?

AR: We're using an external studio as a development partner with it. We sort of designed the game and got with an external vendor to build the game.

[Note: Roche later revealed its development partner to be Dubit, stating that the studio has done "an outstanding job of tackling this project and sharing our passion for making it the best it can be."]

What significant points do you see separating Mini Match from FusionFall or other kid-targeted virtual worlds?

AR: We consider Mini Match a light virtual world, as it's basically just an environment to walk around in and create your own avatar. We also consider the play sessions to be of a shorter nature than Fusion Fall or any other MMOG.

Talking to Gamasutra as part of an in-depth Gamasutra interview, Indigo Prophecy creator David Cage has been discussing MMOs as sandbox games, saying that leveling is great for those who want to "build self esteem", but asking: "What's the real narrative or emotional value?"

Cage is currently working on PlayStation 3 exclusive Heavy Rain, which was shown behind closed doors at last week's E3 event, and was musing on how you keep players involved in your game.

When questioned on how the wide-open 'sandbox' gameplay ethos, where you can go anywhere you like in the game world, helps immerse players, the Quantic Dream founder commented:

"Sandbox gameplay... yeah, it's true that in this industry, we have a real position between people talking about sandbox, and people doing rollercoasters. A rollercoaster is an experience that is entirely defined by some to be optimal.

From the time you're in the line, you go in the back of the rollercoaster and through the tunnel and everything is defined. We knew while you were waiting how to make the stress grow, how to make you feel something, get you scared, make you feel better, et cetera. This rollercoaster is being conceived by someone to optimize the experience.

Sandbox is not that. It's saying, 'Look, there are tools. There are things. Maybe there will be friends. Maybe not. Do what you want.' There's one possibility that these sandbox experiences are so fantastic because you've been extremely lucky. You know how to use the tool. You met people that were truly great, and you had something incredible to do.

Unity Technologies, developer of the multi-platform 3D game development tool Unity (used to develop games including the Flashbang's web-based Off-Road Velociraptor Safari) has announced that Funcom and Cartoon Network have chosen the engine to create new MMOs.

Cartoon Network will be using the engine to create FusionFall, its forthcoming 3D children's MMO in development by Seoul-based Grigon Entertainment. Age of Conan and Anarchy Online developer Funcom have selected the engine to create a yet-unannounced "casual market MMO."

The Unity engine is Unity’s core technology, and allows the development of 3D game play in both downloadable and web formats, as seen on gaming sites including shockwave.com.

The latest version of the engine supports multiple terrain to "immerse gamers in an endless landscape, based on streamed data," expanded streaming resources, a full scripting API, and procedural characters to support fully customizable avatars.

In addition to PC, Mac and Wii formats, the company announced in March that it would be bringing the engine to the iPhone, and is currently in use by commercial developers like Codemasters and Freeverse, as well as in the serious games community for games like Global Conflicts: Palestine.

Said Funcom lead developer Lucas Meijer, "Unity 3D enables us to create game content for the Web, with higher production values than we've ever been able to do before."

Funded by a MacArthur Foundation grant and seeking to analyze the merits of virtual worlds for research applications and controlled experiments, researchers with the Synthetic Worlds Initiative (SWI) at Indiana University Bloomington conducted a study which found that gamers in fantasy-based online worlds conformed to the Law of Demand, which states that increasing the price of a good, all else equal, will reduce the quantity demanded.

For the experiment, two identical virtual worlds (Arden) were created with players randomly assigned to one or the other. The only difference in the two environments was the price of a single good, a health potion, which was priced twice as high in the experimental world than in the control.

Players in the experimental condition purchased 43.1% fewer of the potions, well within the range one expects for normal economic agents. According to SWI, this can be taken as evidence that the Law of Demand holds in fantasy environments, suggesting in turn that fantasy gamers could potentially be economically normal despite skepticism due to abnormal fantasy-themed environment.

According to the paper in which these results were published, A Test of the Law of Demand in a Virtual World: Exploring the Petri Dish Approach to Social Science, this testing in general behavior theory could lead towards further explorations on virtual worlds' viability as social science Petri dihes: "It may be worthwhile to conduct controlled economic and social experiments in virtual worlds at greater scales of both population (thousands of users) and time (many months)."

Please take care to note that early bird registration for the September 15-17 2008 Game Developers Conference in Austin, Texas ends on July 31st. Registrations for all-access conference passes, which include the Worlds in Motion Summit, submitted before the deadline will receive a 20 percent discount.

The Worlds in Motion Summit has previously announced participation from Sulake president Teemu Huuhtanen, Neopets SVP/General Manager Kyra Reppen, Double Fusion CEO Jonathan Epstein, Area/Code co-founder and creative director Frank Lantz, Zwinky development manager Charles Wetmore, Social Gaming Network CEO Shervin Pishevar, Areae president and co-founder Raph Koster, Multiverse co-founder and executive producer Core Bridges, Three Rings CEO Daniel James, IBM 3D Internet manager Michael Rowe, Whyville/Numedeon founder James Bower, NBC.com SVP of digital development Stephen Andrade, Bunchball CO and founder Rajat Paharia, and Electric Sheep Company CEO Sibley Verbeck.

The Summit will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday on September 16 and September 17 as part of the 2008 Game Developers Conference. The Summit will focus on the intersection of online worlds and games, and the official description of the event is as follows:

The Worlds in Motion Summit at Austin GDC, is geared for those looking to bring their content and brands into interactive worlds. This summit is presented by WorldsinMotion.biz and made its overwhelmingly successful debut this past spring at GDC 2008 . Now back by popular demand, the Worlds in Motion Summit will provide new insight to the next steps in virtual worlds. This movement is powered by game technology and development, and offers a broadening of the worldwide business market through the wildly popular interface of social game networks.

The Worlds in Motion Summit features candid sessions detailing the state of the art in leading virtual spaces, and the results that businesses – from small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies – have derived from them. The goal is to provide a realistic and in-focus snapshot of the intersection of games, business, and entertainment today, and where it's trending for the future. Topics include the viability of promoting your brand in Second Life and other immersive environments, the business of kids' virtual worlds, and the future of the Metaverse.

It takes place alongside Austin GDC itself, which includes an Online track packed with high quality technical and other talks from MMO and online companies such as BioWare, Sony Online, NCSoft and many more.

Please visit the official Austin Game Developer Conference site for more information on sessions, speakers, and registration details.

Nickelodeon has announced that it is developing a browser-based online game adaptation of its popular Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon. Titled Avatar: Legends of the Arena, the game will serve as a prequel story to the series and will be Nick.com's first 3D MMORPG.

The company intends to launch Avatar on September 15 with ten different language options and in over 77 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, India, Southeast Asia, Mexico, Japan, Argentina, and many others.

In Avatar: Legends of the Arena, players create their own Avatar characters and challenge others to battle in several arenas. As players level up, they can unlock new content, challenges, custom character outfits, and exclusive equipment.

Said Nick.com SVP Jason Root: "The launch of this multiplayer online game gives Avatar fans the opportunity to immerse themselves in the storylines during and beyond its tenure on-air. This property has always had a deep online connection with its audience and the game offers a natural extension of the franchise to keep fans engaged with the property indefinitely."

Chinese online publisher FerryGames has announced that it has hired former Electronic Arts executive producer (Lord Of The Rings franchise) and Heavy Iron (Evil Dead: Hail to the King) founder Steve Gray as its senior product development VP, where he will oversee its slate of forthcoming MMOs and 'advanced' casual games.

Gray served as senior development director and executive producer for the first two and second two Lord of the Rings titles for EA, respectively, which FerryGames notes have sold a combined 18 million units.

Prior to EA, Gray founded Heavy Iron, which was sold to THQ in 1999 and now serves as the primary studio creating the publisher's Pixar tie-in titles. Before that, Gray directed Parasite Eve for Square, and ran EA's software tools group and motion capture lab for the publisher during its original PlayStation era.

FerryGames says Gray will oversee not only its Secret Online franchise and upcoming expansion packs War of Heroes and Qin Warriors, but also its forthcoming casual products due summer 2009: the music, dance, catwalk and social network title codenamed Project Super, and massively online third person shooter codenamed X-Fire.

Said former EA China vet and FerryGames COO Wei Huang, "Steve brings extraordinary industry and product development expertise to FerryGames at one of the company's most exciting times. We are confident that he will lead our 150 talented young Chinese developers to become a world class online games development studio. With Steve onboard, we hope we can bridge the west and the east in terms of technology, game production process and business model for online game development."

[The preceding article by Brandon Boyer originally appeared on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]

Gaia Interactive has announced that its online community Gaia Online has been expanded with the launch of a closed beta for a casual MMO, and has announced that the upcoming title's official name is to be zOMG!.

10,000 community members will be able to participate in the beta program, selected from 120,000 applications received since April.

zOMG! has been in development since 2006, and is a flash-based environment that is to be released for free and require no downloads. Players are to interact in zOMG! by engaging in quests, battling monsters, exploring the world and socializing with friends. zOMG! also serves as an extension of the Gaia Online virtual world, extending current Gaia Online offerings such as mini games, customizable avatars and forums.

“Our Gaian community is loyal, vocal and not afraid to ask for what they want,” said David Georgeson, senior developer of zOMG! at Gaia Online. “It only makes sense for online worlds to place a huge emphasis on community involvement. In our case, they aren’t just the people who will play the game; they’re the ones who asked for it.”

Funtactix, a developer based in Menlo Park, California, has announced the release of Moondo, an online world that “enables players to move rapidly between 3D multiplayer games, keeping the same avatar, friends, and virtual items.”

The benefit of this concept, Funtactix explains, is that rather than require the player to “invest significant time and money in a single repetitive gameplay experience,” Moondo allows players to “move assets across a variety of game genres.”

Moondo has been available in limited beta since February, and the company plans to unveil a selection of sports games for Moondo players in August, while a full browser based version of the cross-gaming universe is due in October.

Set in a futuristic theme park on the moon, Moondo is to feature multiplayer, short-session party games in a variety of genres, such as shooting, racing, and sports, integrated with a social network. Moondo currently offers free-to-play games in two genres: shooting and racing.

“Massive growth in PC gaming will not be driven by today’s shrink-wrapped games on high-end PCs. Rather, it’s mainstream consumers discovering fun, new, affordable social gaming experiences that will fuel the industry,” said . Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Funtactix. “These consumers don’t want to invest the time and money to learn a new game, only to have those efforts prove worthless as they move to the next one. Cross gaming eliminates those barriers, satisfies their thirst for new game genres, and keeps players coming back– ultimately creating a longer playing cycle with more valuable, lasting items.”

Think Services Game Group announced today that Lane Merrifield, co-founder of Club Penguin and recently-named head of development for the Walt Disney Company's kids and family-targeted virtual worlds, has been confirmed as a keynote speaker for the Austin Game Developers Conference (Austin GDC) 2008 taking place September 15-17 at the Austin Convention Center.

Merrifield's keynote entitled, "At Their Service: Making a Difference by Putting Players First," will explore some of the key elements that go into developing and maintaining a uniquely engaging and profitable virtual world.

Club Penguin, part of Disney Online, is a virtual playground designed for children between the ages of six and 14. Lane helped develop and launch the site in 2005 and since its inception, has led the management, operations and business strategy. The company's commitment to creating a safe and ad-free online environment helped propel Club Penguin to international acclaim and a partnership with the Walt Disney Company, which acquired Club Penguin in August 2007.

In his keynote, Lane will explore the idea that true success is derived from a mindset of focusing on the creation of a customer service-based culture. He argues if you do that correctly, monetization will take care of itself.

"In this era of rapidly growing social games and virtual worlds, new players and investors are constantly throwing their hats in the arena -- hoping to create the next big connected game. The reality is that many of these online games won't reach a critical mass," said Austin GDC conference director Izora De Lillard. "Lane Merrifield's talk will inspire developers to consider how to create a truly compelling experience for the gamer; and perhaps help them create the next Club Penguin."

As a celebration of what's new and next within online game development, Austin GDC will also play host to the Worlds in Motion Summit featuring sessions on how business can enter and capitalize on virtual worlds with featured speakers including: Raph Koster of Areae Inc. Metaplace, Shervin Pishervar of Social Gaming Network, Chris Waldron of Fusion Fall Cartoon Network, and Michael Rowe of 3D Internet & v-Business & Business Management IBM.

Early registration discounts are available until July 31st. For more information on Lane Merrifield's keynote and all other sessions taking place at Austin GDC, as well as for online registration, please visit the official website.

Knowledge Adventure, a developer of virtual worlds for 3-to-10 year olds, has announced the appointment of two new executive team members Thomas Swalla is to be president of e-commerce and Sudhir Krishnaswamy is to be vice president engineering and general manager of Indian operations.

The newly appointed Swalla and Krishnaswamy are to “play a strategic role” in the online expansion initiative that Knowledge Adventure are setting into motion by taking their brands, JumpStart and Math Blaster, online. This forms part of the company’s overall strategy to leveraging its history as a provider of kids' software to “establish the company as the leader in adventure-based 3D virtual worlds.”

As president of e-commerce, Swalla is to lead all online initiatives for Knowledge Adventure including the company's website properties and the JumpStart membership community. Swalla previously served as vice president of business development at event ticket reseller RazorGator. Krishnaswamy is to be responsible for building, managing and overseeing the team in India.

Additionally, Knowledge Adventure has announced the immediate promotions of James Czulewicz to VP Business Planning & Analysis/Retail Sales and William Kennedy to VP Finance and Administration.

"Thomas and Sudhir bring tremendous passion and experience to Knowledge Adventure at this pivotal time in our history," said David Lord, President and CEO Knowledge Adventure. "Their previous successes ensure our next phase of innovation and expansion into the virtual world/online gaming market will be successful and rewarding for our JumpStart kids and parents."

Conduit, a provider of website syndication solutions for web publishers, and Power Challenge, developer of online multiplayer title Power Soccer, have announced the introduction of the Power Challenge Community Toolbar, a download allows players to monitor games, launch challenges and track their progress.

The Community Toolbar has been built with the Conduit Website Syndication Platform, and allows Power Challenge the ability to send messages to their community via Conduit’s Community Alerts, which are sent directly to user’s desktops.

Power Challenge has stated that already 30,000 players of Power Soccer have used the Conduit toolbar since its launch.

“With the Power Challenge Community Toolbar, more than 1,000,000 players can take their game with them everywhere they go on the Web,” said Ronen Shilo, CEO of Conduit. “And Power Challenge can now keep their members permanently online by communicating with them on a whole new level ­ delivering the most desirable information and applications fast, right in the browser and on the desktop.”

[Just a note to remind readers of the early deadline for Austin GDC, which includes the Worlds In Motion Summit alongside a jampacked Online Summit track - five simultaneous tracks of online game goodness, hope you'll consider joining us.]

The organizers of 2008 Austin Game Developers Conference (Austin GDC) are reminding possible attendees that early registration for the September 15th-17th event - which includes keynotes from Bruce Sterling and Club Penguin co-creator Lane Merrifield - ends tomorrow, July 31st.

Austin GDC 2008 is presented by Think Services, organizers of the industry-leading Game Developers Conference (GDC) and the parent of Gamasutra.com and related websites, including this one.

The event is a three-day, multi-track game conference taking place at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas September 15-17, 2008, and continues a multi-year tradition of an Austin-based game event appealing to a nationwide and worldwide game community.

The Austin GDC this year consists of the following elements:

- Austin GDC Online Summit - Austin's signature summit, with four parallel tracks on business and marketing, technology and services, design, and social networking and community for online games. Major speakers from Bioware, Cartoon Network, Disney, EA, NCSoft, and Sony Online Entertainment are participating, with Club Penguin's Lane Merrifield keynoting.

- Worlds In Motion Summit - specifically concentrating on virtual worlds, and expanding from the successful GDC Summit, this business-focused two-day event includes sessions on Facebook gaming, user-created virtual world content and the future of the metaverse - with speakers from IBM, NBC.com, IAC, and more.

- Austin GDC Writing Summit, featuring a keynote from futurist and science fiction writer Bruce Sterling on 'Computer Entertainment 35 Years From Today', plus notable lectures from leading writers from id Software, Carbine Studios, Red Storm Entertainment and Ubisoft.

- Austin GDC Audio Summit, with a keynote from Sony's Jason Page on next-gen audio, and other speakers including Austin Wintory, composer of fl0w, Slipgate Ironworks' Kurt Larson on adaptive music for MMOs, and a special 'Iron Composer Texas' to be fought out on site.

- Game Career Seminar, including notable lectures and panels for those wanting to get into the game biz, such as 'The Game Job Interview RPG', the ever-popular 'Pitch Your Game Idea' panel, and 'You're Hired! How to Get HR to Notice You' - featuring speakers from Vicarious Visions, Nexon, Ghostfire Games, and more.

In addition to an Expo show floor with many game technology companies in attendance, Austin GDC will also showcase the recently announced winners of the 2008 IGF Showcase for Austin GDC, picking the very best examples of 'local flavor' in terms of indie games from Austin and the Southern U.S.

Those interested in registering for the event can visit the official Austin GDC website to purchase their pass - early registration ends on July 31st, though passes will still be available after that date.

Octopi, developer of the multiplayer strategy game Pox Nora has announced an agreement to re-acquire all of the assets of Octopi from its parent company, FUN Technologies.

Octopi was founded in Tuscon, Arizona in 1998, and has a history developing single-player and multiplayer online and mobile games. Octopi's online strategy game, PoxNora, has more than 2,000,000 registered users from around the world according to company literature.

The return of Octopi’s assets follows FUN Technologies acquisition by Liberty Media Corporation.

Daniel Kopycienski, founder and president of Octopi, commented, “We look forward to continuing to develop new features and enhancements for PoxNora, and bringing some exciting new game titles to market in the coming years. There is a large market for casual strategy/MMO-style games, and Octopi has the experience and development tools to rapidly deliver some exciting products.”

Turbine has announced a partnership with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to distribute The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria at retail in North America. As part of the announcement, Turbine revealed that the title is to be available in two retail packages (a “complete” and a “collector’s” edition) plus a digital download available only to existing subscribers.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria Complete Edition is to include the original The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, all content updates released since launch, and The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria. The Complete Edition is to be available at retail stores nationwide and is orientated towards attracting new players.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria Collector’s Edition is a limited release that features the content of the Complete Edition in leather-bound book packaging and 3 tokens that can be exchanged for the player’s choice of 8 different in-game items, a cloth map, a gold-plated ring with chain and pouch, a poster, “The Lord of the Rings Online Art and Music Collection” and the official soundtrack, and a starter guide.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria expands the original title with a new underground environment, including Dwarven cities, a new “Legendary Item” system, new dual height map technology, two new classes and ten additional levels.

“We are excited to self publish The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria and to partner with Warner Bros. to distribute the title at retail this fall,” said Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. “Mines of Moria introduces breakthrough content and features including our Legendary Item system that will revolutionize the way players advance and customize their unique heroes.”

Research and consultancy group Strategy Analytics has released a new study, "Defining the Total Economic Return from Virtual Worlds Applications," which “guides companies in terms of expected returns from virtual worlds investments.”

The report finds that many companies have found that investments in virtual worlds have not met expectations, but reasons that their failure relates to “poorly implemented media strategies that do not include virtual worlds as part of an integrated PR and promotional effort,” and that companies generally fail to use appropriate metrics to assess their level of success or failure.

As a result, within the report Strategy Analytics examines the benefits of virtual worlds and provides a process for evaluating investments based on those benefits.

Barry Gilbert, Vice President and Research Director of the Strategy Analytics Virtual World Strategies program, said, "Companies will require more specific measurement tools in order to continue their investments in virtual worlds."

While companies can access virtual worlds with a small development investment, they often find that building and sustaining consumer momentum requires an on-going budget of at least 60% of their initial investment. "Multi-billion dollar global brand companies looking to target the global youth market should be investing a minimum of one percent of their advertising and promotional budget in virtual worlds," noted Gilbert.

Linden Lab has announced the Open Grid Beta has been opened to the public, based on the work from IBM and Linden lab on developing an open standard for interoperability between virtual worlds.

This initial public beta offers the intergrid teleport code, intended for virtual world developers attempting to make virtual worlds interoperate. It offers a base level of interoperability -- no inventory, textures, or attachments are transfered upon intergrid teleport, and the user’s avatar appears on the target grid as the grid’s default avatar.

Specifically in this first phase of the beta, developers will be able to teleport between Second Life's preview grid and a patched version of OpenSim (an open source server for hosting Second Life-like virtual worlds.)

Along with the Open Grid public beta, Linden Lab have also announced that they are also sponsoring Pyogp, an open source client library and test harness code.

“This is a historic moment in the development of virtual worlds,” said Open Grid Public Beta Manager Whump Linden, “we look forward to your participation.”