Raph Koster's Areae

After writing a book on the Theory of Fun, but failing horribly in the practical implementation, game designer Raph Koster has unveiled a new company named Areae.

Areae, Inc. is a company dedicated to taking the tired old virtual world and making it into something fresh and new. Something anyone can jump into. Something where anyone can find something fun to do or a game to play. Something where anyone can build their own place on the virtual frontier.

Note how he cleverly fails to mention what Areae actually is. So there is a long list of people speculating that it is some sort of illegitimate love-child between a MMO and the Web 2.0. Closer to a web-based Second Life than to World of Warcraft.

When will designers ever learn? User-created content hasn't made any money yet, except for the people who cleverly sold their worthless Web 2.0 sites for crazy amounts to very stupid investors. Second Life creates a lot of media hype, but no profit yet. Meanwhile World of Warcraft is making millions of dollars every month.

Back in my Grimwell.com days we used to debate endlessly about the relative advantages of "world" MMOs vs. "game" MMOs. Which is all very interesting from a theoretical game design point of view. But if you look at it from a business point of view, if you ever want to make money build a "game" MMO. As little information as we have, Areae definitely falls into the "world" MMO category. Expect millions of users, as long as it is free, and no profit for a long time to come.