Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - Your Next Customer Is Virtual. But His Money Is Real., by Julian Dibbell! About There.com
A CNN Money article ""EverQuest" hits the PS2 - Feb. 12, 2003" covers the immediate present and future of Sony's online gaming ventures. EverQuest is coming out for the PS2 (with an explicitly separate user community from the PC EQ community). They're officially cancelling "Sovereign" a massively-multiplayer online strategy game that's been in development for over 4 years. But soon, we'll have "Star Wars Galaxies" from them, and the first persistent-world online first-person shooter, "Planetside." Can they successfully marry Counter-Strike and EverQuest? What kind of gaming world comes out of that? Not much info here, but a hint.
There.com had a big publicity splash - a good way to talk about online games and economy without focusing on the over-hyped Sims Online I guess. Here's a piece from the Wall Street Journal online: Online Game Hopes to Convert Virtual Cash Into Real Revenue
more...From July 2000, in The Economist, Where there's MUD, there's brass. They examine the phenomenon of harvesting, quitting your day job to make money auctioning off virtual assets online. They wonder over the social impact as well.
more...On Virtual Economies by Edward Castronova (July 2002) is a promising, academic study of MMORPGs and their impact on society and politics. 383kb download PDF, 44 pages long - something to print out at the Press Club!
(Update 2/27/03) Also see: Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier
more...Here's an article examining the financial potential of online gameplayers, all that Everquest means to Sony:
"The hottest properties in cyberspace are virtual worlds. Meet the man who's making magic -- and millions of dollars each month -- by developing the Net's newest boomtowns."
Geoff Keighley, The Sorcerer of Sony, Business 2.0, August 2002
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