Will Harvey On There Not Being There Anymore?

Thanks to GameSpot for its interview with Will Harvey, founder of There Inc., after the virtual world creator announced this week that it "is reevaluating its consumer-side game environment, giving itself 90 days to determine if a licensing-only model might offer a more secure upside to the company." Harvey explains that he has "left the company and I'm no longer on the board", and describes his original vision of There: "to support all the kinds of rich interactivity and human experience that top-tier video games are capable of, but in a single, unified world where everything works together." When asked to describe the problems with 'virtual world' products, he suggests: "If you look at the nongenre MMORPGS--There, Second Life, The Sims Online--they are all version 1 products that won't really be complete until version 37. The challenge is making version 1 commercially viable."

Who in the what where?

[DeadboltX]

Most - Confusing - Title - EVAR!

Re:Who in the what where?

[dasunt]

Who modded this off-topic? It might be meta-article, but its far from being off topic.

Ne'ermind the title is wrong:

The title is Will Harvey On There Not Being There Anymore?

Lets expand that (without changing the meaning) for understandability.

[The person] Will Harvey on [the game] "There" not being there [online] anymore?

Is that a question? Perhaps. The title is a tad ambiguous, but the interview seems to imply that "There" may not be an online game.

Therefore, the title is more appropr

Re:Who in the what where?

[Asmor]

Agreed.

Maybe...

[Walker2323]

Maybe the problem with these sim games is that they're inherently boring.

Holy cats

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If you'd tried, I mean really tried hard, it might have been possible to come up with a worse headline than this one.

Re:Holy cats

[Rallion]

I disagree.

Re:Holy cats

[bfg9000]

you are a pompous fucktard.

The non-genre card

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact is, a game is a game no matter what tileset you're using. I think There's problem was more a lack of focus on game mechanic than any sort of marketing or technological failure. Looking at there's site their attraction is "play cards on an island and meet some new people" and "chat with people all over the world. I can register for a free Yahoo! games account and presumably get Yahoo Instant Messenger or AIM. There, I can play cards and chat with millions of people around the world for free already. That's just not a compelling experience and certainly not compelling enough to make me want to upgrade my computer, run a particular OS, pay for some subscription, or even have to install some client software when it can all be done from any computer on the road with a web browser.

People are drawn to the typical mmorpg for many reasons, most of which I don't necessarily find healthy, but at least some of them are only possible outside reality. There and The Sims Online only manage to accomplish experiences that point out just how hollow a world without substance can be.

Re:The non-genre card

[Rick the Red]

Don't you hate it when you read a post and you agree with it so much you want to make the poster a "friend", but it turns out they're an AC and you can't befriend them? And on top of that you don't have any mod points to give them?

Don'y you hate it when that happens?

There There There

[metamatic]

Well, they have a "fuck off" web site that insulted my decision to use a browser they don't approve of, and they only offer Windows software. So, I say good riddance.

What? The world isn't perfect?

[Crash Culligan]

"If you look at the nongenre MMORPGS--There, Second Life, The Sims Online--they are all version 1 products that won't really be complete until version 37. The challenge is making version 1 commercially viable."

What?! Come on! How hard could it be to build a complete functioning online world in there are no negative emergent strategies and everything works as the designers intend them to? Oh, wait...

Right, sarcasm aside, it's damn near impossible to create an online experience which achieves that kind

Re:What? The world isn't perfect?

[MilenCent]

I've been thinking a bit about this lately....

Social-only worlds, I believe, can be made to work. I spent roughly four years on the event staff of one. But attracting that initial audience is the hard part, and then satisfying their expectations seems to be difficult as well. These tasks are arguably more difficult now because of the success of Everquest and other "game" worlds -- people, in general, are attracted to the theme beyond the world itself.

One way this could be made to work is to offer a "fa

Re:What? The world isn't perfect?

[Crash Culligan]

Social-only worlds, I believe, can be made to work. But attracting that initial audience is the hard part, and then satisfying their expectations seems to be difficult as well.

If they're there just for the socializing, the only way you could fail to meet their expectations is by not having enough people or running a server that goes down like a $2 whore. (Or maybe the people that are on there are just feckless nerds.) The "chatter" has been around for many years, and though I haven't looked around for a

Re:What? The world isn't perfect?

[MilenCent]

I think you're right on on many of your points. I've been in one world that was basically an exceedingly impractical chat client. Oy.

One of the things that bugs me about the current crop is that they present few opportunities to change the player's states other than combat. Club Caribe had a wand that could turn another person blue. There was a nude beach special area where it was possible to accidently leave it without your clothes (which some people actually found embarassing, despite that the "cloth

There today, gone tomorrow

[spyrochaete]

This "game" has been beyond buggy for over a year, and there have hardly been any upgrades or visible bug fixes since I started playing last March. For the first 2 months I loved this game obsessively. I saw incredible potential in the premise and I really enjoyed exploring the landscape and meeting new people. Being able to move your very human avatar around the same environment with others was extremely fulfilling. However, after the initial awe, the whole thing got old really quick. Too many bugs an

Disagreement

[Psychochild]

Some interesting things in the interview, but I'm going to have to disagree with this assessment about team size, etc. There are a small number of online world that were built and are maintained by small teams. My own game, Meridian 59 [meridian59.com], is one example that is being maintained by about 4 people. A Tale in The Desert [atitd.com] is another game that was built and is being maintained by a small team. Yes, these games are a bit smaller than the ones that get all the press, but they're still interesting virtual words th

Megabuck budget = Reality Distorion Field

[Doctor Cat]

The challenge is making version 1 commercially viable."

You can say that again. I think a big part of the problem these days is that when your project has huge amounts of funding, it's almost impossible to keep touch with reality. There had $35 million in funding. The Sims Online was well up into the tens of millions also. When a project has that kind of money spent on it, they get a lot of staff, their burn rate is very high, and most people in the company will have one of two attitudes. A) They beli

THERE problem was...

[Anonymous Coward]

There could be successful, if they changed their business model:

1. There is not a game, therefore they shouldn't have marketed it to a "gamer" audience. (Their real audience is people looking for social interaction and virtual place to build communities. HabboHotel is successful. Why not There?)

2. There charged an initial signup fee, then $4.95 a month, and even then you didn't get access to everything in the game! This sparked outrage and people cancelling. You can't mix a subscription model with a "piec