gopets posts

GDC09: Applied RMT Design with GoPets and Live Gamer

by James Egan Mar 28th 2009 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Business models, Economy, Events, real-world, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Free-to-play, Casual, Massively Event Coverage

Massively sat in on a GDC 2009 session this week titled Applied RMT Design which was part of the Worlds in Motion Summit. Andrew Schneider, Founder and President of Live Gamer and Erik Bethke, CEO of GoPets, Ltd. presented a case study on balancing a game's primary and secondary markets, using GoPets as an example of how it can be done.

The market for virtual goods in massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds is worth billions. Not all of this is grey market, and more games are now being designed with microtransactions in mind. Live Gamer aims to bring greater legitimacy to microtransactions through a regulated secondary market providing benefits to companies as well as the players themselves. Thus far they've worked with EverQuest II, Vanguard, and GoPets, with Acclaim's 9 Dragons on the way.

Bethke and Schneider kick off their talk by explaining the fact that RMT in MMOs is inevitable, explaining how developers can be proactive about incorporating RMT into their titles rather than having it exist outside of the game. Live Gamer works with developers to create a legitimate system for trading virtual items for real money, one that's safe and secure. Of course, legitimizing RMT can also stir up controversy.

Gallery: GDC09: RMT Design panel

Tags: 7-11, andrew-schneider, business-models, case-study, casual, economy, erik-bethke, events, free-to-play, game-design, gdc, gdc-2009, gopets, live-gamer, microtransactions, mmo-industry, primary-market, real-money-trading, real-money-transactions, rmt, secondary-market, virtual-goods, virtual-items, worlds-in-motion, worlds-in-motion-summit

The Daily Grind: Pancakes?

by Kyle Horner Aug 6th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: MMO industry, Opinion, The Daily Grind

Pancakes, just about everyone loves 'em. They're deliciously light and fluffy and can be sweetened with everything from blueberries to chocolate chips. Just like their flat 'n tasty counterparts, Pancake MMOs are light, fluffy and sweet all over. Hello Kitty Online, Go Pets, Neopets, Free Realms, Club Penguin and the near bouquet-size of franchise-based MMOs coming from Disney seem to be piling up on our proverbial plates. These MMOs can taste great and do tend to venture into fun, experimental game design territory. However, are they also like actual pancakes in that too many will cause everyone to grasp their collective stomachs and painfully moan, "Too many pancakes!" or can we stomach endless amounts of soft, tasty sweetness?

Tags: club-penguin, disney, flapjacks, free-realms, gopets, hello-kitty-online, hko, neopets, pancake-mmo, pancakes, the-daily-grind

ION 08: A five year forecast for MMOs

by Kyle Horner May 15th 2008 at 9:30AM

Filed under: Business models, Economy, Events, real-world, MMO industry, Massively Event Coverage

There's always a lot of discussion about what's going to be the next big thing in the MMOs industry. We all love to talk about the future and that's largely because it's a very interesting topic. So we just had to attend the "Online Games in 2013" panel at ION 08. This panel was actually introduced by Peter Freese, the ION Conference Director. It was easily one of the most packed panels I've been to thus far which is saying a lot since all the panels have been pretty well populated already.

The panel consisted of Erik Bethke (GoPets Ltd), Scott Jennings (NCsoft), Bridiget Agabra (Metaverse Roadmap) and Damion Schubert (BioWare). With a group of people like this I was expecting some varied and compelling conversation on the topic of MMOs in 2013. In the end we got just that and a quite a bit more.

Gallery: ION 08: MMOs in 2013

Tags: activision-blizzard, bioware, blizzard, bridget-agabra, ccp, city-of-heroes, club-penguin, damion-schubert, erik-bethke, featured, gopets, habbo, hollywood, indie, ion, ion-2008, ion08, ion2008, joystiqfeatures, metaplace, metaverse-roadmap, microtransactions, ncsoft, peter-freese, playstation-3, rights, scott-jennings, world-of-warcraft, wow

ION 08: Virtual worlds for the masses

by Kyle Horner May 14th 2008 at 9:30AM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Entropia Universe, Events, real-world, Second Life, Virtual worlds, Massively Event Coverage, Gaia Online

What's a virtual world? Why do we even call them virtual worlds when we could easily call them digital worlds, or just simply, worlds? This was just one of the many interesting topics discussed at ION 08 this year in a panel entitled, "Redefining Virtual Worlds for Mass Markert Consumption" which is quite the mouthful. So lets put things in a more understandable -- and far more interesting -- perspective.

Whether you're talking about Club Penguin, Gaia Online or Second Life the truth of the mater is that these "worlds" are here to stay and they all share similarities -- social interaction. Not only are they here to stay, but they've only just begun to grow as a market. Which is why this panel was all the more interesting. The panel includes Erik Bethke (GoPets Ltd), John K. Bates (Mindark/Entropia Universe), Craig Sherman (Gaia Online), Rob Lanphier (Linden Lab/Second Life) and was moderated by David Elchoness (Association of Virtual Worlds).

Gallery: ION 08: Game Conference gallery

Tags: activision-blizzard, association-of-virtual-worlds, blizzard, club-penguin, craig-sherman, david-elchoness, entropia-universe, erik-bethke, featured, gaia-interactive, gaia-online, gopets, ion, ion-2008, ion08, john-k-bates, joystiqfeatures, linden-lab, mindark, rob-lanphier, rob-linden, second-life, world-of-warcraft, wow

GDC08: Why are goal structures important to MMOs and VWs?

by Barb Dybwad Feb 19th 2008 at 5:25PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Business models, Economy, Events, real-world, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Crafting, Virtual worlds, Massively Event Coverage

The following is a quite excellent session from the Worlds in Motion GDC track given by Erik Bethke, CEO of GoPets. The takeaway message is about what virtual worlds can learn from MMOs in terms of providing intelligent goal structures.

Erik: How do we apply MMO goal structures to virtual worlds (and to almost everything)? Virtual worlders tend to hate games like WoW because they're not "erudite" enough but look at this screenshot (shows slide of a UI from a raid) and look at how complicated the user interface is. With 10 million people playing, is it hardcore or is it casual? I get really frustrated with arguments about UI: the raid screenshot proves that even this level of complexity can break through to a larger audience.

Shows slide of quest-giver goblin in WoW: "virtual worlds are missing the little guys with exclamation points above their heads." Looking at other examples of goal structures: look at how successful Puzzle Quest got by combining Bejeweled with RPG elements. Look at Chore Wars -- suddenly I get excited about walking the dog (laughter). Even something like the LinkedIn registration process -- I logged in one day and saw that my "progress bar" was only at 40% and how can I live with that?! I had to level up in LinkedIn. I found out I needed to get testimonials from my contacts to get higher -- it was a group quest! I got pissed that I couldn't solo LinkedIn (lots of laughter).

Tags: casual, chore-wars, erik-bethke, featured, gdc08, gdc08fanboy, goal-structures, goals, gopets, hardcore, joystiqfeatures, linkedin, puzzle-quest, ui

GDC08: What if your mana bar was green?

by Elizabeth Harper Feb 18th 2008 at 9:30PM

Filed under: Events, real-world, Browser, Casual

At a morning GDC session, GoPets' Erik Bethke gave a standing-room-only-crowd some sage advice:

People who use green for mana bars instead of blue for mana bars... that's just hubris.

Of course what he means by this is that developers who defy basic gaming trends are setting themselves up for failure. To continue the mana bar metaphor, players have become accustomed to blue mana bars and green health bars from a long history of games. Mixing up this very basic element will only make a game less accessible. On the flip side of this, however, is innovation. If no one breaks the traditional molds, we may never see better games. But at the same time it's hard to argue with Bethke's example: why change a game element that players are accustomed to? It could make the difference between a game that's intuitive and quickly picked up by new players and a game that loses players before the tutorial's finished.

Gallery: GDC 08: Worlds in Motion summit