Attack of the Mass Media!

May 17, 2007

Earlier this week I blogged about Disney's goals with Pirates Online -- and of course, you can Play the Pirates of the Caribbean Online Beta Test here on FilePlanet.

But let's back up a second. Why is Disney going back to the gaming well? What's the big picture here? I'll tell you what's happening: big media is getting wise! This is the online generation. We spend more time on the 'net, playing games or chatting with friends, then we do watching movies or TV. So what do big media companies do to keep up with the curve? Fold up? Go away? Hellz no.

Even the slowest of media companies are catching on and is experimenting with new ways to reach you. Yeah, you, sitting there surfing the web right now. But what's scary is that some of the smarter companies might actually be ahead of the curve, smarter than the big game developers and publishers within the industry. Check out this Interview with Raph Koster on Gamasutra. A longtime game industry veteran, he lays out some serious mental voodoo and points out how quickly non-gaming companies are innovating in the online space, especially with virtual worlds:

"When MTV went to make Virtual Laguna Beach, they didn't hire people from the games industry, and yet they had a lot of success. They had a better launch then Dungeons and Dragons Online, and on top of that, they're doing stuff we [game industry developers] only wish we could do. They stream the TV episodes in the worlds before they come out on TV. I think big media will screw it up a lot, but they have effectively infinitely deep pockets. It's because they know that their territory is going away, so they're going to crowd into ours. They think that they can take it away from us, and they may be right. -Raph Koster

As a hardcore gamer, you might not get a kick out of Pirates Online, but if even a million people start playing it regularly (that's a fraction of the number of people who play Disney's Toontown), then it's already more popular than every North American MMO ever made -- excepting World of Warcraft. Not too shabby!

      -Fargo

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