Iron Realms announces Earth Eternal January 10, 2007
Posted by David Kaye in : MMO, Earth Eternal , 9 comments
Iron Realms just announced our first ever graphical MMO. It will be fully 3D, free, and playable in a web browser.It’s called Earth Eternal, and the website is now live.
As a partner in the company I’m obviously far from an objective observer, but I’m incredibly excited about the game’s potential.
I’ve had the opportunity to see exactly what Matt and the rest of our team have been working on during the past year, and I am really excited about the quality of what we have put together on a fraction of the typical MMO development budget. Watch this space.
World of Warcraft cellphone client released October 30, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : Mobile, MMO , 20 comments
This is nifty. An enterprising individual has hacked together a mobile phone client for World of Warcraft. It doesn’t talk directly to Blizzard’s servers, of course - it acts as a dumb terminal that connects to your remote PC desktop.
I think standalone mobile MMOs are largely a dumb idea, but I can see this finding an audience among certain hardcore WoW addicts.
[via Warcry]
Second Life hype bubble finally bursting? August 15, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : MMO, Marketing , add a commentSteve Rubel has posted an article that comes to the same conclusions I did about the extent of hype surrounding Second Life. Most of the blogosphere still continues to smoke the crack, though.
Why do people buy virtual items? August 11, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : MMO , 2 commentsWhenever I talk to people about Iron Realms, the hardest thing by far for people to get is why our players are willing to spend so much money on virtual items - property that, after all, doesn’t ‘really’ exist.
In the first of a series of interviews, my business partner Matt Mihaly talks to a player who recently spent about $240 on a virtual cherry pie. For anyone who wants to understand the appeal of virtual items from a consumer perspective, this is essential reading.
Runescape is the 7th stickiest brand on the web June 30, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : Business, Games, MMO, Product Marketing , 35 commentsBrowser-based MMO Runescape is the 7th stickiest brand on the web, according to Nielsen Netratings’ Megapanel. Stats like this always make me a little wary - they often say as much about the methodology as they do about the data - but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.
It’s curious how, despite its size and the extent of its commercial success, Runescape remains a largely under the radar phenomenon. You can learn a lot from looking at the disparities between media hype and hard data, and the great thing about the Web in 2006 is that there are a ton of tools that make doing so easy and fun.
