Interoperability; was: [sldev] Call for requirements: ISO MPEG-V ...

[Kelly Linden]

Argent Stonecutter wrote:
> On 2008-06-03, at 03:34, Felix Duesenburg wrote:
>> The main question to answer for any such thing to happen is, where's 
>> the business angle to justify such an effort? Creating interfaces and 
>> mappings between spaces that were never made with interoperability in 
>> mind is not a trivial task. Ultimately the customer, the user will 
>> have to pay for it to be enabled. Is there anything you want to do so 
>> badly that you'd part with your hard earned L$, PED, gold nuggets or 
>> real world currency?
>
> I've spent hundreds of dollars on my avatar over the past three years: 
> that and land rent for the Coonspiracy is where pretty much everything 
> I earn in SL goes to. Why wouldn't I spend real money to carry that 
> around with me?
>
>> And, even before that, what's the business advantage for the 
>> respective companies running those worlds?
>
> Getting people who would have absolutely no interest in visiting WoW 
> as an elf or a thinly disguised hobbit to play the game? People 
> willing to pay a premium to have a custom avatar, but not willing to 
> pay a penny to be a dark elf no matter how fantastic a costume Sony or 
> Blizzard or whoever come up for it?
>
>
I do not think Sony or Blizzard would want that.  The key component in 
the WoW / EQ / AoC interoperability scenario is creative control.  None 
of these products are trying to host a free form virtual world.  They 
are trying to tell a story, they want their characters and their content 
to match the story they are telling.  And the people paying them to play 
want that story, they want elfs and/or barbarians and adventure and 
slaying etc etc.  They don't want robot overlords from SL, or fashion 
models or tinies or furies or goreans.  The people who have no interest 
in visiting WoW as an elf etc are not going to be interested in its 
story or game play - they aren't the target audience and no one would 
expect them to join WoW.  Blizzard does not want to ruin the experience 
for their millions of paying customers to satisfy the people who aren't 
interested in their product.  That just makes no sense at all.

It is not reasonable to ever expect this sort of product to even desire 
content exchange with other virtual worlds - independent of what 
technology allows.  At most they may be willing to work with identity 
exchange and communication protocols.  Even then consider that in WoW 
they restrict communication between their own players (no cross faction 
communication).

In short these are not "virtual worlds", they are MMO stories or MMO 
games but not virtual worlds.  The people who don't want to be an Elf 
etc don't want to play WoW.  Effort on interoperability should be 
focused on the products (potential and existing) that would actually 
want it.

 - Kelly