Where Game Meets the Web : My Take

This is from a comment I recently left to one of Raph Koster's entries on his GDC presentation Where Game Meets Web. Its a great read, just be patient with the slides, it takes a while to get going.

Raph starts out by stating on his blog:

Those of you who are Web 2.0 geeks will likely find nothing much that is interesting here, honestly — but those of you who are straight up game geeks may find it enlightening.

When one of his avid readers responded:

I think the Web folks have already learned a lot from the game folks: look at Google Image Labeler and Amazon Askville. Or the change of heart on the part of the usability gurus a while back, when they realized that aesthetics could contribute to functionality rather than always obscuring it.

I figured at least some of his intended audience missed the mark. This isn't about engaging the web audience with game like qualities. Although, yes, the above referenced examples do exactly that, this is about the reverse and about reinventing game development.

Frankly, though, a lot of the web 2.0 crowd could learn alot from the web 2.0 crowd... did that make sense? Doesn't matter, that's a different post.

Raph recaps web 2.0 design concepts wonderfully and lets people draw their own conclusions as to how to implement them in modern game systems. Will a lot of people hear? Let's look at one of the 800 lb gorilla's out there.

Sony had two big annoucements at GDC: Home and LittleBigPlanet.

Home tries to get it, but, I fear, is going to miss the mark. Its just like Kaneva and SecondLife-lite and a myriad of "you get an apartment to decorate and can visit with other people... online chat rooms with avatars" systems that are out there. While there is an attempt at UGC (you get in-game trophies and put them in your room), its in a nice sterile sandbox and eventually everyone will be more or less alike.

LittleBigPlanet embraces the UGC concept with "use our platform to create levels and uploaded them to the servers and resell them to the user base". Ratings, Rankings, and Reputation. Game as a platform. They got it all.

Now which one was by the big corporate giant and which the small, lithe, developer? I'm not sure Sony knows what it's got it's hands on, but they better be nice to an innovator like this one. They see where the industry is going.

That brings me back around to MyndSparc. The project is all about user generated content; about game system as a platform; and about ratings, rankings, and reputation. In a nutshell we're putting the game on the web and the web in the game for something completely different and fresh.