There are interesting comparisons to be drawn between online gaming platforms and operating systems. I'm going to define OGPs fairly vaguely -- Warcraft is one, so is XBox Live, so is Steam -- in that they allow you to play games with other people, provide community features (messaging, achievement comparison), and give you some kind of game to actually play.
These OGPs represent a kind of "stickiness" that keeps you coming back to the game or games supported by those platforms. If given the choice between a game that's out for PS3 or XBox 360, I'll buy the Xbox game even though I own both platforms. Why? I can see my Live buddies if I'm playing the XBox game. You end up investing in your online experience. In Warcraft, I've spent a lot of time developing my library of applications (characters, addons), and I have a lot of interest in maintaining interoperability with others (the social groups I've developed to play games with).
There's even now a Bejeweled that runs inside of Warcraft. The next major upgrade will include in-game calendaring on top of the pre-existing mail system. The todo list -- quests, if you will -- is also getting a major beefing up in the form of new achievements, XBox Live-style. I've long contended that Warcraft is the most interesting online productivity suite out there, if you're willing to accept that killing giant dragons is an interesting group productivity activity.
And why not, really? So much of our 21st century life is based around the production of things that have no physical basis. Yes, the software I develop gets dumped onto a CD or DVD every so often, but that's an artifact of distribution -- and since I don't work on distribution, there's nothing tangible, really, that I craft with my fingers. (And iPhone apps are purely virtual!) What remains interesting is not the physical or virtual mementoes of the process, but the act of doing, and the social constructions that remain from that act. In this, online gaming now resembles blogging, in that the community and the memetic constructions are what remain lasting.
So what's a new game to do in this space? One could liken the release of Warcraft to the release of Windows 95 -- a social gaming space that finally broke through to the masses. (I'd say the same for Live and Steam but really... nothing like them existed before for the markets they address.) Before Warcraft, MMOs existed -- the DOS of DikuMUDs, the Windows 3.1 of Everquest -- but they had not yet shattered that accessibility and usability barrier to really catch on. And since Warcraft, there have been a number of attempts to learn from and inherit the space that Warcraft owns, but none have really been successful. I've tried several of them -- some, like Lord of the Rings Online and the most recent, Warhammer Online, are fairly faithful extend & embrace copies of Warcraft. So why do they not have the same traction?
It's that stickiness. When Age of Conan came out, the die hard neophiles jumped to it -- in the millions. Funcom's stock price rocketed. But then those same players abandoned the game in droves. Why? The social space wasn't as rich. The game itself wasn't as mature and stable. And, frankly, you didn't have your stuff. Why don't people jump from one OS to another purely based on features? The reason I hear most often is, "I'd have to re-buy (or re-acquire) all of my applications." Switching online gaming platforms is getting to the same place -- you want to play the one your friends play. You want to play the one where your stuff is.
I've been messing around some with Warhammer Online (and did the same with Lord of the Rings Online). Both games clearly very carefully learned the UI lessons of Warcraft. Jumping into both games feels very comfortable for an experienced player, and they've clearly taken care to make the experience pleasant for the new player as well. But neither stuck with me because I have great affection for my communities and my little avatars.
What's the solution for these brave new upstarts then? To be honest, I'm surprised nobody's done it yet. It's the same as the solution for, say, a plucky presentation software upstart that's challenging the dominant paradigm. You provide the ability to work with your old stuff, and another compelling new features to make you feel like you're mistreating your old stuff to work with the old app. Blizzard's already put the foot in the door already -- all of your WoW characters can be examined (in XML format, no less!) via the armory.
Mark my words -- some brave asshole will finally put two and two together and make a WoW character importer for their new game. And it'll work terribly. And their will be lawsuits. But then the idea will be out there. And then, eventually, we'll see avatar portability and a persistent, interoperable virtual stuff space. I give it ten years. After all, somebody you know is probably raiding tonight. These virtual spaces are here to stay.
