Daily Yomiuri recently featured James Crowley and MMO 2.0, here is an excerpt from the article:
If you haven’t yet digested the concept of massive, multiplayer online games, or MMOs, then watch out: James Crowley has announced the advent of what he calls MMO 2.0. And if you can’t guess what that means, you probably weren’t “born digital.”
Crowley is the president of Turbine, Inc., which runs such MMOs as Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online. In an Oct. 10 speech at the Tokyo Game Show in Chiba, Crowley called MMOs the place where social networks, virtual worlds and conventional online games overlap. But he also said that MMOs would have to reinvent themselves to appeal to the new “born digital” generation.
Crowley called social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook, “the telephones of the 21st century” because they are accessible and easy to use. But, he said, they have “no real native hook to establish a broad community other than your own network of friends.”
Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are more interactive in that they rely on user-created content, but they lack unifying themes, he said. “There is a sense when one enters a virtual world…that, ‘OK, I’m here, what do I do?'”
That question is not a problem with online games, such as Halo, The Sims and Grand Theft Auto. “You’re grabbed by this thematic structure, and you have this entertainment experience that becomes incredibly directed,” Crowley said, adding that such games have short life cycles and limited opportunity for community-building or user self-expression.
“Let’s look at the traditional MMO [compared to the other online environments]. It’s fully immersive, it’s incredibly persistent, it’s a themed experience. That thematic structure allows one to automatically establish a common community…It empowers users to participate in that world, and share in the creation of that experience,” Crowley said.