A while ago in one of those "lets talk about game development and virtual worlds" conversations I have with other people and myself every now and then, I proposed that if someone ever succeeded in making an MMO game that managed to draw in the facebook and bejewelled casual webophile crowd, that person would rule the world. Apparently Sony Online Entertainment is trying to do it. They've just come out with a game, creatively entitled "Free Realms" where you can make a character straight out of a Lisa Frank sticker sheet and run around playing mini-games, beating monsters, and questioning your personal life decisions. I've only played it for about 20 minutes, but so far I've trained as a Brawler, doing standard MMO button mashing to beat up hobgoblins, and trained as a cook, playing a hybrid Bejewelled/Cooking Mama set of silliness to create stews and porridges. It apparently has video integration with youtube, and has a real-life trading card game that has in-game benefits and vice versa on top of all the pet-training and go-kart racing and ninja roleplaying you could ever imagine, so all the little boys and girls can get all their favorite hobbies amalgamated into one game. Basically I think it's interesting that someone is making a super-casual MMO game, and blurring even further the line between "gamer" and "kid who spends all his time online looking at facebook". Technology is weird, and it's doing strange things to the chilluns.
The attached image is the character I made to explore this online debacle- there is absolutely no way to make a dignified avatar in this universe, so I opted to shoot the moon. I'm trying to pretend I'm just dabbling in the game as an observer watching an interesting development in the sociological phenomenon of Online Worlds... but it's entirely possible that I just want pixie wings.
