Business 2.0: SimCode?

” Much attention is being given to the new massively multiplayer
version of The Sims, and rightly so. But consider the vast
collection of modifications to the single-user iteration of The
Sims, distributed across the Net by a verging-on-obsessive group of
fans. They remind us that a game doesn’t need an overt multiplayer
component for players to dissect it and share the results with a
couple hundred thousand of their closest friends. This was, in a
sense, already a multiplayer game.

“It’s a given that The Sims Online will have a profound effect
on the game industry: More and more games considered single-player
endeavors will go online, and platform after platform (today Xbox,
tomorrow Playstation) will move to the Net as well. Publishers find
those monthly subscription fees irresistible. It will get absurd,
I’m sure: Someone somewhere must be dreaming of a massively
multiplayer redo of Tetris. But the most profound changes that
these everybody-get-on-the-Net-and-play-at-once games may trigger
might have nothing to do with games.

“How many of you use Mozilla as your Web browser? OK, both of
you can put down your hands. Mozilla, you’ll remember, was the
super-cool open-source version of the Netscape browser that was
going to take over the Web because thousands of programmers from
around the world, all committed to building a better browser and
countering the Microsoft behemoth, would pool their talents and
create the greatest browser ever. More than four years later,
Mozilla has generated far more press releases than products and has
done nothing to help the Netscape browser retake any ground from
Microsoft. This was one massively multiplayer project that never
took off…”

Complete
Story