Home is where Sony's heart is

There are a lot of virtual worlds on the World Wide Web, and I'd like to think I've visited a few of the more prominent landmarks among them.

As I've mentioned before, my background coming into Second Life was that of a videogame player. Ever since my youngest days, I've been drawn to the clever blend of narrative and skill-based gameplay that come together in the best games, but in recent years I've been intrigued by what some games have been trying to do in the online spectrum.

The MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) genre, besides being a nearly insurmountable acronym, is one of the fastest-growing areas of the videogame industry. Just recently, Activision — one of the largest console, handheld and mobile game publishers in the world — merged with Vivendi Universal, which owns Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of the wildly successful World of Warcraft.

How successful? Well, since launching in the fall of 2004, World of Warcraft (WoW) has garnered:

• More than 10 million paying subscribers worldwide, paying an average of $15 per month to play
• The position of top-selling computer game every year since it came out
• An Emmy award-winning South Park episode entitled "Make Love, Not Warcraft," which was animated partially using actual avatars within the World of Warcraft game

The MMORPG space is serious business, without a doubt. And Sony has taken notice.

Sony Online Entertainment head John Smedley suggests that Sony is considering the MMO space as an integral part of its offerings with its latest console, the PlayStation 3. Having partnered with NCSoft, publishers of popular MMORPGs like Lineage and City of Heroes, Sony hopes to become a major purveyor of virtual world-based entertainment.

But the crown jewel for Sony isn't a game at all — it's an interactive world built around socializing, personalizing one's avatar, and creating content. Hmm . . . sounds familiar.

Simply dubbed Home, Sony's product is launching later this year as a free program for PlayStation 3 owners. But while Second Life is designed to allow a user to build anything within the limits of his/her mind, free time and wallet, Home is designed more as a marketing tool. Users will be able to purchase virtual brand-name clothing and items, share media in a virtual home theater setting, and show off their accomplishments from games they've played.

By no means is it a substitute or a competitor for Second Life. But what Home indicates is a more mainstream movement, a demand from a wider audience for a similar collaborative online experience where avatars are the makers of change. If anything, it's validation for the experiment the folks at Linden Lab have stuck to for the last few years.