Play MMORPGs, befriend a level 70 orc warlock and learn about the future of news
Written by amedeo on September 26th, 2007
Massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Second Life and many more show how to exchange information in a goal-oriented, entertaining, community-building and gratifying way.
The interaction formula for MMORPGs is:
- Start with little power and status relative to the power and status available for acquisition;
- Overcome challenges by acquiring information, accomplishing tasks and networking with other players;
- Earn rewards that unlock more complex challenges, and increase power and status;
- Back to 1;
So if the world of news was an MMORPG, how would it work?
Here’s a start:
- Visually represent stories so they can be easily traded, dropped, altered, bought and sold, and shown off in the game;
- Offer virtual or real status-building rewards to people who use your information;
- As these information remixers create increasingly valuable iterations of your stories, give them more access to data, more powerful information-manipulation tools and better presentation in the news world.
Be sure to check out Home, the MMORPG coming for the Playstation 3. You can watch the YouTube video on it following the break. As the pleasant voice of the narrator promises, “Home becomes a huge, 3-D, worldwide, Playstation 3, matchmaking system.”
Put the name of your journalism organization where Playstation 3 is.
And if you’re wondering what a level 70 orc warlock looks like, venture here.
