musings of a social architect

MMOs employ actors... finally

I remember having conversations about this idea when Ultima Online came out... it's SO COOL to see it actually happening. I wonder how it'll make a difference?

Since the close of the beta, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced that it has employed a troupe of 20-odd people whose job it will be to enact narrative scenarios in The Matrix Online live. These people will assume the roles of popular characters, interact with players, and generally move the stories in ways that only live "actors" can. And though it appears that the story hasn't officially commenced, a few players on the Method server were treated to a pretty slick sample of it this afternoon: an extended pep-talk by none other than Morpheus himself.

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Joke-e-oke

As loyal readers know by now, I'm a huge fan of Karaoke and other forms of "participatory entertainment." Well, now Wired News reports on a new twist on this formula called Joke-e-oke that's basically karaoke with stand-up comedy material.

Many dream of the chance to be a comedian with killer material in front of a laughing crowd. With Joke-e-oke, people are able to live out their comedy fantasy of being their favorite comedian onstage, choosing from a list of stand-up comedy icons to perform. A built in laugh track is added, timed perfectly to accent punch lines.

Xfire on TV?

Stowe Boyd does a nice job summing up the currently-hot Social TV meme - with a great conclusion that echoes my thoughts.

You can tell these people are not playing massively parallel online games, because if they were they could reduce the discussion to a single phrase: Xfire for TV. Xfire provides augmented presence information about your online gaming pals. It shows not only that they are online or not, but also what game they are playing. Xfire provides the ability to join others in those games by just clicking on that presence indicator.

So, social TV -- with what ever bells and whistles involving web cams, microphones, etc -- is simply going to be the fusion of that Xfire notion of context ual presence (what show I am watching) and the online gamer experience of a shared space with integrated chat. The shared space in this case maybe the John Stewart show instead of World of Warcraft, but the basic are all there, and millions of people are already doing it everyday.

However... I think Social TV will take on many different forms, including new types of games, voting mechanisms & ratings/reputation systems. Buddy Lists are great, and very popular - but they're not necessarily the center of everyone's online social experience.