Kap’s Log: Web 2.0 - But When?

Contributor Nic Stransky continues his Kap’s Log series today, exploring the ramifications of Web 2.0 coming to the MMO genre.

At the end of April, Google’s CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt was interviewed on CNBC about the Yahoo! / Microsoft merger:

“If they go ahead and the merger’s ultimately successful, it would be possible for Microsoft to integrate some of the properties and essentially eliminate consumer choice, particularly in electronic mail, [and] instant messaging … “

On Rupture.com, Napster founder Shawn Fanning’s recent $30 million creation, similar sentiments are echoed.

“Rupture is designed to be game agnostic, and we’re constantly creating new partnerships to expand the games we track. Our goal: all games, all platforms.”

Fanning and Schmidt have a lot in common when it comes to their beliefs about an open and free internet, and ultimately giving the user as much choice as possible. Lately, they’ve both offered ways to merge multiple networks in an effort to keep people connected no matter where they are on the net.

In 2006, after playing World of Warcraft and reportedly finding it tedious to organize players and disseminate info while in-game, Shawn Fanning and Jonathan Baudanza announced the beta of Rupture, an automatically generated profile capable of tracking activity from within games and then reporting it back to your friends.

The concept is in the same vein as the popular X-Fire service, which generates a snapshot of a user’s various games and play times and is capable of indicating which game they are currently playing.

Although impressive uses of technology and honest attempts at connecting people Rupture and X-Fire — in their current incarnations — merely help gamers advertise their stats, online status, and achievements on web based URLs.

There is no reverse communication that updates a player while in-game, and they do little to truly connect people.

Last month Google announced the preview release of Friend Connect, an ambitious move to share a small amount of your personal info across all social networks. The Javascript based gadgets allow any basic skill level web site owner to provide a login system that utilizes the credentials from whichever network the user chooses.

Users can type in the username and password from any network they already belong to. Facebook, Google Gmail and Yahoo are just a few of the current options noted in Google’s preview introduction.

After signing-in and opting-in to share, a person can have their Facebook profile report back to their friends on the social aspects they participated in, if any, on the other web site. As a developer I’m excited to see the progress on this front.

As a user I am impatient and wonder why everyone doesn’t just adopt this already so we can begin work on the important stuff — in-game cross-network communication.

At present, neither Google’s Friend Connect nor Fanning and Baudanza’s Rupture have APIs nor any documentation for providing communication back to a game.

However, the industry leading trends toward an open and free internet, the booming contingent of gamers that spend their time in online multi-player, and the world’s growing desire to tell everyone their business leads me to believe that it is only a matter of time before this happens.

Its unclear whether either one of these intelligences will be the one to do it. On May 8, 2008 Electronic Arts decided Rupture was worth $30 million, just six days before Google announced Friend Connect. Since Fanning and Baudanza will innevitably become EA employees Rupture will likely be rolled into Warhammer, EA’s MMO. The job of standardizing the internet will again fall on Google.

At that point the choice will be simple. The only question is — When?

Nic Stransky - “Kap”

Friend Connect: http://www.google.com/friendconnect/home/moreinfo

Rupture: http://www.rupture.com

X-Fire: http://www.xfire.com

“EA buys Shawn Fanning’s Rupture for $30 million” - http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-9939694-52.html