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Will Harvey On There Not Being There Anymore?

Posted by simoniker on from the there's-a-there-there dept.

Thanks to GameSpot for its interview with Will Harvey, founder of There Inc., after the virtual world creator announced this week that it "is reevaluating its consumer-side game environment, giving itself 90 days to determine if a licensing-only model might offer a more secure upside to the company." Harvey explains that he has "left the company and I'm no longer on the board", and describes his original vision of There: "to support all the kinds of rich interactivity and human experience that top-tier video games are capable of, but in a single, unified world where everything works together." When asked to describe the problems with 'virtual world' products, he suggests: "If you look at the nongenre MMORPGS--There, Second Life, The Sims Online--they are all version 1 products that won't really be complete until version 37. The challenge is making version 1 commercially viable."

2 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe... by Walker2323 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Maybe the problem with these sim games is that they're inherently boring.

  2. THERE problem was... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    There could be successful, if they changed their business model:

    1. There is not a game, therefore they shouldn't have marketed it to a "gamer" audience. (Their real audience is people looking for social interaction and virtual place to build communities. HabboHotel is successful. Why not There?)

    2. There charged an initial signup fee, then $4.95 a month, and even then you didn't get access to everything in the game! This sparked outrage and people cancelling. You can't mix a subscription model with a "piece-meal purchase" model. It just doesn't work.

    There hasn't been around long enough to call it quits yet.