Sun Claims They Make Worlds Biggest MMO

Next Generation has a piece up examining Sun's claim that they develop the worlds largest Massive game: the stock market. They also go into some detail about Sun's actual MMOG middleware, Sun Gaming Server. From the article: "I argue that we've been the principle architect of the largest massively multiplayer online game in the world. It's Wall Street. If you took a look at all of the mechanics that go in to building an online trading system, they're almost one-for-one, the same functions needed to build an MMOG. Except we've done it with more redundancy, reliability and scalability than pretty much anyone else."

Comments

what you hear on the floor

[darkmayo]

WTS [DOW Jones Stock] PLS SEND TELL!!!!11

I'll go with it.

[torchdragon]

I suppose that's a fair statement. Wall Street has its fair share of Min-Maxers, Power Gamers, and Exploiters all the same. The Broadcast and Trade channels are full of people trying to rip off the casual players. And most people are throwing away money every month for the ability to waste time and energy on a world that doesn't exist. Yeah, I'll agree with that statement.

Re:I'll go with it.

[Have Blue]

It would be way more fun with PVP though.

Cool...

[AlltheCoolNamesGone]

You know a stock market MMORPG might be a good idea, hell I'd welcome anything that isn't another "me too" fantasy MMOG. Think about it, no classes, no levels, just your wits and some start up money you inherited or something. I'd pay good money for that...

More on topic: There main selling point seems to be the ability to run more than one type of game for different end user hardware. Which would lower may lower the cost to MMORPG currently available and developing in the future, so I guess we will be seeing even more MMORPG.... More is not always better......

Rated M

[LoverOfJoy]

And often, when you lose at the game, you commit suicide. Rated M!

It's true

[oni]

I've played a lot of Stock Market. The end guy is hard

Re:It's true

[DarthVeda]

have you tried the insider-trading combo?

Re:It's true

[djdavetrouble]

No, thats the one where the giant gorilla comes out and throws barrels of overpriced crude oil at you.

Scary

[Lord_Dweomer]

You know...there's something really scary to imagine those hardcore EQ, WOW, and w/e players getting into stocks. I seriously think they could give a lot of traders a run for their money if they got into it.

Whats even scarier is the fact that there are Sun banner ads for this article...coincidence? I think not.

Re:Scary

[dasunt]

First off, the usual disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser.

That being said, one of the more productive strategies in stocks seems to be holding stocks for long periods of time. This is looking at the long term, not the short term. Can MMO players, used to instant gratification, understand that sometimes their investment fluctuates in value?

The stock market would be equivalent to a game where all NPCs give a range of XP: Sometimes its negative, sometimes its positive. Some NPCs give a negative net XP. Some NPCs give a positive net XP. The XP (negative or positive) is highly dependant on the amount of XP you have. Have more XP, and you get more XP (or lose more XP). Of course, whenever you leave the zone, you get hit with a capital gains tax. :p

Now that I think about it, that would be an interesting experiment to run on a MMO.

This just in... Jack Thompson sues SUN!

[kramthegram]

CNN is reporting that Jack Thompson has recently discovered SUN makers of the popular MMO "Stock Market" have created a game wich had lead to many deaths. It seems players of this game have become so distraught after losing all their "Stock" the in game term for money that they have commited suicide. Also some other users become so addicted that they neglect family and friends. Jack Thompson is proceeding in a class action law suite funded by former Enron and Wordlcom executives. When reached for comment Mr. Thompson had this to say, "This game is an outrage! This is the worst threat to our moral society since the fiends at Penny Arcade!"

Not really about the stock market

[esampson]

From reading the article it looks like what Sun is talking about is making a server solution to handle all the transactions that occur in your typical MMO. Transactions, in this case, doesn't simply mean the player economy, however. When a player moves the client tells the server the player has moved from point A to point B which is validated by the server. When the player kills a mob the game gives them XP. When a player chats the client sends a message to the server and then the server sends messages out to all clients close enough in VR space to 'hear' the player. These are all examples of transactions with the servers.

The reason Sun talks about the stock market is because like an MMO the stock market has massive amounts of transactions that occur in real time. Unlike games, however, it's a lot more critical to get the transactions right. If you think duping can screw up a game imagine what it would do to the world economy, and I would imagine that it is simply unacceptable for the stock market servers to crash and have all the transactions for the past 15 minutes 'rolled back' when they reboot (for that matter it's probably unacceptable for the entire system to go down in the first place, so when a transaction server crashes other systems have to pick up without the end users ever knowing anything happened).

As a result the transaction servers developed by Sun are leaps and bounds beyond what MMOs are using. Sun is saying it can bring that expertise to developers, saving them from the expense of coding their own, usually inferior, transaction servers.

Of course a lot of this is me reading between the lines. It seems like the author of the article himself doesn't really grasp what it is that Sun is saying, but maybe the truth is that I am reading way too much into things.