Ben Bajarin is a consumer technology and digital media analyst/strategist at Campbell, CA-based Creative Strategies. In this new column, Ben will share his opinion on any videogame-related topic you propose. E-mail him and read his blog.

QUESTION: At GDC 2007, Sony announced something called “Home.” Do you believe that “Home” is important for Sony and for the video games industry?

BEN RESPONDS: The best way to describe Sony PlayStation Home is that it’s a virtual world for your PS3 in which you can create your own virtual person and customize that person to look however you want. There are many social aspects of this virtual world where you can meet and interact with people, customize your own living space, go to stores, and so on. In a nutshell, it’s “Second Life” meets “The Sims” meets Nintendo’s Mii Channel meets MySpace.

Given the strength of the Nintendo Mii Marketplace and the Xbox Live Marketplace, Sony needed something in the online realm to really differentiate. It has really nailed something here by taking all the same features of Xbox Live and taking it from 2D to 3D.

For Sony and Home, the possibilities could be endless when you think of the social implications something like this can have. I have been fascinated with what folks and brands have been doing in virtual social worlds, like Second Life and There.com. “Sims Online” was an indication of things to come and PlayStation Home takes it to another level.

Imagine being able to “play” in this social world, find new friends there, and then invite them to your “virtual” apartment to watch a movie or play a PS3 3 game. Those examples are really just the beginning.

QUESTION: How long will it take for Sony’s “Home” to really make an impact?

BEN RESPONDS: I believe the adoption of PlayStation Home will be similar to Xbox Live. It took the developers time to fully understand how great the Live marketplace for content downloads was and what it could mean to their business. Once developers start creating “places” within Home where people can come and interact with their brand or games and commerce can happen, then we will really see some exciting things in Home.

Imagine if Electronic Arts had an EA building in Home and people could come in and actually interact with the developers and give them ideas or feedback. Or if there was an “Arcade” in that building where you could come and play or test the new games.

That is why I fundamentally believe that moving from a 2-D to a 3-D social marketplace is a significant and potentially important move by Sony and most likely will add to the future value of the PS3.

DIALOGUE: RICHARD “LORD BRITISH” GARRIOTT
ON THE HOLY GRAIL OF MMOS

“I don’t personally think that any game has hit market saturation, including ‘World of Warcraft.’”

No newcomer to the gaming scene, UO’s designer, Richard Garriott, had nine single-player Ultima games under his belt before venturing into the online world. He’d also built his own publishing company, Origin Systems, which he sold to Electronic Arts in 1992.

Garriott, affectionately known in the industry as “Lord British,” is the son of astronaut Owen K. Garriott and is today an executive producer at MMOG publisher Austin-based NCsoft. Last year he became the ninth inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame.

HollywoodReporter.com columnist Paul Hyman chatted with Garriott about his departure from Electronic Arts, the skyrocketing popularity of MMOGs, his soon-to-be-released game “Tabula Rasa,” and his plans to visit the International Space Station.

Paul Hyman: Richard, it’s ironic that most of the Ultima games you created were for Electronic Arts (EA), but then you left when they seemed to you to be less-than-enthusiastic about the MMOG sector. EA still publishes your “Ultima Online” (UO) and recently bought the MMOG developer Mythic Entertainment to expand its MMOG offerings. What made you leave EA and what did you learn from the experience?

Richard Garriott: The short explanation was, as they say, fundamental creative differences. If you’ve seen any of the Ultimas, you know they contain very large virtual worlds, deep story lines and they took me each years to develop. But EA’s core business is making sports games, and they’ve got a machine and a process that does that very, very successfully. Frankly, EA wasn’t convinced that the MMOG business model was the way of the future and so that ultimately led to my retirement from EA. In fact, when I left in 2000, I fully anticipated that …

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DIALOGUE WITH MIKE WILSON: THE GAMECOCK CROWS

“Honestly, when we left the industry in 2001, I felt like I’d failed in the grand crusade.”

Wilson — a man who straddles both the game and film industries
— knows of what he speaks. He’s gone through the painful experience of funding two indie films in one year, as executive producer of “Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock” and co-producer of “Preacher With An Unknown God.” And he struggled with the short-lived success of Gathering of Developers (later known as G.O.D. and then GoDGames), a video game publisher built on the business model of the developer as king.

But GoDGames, which started in 1998, didn’t last long and was quickly acquired two years later by Take-Two Interactive and redubbed 2K Games.

Fast forward seven years and Wilson is launching a new publishing company, Austin, TX-based Gamecock Media Group, of which he is CEO (although his business card reads “Grand Champeen”).

Not cowed by the history of his former company, Wilson plans to run his new company very similarly to his first — with one big exception. HollywoodReporter.com columnist Paul Hyman chatted with Wilson about why he expects Gamecock will have a longer lifespan, new business models, and the art of not promoting your company.

Paul Hyman: Mike, what made you jump to films after spending so much time in games?

Mike Wilson: Let’s just say that when I first got into games in 1995, a few guys in a room — guys who were friends of mine — could make something as creative as “Wolfenstein 3D” and “Doom” and rock the world with them. By the time I left the industry, which was five years later, mainly because of a noncompete clause, games suddenly cost multimillion dollars and [took] years to make.

At that time, the digital video revolution was happening on the film side, where a few guys in a room could now make a movie. It was like old times again. So I started experimenting with …

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April 14-15, 2007
Indie MMO Game Developer Conference
Minneapolis, Minnesota
http://www.mmogamedev.info

May 5, 2007
Northwest Games Festival
Vancouver, Canada
http://www.nwgamesfestival.com/

May 7-9, 2007
Global Games Summit
Seattle, Washington
www.globalgamessummit.com

May 10-11, 2007
OGDC 2007 (Online Game Development Conference)
Seattle, Washington
www.ogdc2007.com

June 6-8, 2007
AIIDE 2007 (Artificial Intelligence & Interactive Digital Entertainment)
Stanford, California
www.aiide.org

July 11-13, 2007
E3 Media and Business Summit
Santa Monica, California
www.e3expo.com

July 25-28, 2007
CGAMES 07 — Computer Games Conference
Louisville, Kentucky
www.cgamesusa.com

August 4-5, 2007
Sandbox 2007 (2nd Annual ACM SIGGRAPH Video Game Sympsium)
San Diego, California
www.sandboxsymposium.org

August 22-26, 2007
Games Convention
Leipzig, Germany
www.gc-germany.de/gcinfo_e.shtml

September 21-23, 2007
Tokyo Game Show 2007
Tokyo, Japan
http://tgs.cesa.or.jp/english

October 18-21, 2007
E For All Expo
Los Angeles, California
www.eforallexpo.com