Much obliged! And good luck with it all, can’t wait to see what you produce.

Alice.

From your post “one that is as rich and social as real-world activities like shooting hoops or jamming in a band. And we wanted it all in a browser, as accessible as your email.”

But don’t forget the “real-world”. An idea might be to integrate things we do and places we hangout at in the “real-world” with conduit. Try to integrate the social online entertainment with social real-world entertainment. For example, when I’m at restaurant A in the real-world I’ll also be hanging out with people at an online version of restaurant A. Just an idea.

And you’re right that MMOs are indeed a good example of this which is why much of the background of the team is in MMO development on top of web guys. I thought we gave good enough credit to MMOs, but perhaps not.

We see typical MMOs like WOW as a great service, but one that is ultimately tied to a very specific production (ie big budget+years of development), distribution (retail+subscription) and play style that is directed at the hard core gamer.

While the enjoyment might be similar, the aim in the audience is quite different, to an audience that really hasn’t experienced the kind of interactions you have had he pleasure of having online.

The statement “there really isn’t any place to “hang out” with friends, an online world where you can get involved in a whole range of activities, a place where you help create a steady stream of new adventures.” simply isn’t true.

Because what you’ve just described is the very experience that i’ve been having in MMO’s for the last several years – getting together impromptu with friends to hang out together while doing a multitude of casual yet useful fun ‘Stuff’ together, a kind of “directed casual” experience.

And Socializing while still doing worthwhile ‘Stuff’ is also mostly what goes on 24/7 in IronForge in WoW, at least on the servers i’ve played on.

Not being a Virtual Worlds guy, if this type of casual social directed co-op is missing from VR worlds like SL then indeed yours is a worthy endeavor, especially if it comes in the form of web based flash, but us MMO guys have been doing this for most of a decade now (UO went live in 1997 iirc)

Anyway, more games is good games so Go For It and Good Luck.

http://thinglefin.com/2007/08/23/congrats-conduit/