Jane at Game Girl Advance – who wrote the “Is WOW the New Golf?” article – returns to the issue.
It’s an interesting idea, but WoW is a long way from Friendster or mySpace or LinkedIn. For one, it’s a lot harder to browse for friends; the server system is optimized for play experience, not for contact volume. And then the game itself is so involving that, unlike taking a stroll through the links, there’s a lot less potential time for schmoozing while playing. At the lower levels, at least.
Meant to link these a week ago: Making Games for Poor Kids (RPGnet) and Chris’s take, Loaded.
I’ve been trying to figure out, myself, if storygaming is necessarily a hobby for the middle-class / upper-middle-class, or if it can be possibly more accessible than, say, video gaming. (It’s already been said that video gaming could become the “new golf” of the 21st-century leisure class. Hence I coing a new phrase, golf2.0.)
Of course, there’s no shortage of cool, free games out there, just a shortage of broad exposure.