Wii, I couldn’t give you a time frame. But it is important to us, because as we build up the site we are trying to capture the aggregate game play experiences a player has. We want to be tracking information across all of those experiences. We want people to be able to sign up and then 10 or 20 years from now, look back and review the memories they saved, and that requires that we have access to all the major platforms.
X: Do you think people are going to be tapping into these Web-based communities in real time, as they play the games, or will it be more asynchronous? Do a lot of console gamers have a PC or laptop next to them as they’re playing?
JR: I know that a lot of people are looking up hints and tricks and are playing with a laptop next to them for their console games. But I do think that it’s inevitable that Web access—though it isn’t a bit part of most consoles—is going to be a part of them in the future, and it’s going to be in our TVs anyway. So we think the Web is the safest bet in terms of where you should deploy these interfaces and systems.
That said, we are building this based on a services architecture and a data feed, then building a user interface on top of it. So should there be a better interface in the future, we will have the ability to tap into those feeds and services. For example, if we wanted to create mobile access to this, we will be able to create those feeds. Or just document the feeds and let people know that if they want to, they can build interfaces into GamerDNA from whatever specification they want.
X: When will you be publicly launching the GamerDNA site?
JR: We haven’t announced a date yet. I’m going to say that by the end of the spring is the horizon for having GamerDNA as a distinct and separate site. But a lot of the functions that are going to become part of GamerDNA are already visible in certain places [inside GuildCafe] for people who are signed up as users.
X: Whenever you introduce changes to a big, established community there’s the risk of a backlash—people get used to things being the way they are, especially if they’ve invested a lot of time in writing comments or the like. What are you doing to handle that possibility at GuildCafe as you roll out GamerDNA?
JR: You’re right, the distinct flavor and aesthetic of a community isn’t something you can easily change. That’s why GuildCafe.com has to exist as its own entity going forward. It will continue to have the core functions of guild hosting and community. What will change in the future is some of the underlying services like player profiles and history capture and all the fun aspects of recording your game play that will be driven by a set of underlying services we’re calling GamerDNA. We are also going to make all of those services available in the form of widgets that can be plugged into any website.
GuildCafe will be the first great case of how you can enrich a gaming website with access to these services. We are going to want other people to adopt those as well. And as you know we acquired Uberguilds a few months back, which gave us access to another 30 or so gaming sites, and a lot of those sites will be using the GamerDNA widgets as well.
X: So you’re talking about a service that goes across websites, some of which may not even be under your control. But there will still be a central GamerDNA site, right?
JR: There will be a GamerDNA site, a crossroads type of site that connects you to anything you want access to. That’s where the profiles and a lot of these core services will live. The closest comparison to that I can think of is any of the social music sites like iLike, which has a core website but also widgets that can live elsewhere, like the Facebook component. That’s the methodology we’re using. We believe it’s more important to drive engagement at the application level. We are less concerned about being the uber-destination. The essence of the GamerDNA brand is that it’s very personal to you as a gamer. The things that you care about or that you’ve done. That identity then becomes something that is portable across all kinds of communities and games.
X: You talked earlier about “extending the entertainment experience of the game.” That sounds like something the game publishers themselves would want to control and monetize. How do they feel about what you’re doing?
JR: What we’ve hard from several game companies is that they love the idea of taking this data and putting it up on the Web in more fun ways that allow you to encourage social competition or interaction. The appeal that has to game publishers is that people tend to play the game for longer and talk to their friends about the game more. One of the really important pieces of research that is starting to emerge over the last year in the game market is that advertising isn’t particularly influential for games. Even the professionally written reviews aren’t really correlated to sales. People buy games because their friends told them the game was good. Anything you can do to encourage people to share their experiences and play longer and talk more are the kinds of things that help game publishers. That is the pitch that we are making to the game industry.
