Whose Life is it Anyway?

Earlier in the year plans for a new virtual world were made public. But rather than a new MMO, A World of My Own is what you might call a game aggregator - a place to go to take part in an online community around certain games, and then download and play those games if you wish.

We spoke to Roger Walkden, CEO of the company behind the development - GDI - back in May, but with the service due to launch early in 2008, we thought it was high time we caught up on the latest.

Quite simply AWOMO is our new platform for videogames. It enables the downloading of games in a much shorter space of time, typically in minutes rather than hours, depending on your broadband connection speed.

And the reason why we're able to do that like nobody else is, is because we have a new piece of patented technology that changes the way that games are both delivered and compressed, and then feeds it to you on a standard open connection.

We believe that doing that opens up new business models and new ways of playing videogames, it changes their availability. Instead of having a planned purchase, where you download something over night, or in a few hours' time, it allows people to play games in a way that casual gamers have developed on the internet.

Access is much faster and easier, and we believe that there's a big opportunity to change the way that videogames are played over the internet, and to really bring to digital downloads the kind of success that we've seen with boxed games, and the way that casual games have gone — much more accessible and brings in new audiences to both older and newer games, and really help the digital download market compete properly.

I think we're taking a much more open approach to our technology than say iTunes did, which is often one of the analogies that's made with us, because we are creating something that looks very much like iTunes from a desktop client point of view.

The opportunity here for us is that we've truly got a piece of software which we believe shouldn't just be held back for people in AWOMO, but we'll do this for the market, so we're very happy to license out the technology to retail partners, ISPs and portals — anyone really that has a large enough base of gamers or potential gamers.

In one sense we're a technology company, providing those services to other parties, on the other side we're a new brand called AWOMO doing that for ourselves inside a 3D virtual world. So we've got two arms to our business, as it were.

Well, our thinking here is that there are only really two models that are used broadly for digital downloads. The first is a single price point buy and download price, GBP 29.99 or something like that. And then there's the subscription, the all-you-can-eat model that gives you access to a whole load of games.

We believe that those are being underutilised currently. While the buy and download method is currently used at the front end of the life cycle of a product, the subscription is used at the back end — typically a publisher will place a game there when it's on its last legs.

We believe that our business models open up something in the middle as well as being able to use those two much better. Our vision is to manage games downwards through their price point, in just the same way as a boxed copy is, and monitoring the boxed copy at all times to make sure there's parity in those two things.

It might actually surprise you to learn that if you were to look at the price of a buy and download game sometimes it's actually more expensive than the box, which is unbelievableâ¦and the reason for that is because it's not being managed correctly.

So why the Hell would you buy a digital download version, when it's more expensive and there's no box?

That's very true, which is one of the advantages of taking our technology to retailers direct. At the moment they don't have access to that technology direct, they're going through third parties who haven't got either the staff or the margin to be able to make those kinds of calls.

Retailers do, and they are managing those kinds of things, it's their daily job to get it right in order to beat their local competitor on the high street. That's where we think we can offer a significant advantage, both to the consumer and to the industry.

The answer comes through a series of negotiations individually with every publisher, but I think the reason we've been able to persuade them that this is the right way to go is because we've been the first and only people to suggest this way forward to publishers.

And I think they appreciate it, because unlike our competitors we've got a technology that enables them to have flexibility. We're helping them to manage their price points more effectively, we're giving them more models that they can use, that aren't just at the front and back ends of the life cycle.

So basically you've got a much broader offering that you are able to give to a retailer so that they can do something interesting and exciting online. And that's what's getting typically a good reaction from publishers.

They want it to move into the mainstream, and I think everybody understands what the benefits are of digital distribution in general. There's no costs of goods, there's no returns, there's no price protection — these are all massive issues from both an accounting and a logistical point of view, that get completely eliminated by our model.

First of all I'm not a big proponent of the death of bricks and mortar as a result of digital downloads.

Because I think there's a place for a box in the life of a consumer. For example, there's a large amount of gifting that goes on around videogames, and that will never go away. That's one simple reason, and the reason why CDs haven't disappeared from HMV either.

So it will be a gradual thing and obviously like most things there will be a section of the market that will cotton on to it faster than others. I think we'll be particularly well place to harness that as it happens.

Most of it is to do with the business model, and that business model at the moment is just not optimal, and so the whole consumer experience is weak.

For me I see it growing exponentially over the next few years, obviously, but never with the death of the box. I think they'll both need to work to live alongside each other for the next five years.

Yes, it will be, but it will still be at a beta phase. The thing about a virtual world is that it's pretty much like an MMO in that what you get on day one isn't necessarily what you're going to have a year later, or two years later. It will evolve, and it will continue to evolve over a long, long period.

We'll be launching AWOMO 3D World version 1.0, and then there'll be a 1.1 and then a 1.2. Our vision is that we launch with districts, and each district will have a different style of gaming, and you go to those districts to hang out and meet people who have similar interests to you from a gaming perspective.

It enables you to network with them, to talk to them, via instant message, by voice over IP — all of these things will be available at launch, as well as tournaments which will also be available.

And then as time moves on we'll be adding other things that definitely won't be there for launch, such as skill-based gaming, but to do that we'll need to be talking to the publishers about certain versions of their games, but right no we're not ready for that and neither are they.

We'll also add more content to the virtual world to make it more interesting. We've already signed up some partners, and there are other announcements to come, which revolve around social networking and tournaments.

We're 100 per cent focused on ensuring that 3D AWOMO is an interesting enough experience for people to want to hang out there. It's like a game, really. If you create a dull game, people won't play it. Virtual worlds are no different. You have to create something that makes them want to be there, want to come back.

If we make the experience sub-standard from day one, all we're going to have is a whole load of people come in and go straight out. That's really not our goal.

The 3D side will always remain the unique thing to AWOMO. When we're doing our white-labelling we won't make that part available to them, although obviously they can set up something inside AWOMO.