"Everyone is talking about more or less the same opportunities." says Jeffery Anderson, CEO of Turbine. "The goal for all the different studios, regardless of your product, is how you're going to maximize revenue.

He adds, "Today, a lot of revenue is being created by a small audience. In fact, the people who are paying most of the profits in the games we're running are the casual user, the people who are using the game lightly, a couple hours a week. They're the ones with the lowest variable cost.

"Ironically, they subsidize heavy users who are who are -- from a subscription basses -- a poorer value proposition. Right now, everyone is trying to figure out ways to do two things simultaneously."

He adds, "One is diversify revenue streams so you get away from doing hardcover books into doing paperback books and comics. We're trying to get away from the heavy priced subscription side. And conversely, we're tying to go after the intellect because the intellect should be treated differently. So when you see somebody who's willing to pay a hundred to two hundred dollars a year for item transactions, we also want to capture that revenue." [ Read More! ]

World of Warcraft is everywhere. Even the GameSHOUT.com radio staff is playing this game on a role-playing realm. There are over 4.5 million subscribers playing this game and people can't seem to get enough of it.

If you haven't played WoW (also known as World of Warcraft) by Blizzard Entertainment, you can download a 14-day free trial from FilePlanet. The trial includes 4 additional days over the standard 10-day trial available to non-subscribers of FilePlanet. All you do is fill out a quick form and then download. [ Read More! ]

Imagine you are a furniture dealer with a nice steady business, buying and selling, when one day you sell a rare antique chair and find that it magically replicates itself. The customer gets his chair, you get the cash and you still have the chair to sell again. You discover that it wasn't a one-off. You can make it happen again and again. What would you do?

Endlessly reproducing the chair would be conning the customer in a way: to some degree at least, the chair's value is linked to its rarity. Would your conscience get the upper hand? Or would you start duplicating and selling like mad to get as much money as you could before you were found out and/or the market collapsed?

It sounds an unlikely dilemma. Chairs don't magically replicate themselves. But this seems to be exactly what happened in the world of Everquest II, an online computer game. However, before you jump to the conclusion that this was a virtual-world scam involving just virtual-world money, stop. This is real money we're talking about. For this is a story about two types of money: game gold and US dollars. And the point is that you can sell one for the other. [ Read More! ]