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Avatar movie producer interested in Avatar MMO

Rubi Bayer — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:30:00 EST

It probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise. James Cameron's Avatar caught the attention of gamers from the moment the first trailer was released. Its appearance alone was extremely familiar to anyone who's spent more than a few minutes in any number of fantasy MMOs, and the movie's plot centered around what could be called the most immersive MMO ever.

The movie has already been turned into a single player game, and now our friends at G4TV report that Producer Jon Landau says he's "very interested" in the creation of an Avatar MMO. Before you groan in despair, hear him out. The focus doesn't seem to be on shoving something out the door right away while the money machine is still running at full speed: "it's something we'd want to do, would be very interested in doing, but we'd have to do it right. To create those worlds is sometimes a long time endeavor."

Landau continues by exploring the concept of 3-D gaming -- a feature that would be almost a given in an Avatar MMO: "I think that the addition of 3-D in gaming tends to be more transformative than 3-D is to movies. [...] I think we're starting to see the start of 3-D becoming commonplace in gaming."

Follow along after the jump to see the full video of Landau's talk with G4TV.

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Avatar movie producer interested in Avatar MMO originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Sea Monkey experience of avatars

Tateru Nino — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Business models, Culture, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds

So, as you may recall last week Linden Lab responded about what appeared to be Second Life advertisements that capitalized on the recently-released James Cameron film, Avatar.

Linden Lab implied (though didn't actually state plainly) that the advertisements were not intended to cause confusion between Second Life and Avatar.

Since about Christmas (just after previews showing the blue-skinned Na'vi began to become available to the general public) IMVU started running some blue-skinned ads of its own.

It was when we saw the blue-avatared IMVU advertisement that sprung up during the same period that we inevitably started thinking about Sea Monkeys.

There's more similarities going on here than just the visible, so let's rummage around and see if we can't find one of the old advertisements in our files.

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The Sea Monkey experience of avatars originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Avatars blue, Second Life concurrency and transactions rise

Tateru Nino — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Business models, Economy, News items, Second Life, Roleplaying, Virtual worlds

The Second Life user-concurrency and user-to-user transaction figures took a bit of an unexpected jump this week, rising sharply after a year of relatively little motion. Through 2009, user-concurrency has been on a slight, though not terribly significant decline, while user-to-user transactions remained flat and rather unexciting.

The sudden rise coincided with an advertising campaign by Linden Lab, where James Cameron's Avatar and Second Life were rather strongly linked in a series of banner advertisements run on YouTube and as a part of Linden Lab's affiliate program.

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Avatars blue, Second Life concurrency and transactions rise originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Avatar uses smoking as a metaphor for (online) gaming obsession

Kyle Horner — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, MMO industry, News items

For all of you who saw Avatar (and we're pretty sure that's a lot of you) we imagine the analogy between James Cameron's sci-fi techno masterpiece and our beloved genre of gaming didn't fully escape many of you. So, when anti-smoking outfits began to boil over about Sigourney Weaver's character lighting up after "logging off" from her big blue cat woman for the evening, Cameron took to the defense.

According to the mastermind behind Avatar, the character of Grace was never meant to be a role model. "We were showing that Grace doesn't care about her human body, only her avatar body." Cameron continued by saying her destructive behavior "is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games." The message is clear, although not too overbearing. We love our online games, there's no doubt about that, but getting the occasional exercise routine or two in doesn't hurt, either.

It's all very interesting given the ending to Avatar, which we won't spoil for those of you who somehow haven't yet seen it. Still, regardless of whatever "anti" sentiment you think Cameron was sending, there's no doubt plenty more MMO metaphor to be found within Avatar -- a movie ostensibly about a real life fantasy world and avatars to play within it.

[via Wired]

Avatar uses smoking as a metaphor for (online) gaming obsession originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Avatar: Why does this movie look so familiar?

Rubi Bayer — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Culture, Events, real-world

If you're one of the few people who has not heard the buzz about Avatar yet, we'll catch you up by saying that the film's beauty is all anyone can talk about. MMO players discussing the movie will follow that observation up almost immediately with "...and did you notice how much it looks like [insert game of choice here]?"

Quite a few comparisons have been drawn, with World of Warcraft and Guild Wars being the two most frequently mentioned. Film and music review site In Review Online was quick to point out that James Cameron is a big fan of WoW, and Guild Wars fans noticed the similarities as soon as trailers showed up way back in August.

So James Cameron is stealing all of his ideas from MMOs, right? Of course not. Magically floating rocks, mountains in the distance, and lush, green landscaping have been a part of the fantasy genre for some time now, and anyone involved in a creative process is bound to be influenced by the things encountered in daily life.

While (we hope) nobody seriously thinks that Cameron looked at a game load screen and said "Yeah, I'll use that," there is certainly a strong influence there. Whether he was influenced by games or everyone has the same general underlying theme of a fantasy world is anyone's guess. In the end, we'll just enjoy the movie and its strange sense of familiarity.

Avatar: Why does this movie look so familiar? originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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