Whit AndrewsI get it. I don’t necessarily think Google will succeed, but I get it.
My son, Joe, is entranced with a PC game called Spore. You tragic readers who have been reading this for a while may remember some lengthy and muddled consideration about whether to get it or the following self-congratulatory post noting its virtues. He frequently considers what he wants to see in Spore 2, and at the current pace of development, it’s not inconceivable that he could be a developer on that revision, frankly.
I wanted to write books. At Joe’s age, I was scribbling on paper that only recently had stopped having colored lines on it to help my cursive positioning so that I could succeed in a sequel to How To Eat Fried Worms. (This was before Fear Factor or Jackass, chillun. Gather ’round the fire.)
Joe doesn’t want to write books. He reads extremely well, but he sticks mostly to manga these days. (Yes, I check them out first, and they all come through the children’s librarian.) He wants to make PC games — because he plays a PC game that allows him to be the developer. Spore lets him create creatures and situations that match his desires for a narrative. (I made a video that lays this out.) So, Joe grasps that the game is a platform, and that it is, in fact, a B2C platform. He, being a C, can develop a game on the platform that meets his criteria for fulfillment. Because he is so young, there is no possibility for synchronous play with others, which would shred bedtimes and otherwise cause all kinds of problems. World of Warcraft and similar games are the same, though, with such shared experiences that create a magnetic effect — in which every player explicitly coaxes others to join, who coax others, and so forth.
Here’s the part about Google Wave. By making Wave, Google is seeking to build on this concept of making a platform that consumers can use — not just developers, even though they obviously matter a great deal as well — to create the world that they themselves yearn for. Consumers desperately want to control their own communication model and system. Look at Facebook, where tagging someone in a note no longer means someone is IN that note; it means that someone SHOULD READ and if possible DUPLICATE that note treating the note in which they are tagged as a template. (That sentence should be shorter. Sorry.)
In other words, Google executives want to create a platform like a game in which the world is available to everyone to communicate the way they want. Now, does that mean it will succeed? Obviously not. Many a MUD and a MOO went south before World of Warcraft and other games made them widespread and generally effective. Nor has any major standard emerged that allows, say, your Warcraft witch to compete with Natasha Yar for Castle Wolfenstein.
But this makes perfect sense.
I started sketching out my notes on this yesterday. What Google is building, in essence, is a new medium — a unifying and extending construct that ties together existing dimensions of communication in order to capture how we communicate today and combine it with the dreams I shared with a hardware company last week when I tried to describe my frustrations in tying together my blog, my Facebook account, my friends, my playlist, and my car stereo and my PC speakers. (And I live a simple electronic life! I don’t have cable, satellite, or even a TV.)
It’s no coincidence that Joe’s been working with Legos while I write this. He likes the Power Miners line (which, at least as of this instant, appears to have no TV or DVD tie-in, or even a Nintendo DS game). Joe was supremely unimpressed by plain Lego blocks. He’s no developer (at least not yet) and telling him of the extraordinary precise manufacturing standards Lego demands, or the amazing interoperability they allow, would have baffled him, and justly so. But Lego added some “crystals” (read, “colored pieces of clear plastic”), and a few faces, and he was able to generate his own stories. Below, you will note, the miners have been beheaded and the rock monsters are standing around laughing. (I kid you not.)
The Rock Monsters succeed in trapping and murdering the miners.
So, Legos are a medium. Email is a medium, and so is IM, and so are phone calls, and all sorts of things like that. Google Wave is a medium, and one which will (apparently) support a key standard. This is, in short, the potential start of a very big deal. Or, it could crater, and in three years we could be reading interviews with Google folks talking about how important that effort was, “under the covers,” or “having impacts that aren’t that visible.” That’s how we are in tech, you know?
But for now, it’s a major plan, ambitious and extraordinary. It’s a tough year, and I am inclined to dream as well, at least for today. This week, if I have time, I look forward to a meaner, more deconstructive look at Wave. For now, I’m happy that there’s a new medium in town.
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
