Count on Ludicorp, maker of GNE, to push the more interesting dimensions of the VW genre. E.g., Flickr.
Stewart and team announced Flickr at Etech last week.
The idea for Flickr grew out of Ludicorp's online gaming work. The company initially began developing a multiplayer game called Game Neverending, which it expects to launch this summer, and realized it could leverage much of its functionality in an online groupware-type application, Butterfield explained. Flickr, in fact, shares about 75 percent of Game Neverending's code in common, particularly code related to event distribution and messaging.
The Ludicorp slides are available here. (2.6M .ppt)
But it turns out play is about people, not places. In fact, play is often about building things [including places] collaboratively.
First above sentence on a background of Pieter Bruegel, Children's Games (1560). Second statement on Legos -- nice touch! Tom Coates reviews Flickr and gives Ted's Etech speech a good review too. Good times in San Diego, Ted?