Free Realms celebrates Halloween in style

Feel like dancing like that awful show on ABC? Well Sony Online Entertainment is hosting what it calls the Biggest Virtual Halloween Dance Party ever in its free to play MMO for all ages, Free Realms.

Everyone is encouraged to log on to Free Realms at 4pm PDT - 6pm PDT (11pm - 1am UTC) this Wednesday, October 21st to show off their new Halloween costumes and get down to with the “Chiller” Boom box dance. Scheduled to be certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, this celebration will be offset by well-known dance moves and a notable tune that promises for a thrilling good time.

If you’re interested in getting involved, check out www.FreeRealms.com for all the dirty little details. SOe will also introduce 14 new Halloween quests, spooky mini-games, trick-or-treating, 2 new trading card game Quest Packs and more than 35 costumes for pets and players.

Crisp Thinking: keeping Free Realms players safe

Crisp Thinking is helping Sony Online Entertainment make Free Realms safer for kids; in fact it has been doing so for quite some time. Free Realms is using Crisp Thinking’s online threat protection software, NetModerator to accomplish this. The product identifies and blocks predators and other threats in online games in real time as well as providing analysis of veiled online communications which might be a “well-disguised wrong-doer” or an escalating situation of bullying.

Since Free Realms is geared towards adults and kids, a solution like this is probably for the best because it could be a potential breeding ground for Internet predators. NetModerator analyzes the intent of dialogue between players as well as the actual words they are using. According to its makers, the software can identify potentially escalating situations such as potential self-harm or cyberbullying as well as immediately calling attention to predators. In tests undertaken by Cambridge University in the UK in 2007, NetModerator proved 98.4 percent accurate.

“We take our responsibility to ensure child safety in our products very seriously and that makes it a priority in Free Realms especially. We feel strongly that it’s up to us to implement protections for children while they’re playing our games,” said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. “After installation and weeks of testing, we found Crisp NetModerator is a high-quality product that works well. It goes far beyond anything else we’ve seen. We are looking to implement it into other SOE games in the future.”

Crisp clients include Cartoon Network’s FusionFall, ZulaWorld and SuperSecret, along with Internet service providers, Sky and Tiscali. Full details of all Crisp Thinking solutions can be found at www.crispthinking.com.

SOE opens Usability Lab to the development masses

Sony Online Entertainment will now provide in-house “Usability Lab” services to outside companies. it announced today. So just what the hell is a “Usability Lab?” SOE says that it is a disciplined approach to product development that incorporates user centric feedback throughout the process to produce a better end product.

SOE’s Usability Lab was originally created to test the company’s in-house products, with Free Realms being the first major game title to benefit from the process. During the development process Free Realms was vigorously tested in the lab; everything from the tutorial and user interface to the gameplay mechanics were tested and tweaked during the process. This allowed the development team to make necessary changes to the game prior to launch, and made it so that users didn’t have to endure massive changes after the game was in service..

The SOE Usability Lab consists of “top of the line” PCs and PS3 systems, and is able to accommodate projects varied in size and scope - unless they are on the Wii or Xbox 360 - I would assume (they are owned by Sony after all). The services offered include usability testing, heuristic evaluations, focus group testing and feedback, and product evaluations.

For more information about the Usability Lab visit www.soedevservices.com.

Free Realms now supports five languages

Sony Online Entertainment announced this week that Free Realms now supports five fully-localized and supported languages: French, German, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (Latin American) and English (UK). Originally launched in English (US) on April 28, 2009, Free Realms is a free-to-play, family-friendly online video game that has more than four million registered players enjoying its virtual world.

All existing and new players can play in any of the supported languages on any Free Realms server, according to SOE, who calls this a “first” for any of its MMO products. Players can begin playing Free Realms in their language of choice by visiting the localized versions of www.FreeRealms.com where a server with the highest population of players playing in their preferred language will be recommended. Chat and profanity filters that support all languages have also been implemented. All languages have full customer service and community team support as well.

Find out more at www.FreeRealms.com.

John Smedley to keynote GDC Austin

 John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, will deliver a keynote address Game Developers Conference Austin (GDC Austin. Smedley’s keynote, “From Dragons and Daggers to Kart Racing, Cooking and Concerts…It’s a Whole New MMO World,” describes in detail how SOE’s freely available tween and teen title Free Realms has worked to expand the base of players coming together in online worlds. Smedley’s keynote will inform attendees about the challenges and lessons learned when creating a full-blown MMO for younger audiences including the challenges and opportunity of creating connected games.

GDC Austin features three days of main conference content focused on connected games, online games, virtual worlds, and social networking game play - along with four two-day summits including the Game Writers, Game Audio, iPhone Games and Independent Games Summits. The event takes place at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas September 15-18, 2009. Early registration discounts for the event will end on August 13. Find out more at www.GDCAustin.com

Free Realms hits 3 millionth user mark

Sony Online Entertainment announced that more than three million unique users have registered for Free Realms,since its launch on April 28, 2009. Recently awarded recognition by Guinness World Records for conducting the first concert to take place simultaneously in the real world and a virtual space during E3 in Los Angeles last week, Free Realms continues to prove that free-to-play games are serious business.

To celebrate the rapidly growing community of players, SOE will grant its first three million Free Realms registrants the “3M Pet Party Pack,” filled with goodies for use with their virtual pets, both cats and dogs. From the in-game Marketplace, players can choose from more than 20 different types of dogs and cats to train, feed, groom and dress up. Players have until Friday June 19, 2009 (11:59 PM PDT) to redeem the “3M Pet Party Pack”.

Free Realms also features 14 other fun jobs to master, as well as the Free Realms Trading Card Game: a full-featured trading card game, playable both digitally within the Free Realms online game and offline via physical card decks sold wherever you buy trading cards.

Free Realms hits two million user mark

Sony Online Entertainment’s free-to-play, family friendly MMO game, Free Realms continues to surprise everyone - including its developers. In its first month of service the game has managed to attract over two million registered users. That’s a pretty incredible number, given what Free Realms is: an MMO that the whole family can play together.

According to internal data from SOE, 75 percent of those users are under the age of 17. Can you say pay dirt? I believe that it won’t be a fancy multi-million dollar MMO that will topple World of Warcraft - it will be a myriad of free-to-play MMO games like Runes of Magic and Free realms. On the other hand,  perhaps this is all just a phase. We’ll let you know in a month how both of those games hold up.