BizOrigin

Gaming, Web 2.0, Google Maps and Areae.net

Written by Sunny Kalara on January 26th, 2007 | Posted in Startup

Former Sony Online Entertainment’s Chief Creative Officer, Raph Koster starts Areae, a combination of virtual worlds and entertainment. Areae means many places or “many worlds” in Latin. Susan Wu describes it as Second Life meets Web 2.0. Areae received funding from Crescendo Ventures and Charles River Ventures, but the amount was not disclosed.

There have been rumors that Google expects to open up Google Maps and SketchUP for a meshup to create your own cities and google life.

There is clearly a need for more MMOG (massively multiplayer online games) and as more and more communities discover the joys of the game, the participation is bound to go up. I don’t buy the hype of alternate economies (most of the numbers you hear about people making zillions of $$ in these games are fake) but the concept has a great value as an entertainment franchise, and I am glad that the developers are fostering it.