I added this under the Entertainment section, since it's kinda a lit/ interactive game experience. Is anyone here involved with the Pottermore beta?
Just to give it some background, Pottermore is currently in beta until sometime in October, then it's going public. Right now it gives HP fans a place to discuss the books, submit fanart, explore extra written content by JK Rowling, and play some games, like Potions brewing. There is also a combat system with Wizarding Duels, but it's currently under construction.
What do you think of authors getting involved with their readers on this level? Would you ever want an online interactive world based off you fiction?
Pottermore baffles me. Not its existence — it's a wonderfully cynical way to cash in on your success — but its popularity. People keep moaning about the "maximum capacity" messages they get when they try to log in. How can there be that many people trying to get in on this?
It's not necessarily a bad thing. I'd love to play around on a site pretending to be based on, say, Snow Crash. (Or maybe that's what the internet is...) But it's astounding to me that it's already so popular.
I doubt it was poor planning on Sony's part. When you develop something like this, that has such a large user base, one of the things you do during beta is intentionally throw more users at your servers than your servers can handle.
This way, when it goes live, they already have a good feel for how many users can be active on a given server at any time. It also helps them identify load issues they wouldn't have been able to see otherwise.
Where the problem is, is that people don't understand what a beta is anymore. Beta has become synonymous with "sneak preview".
I'll show my age here - but in the old days, you had to prove you were worthy of being a beta candidate. You had to provide system profiles, fill out questionnaires, tell them other betas you had been involved with prior, etc. Basically they wanted people who knew what was expected.
A short list of universes that would make fun MMOs.
A Scanner Darkly - P K Dick
Saga of the Seven Suns - K J Anderson
Naked Lunch - William S. Borroughs
Clockwork Century Universe - Cherie Priest
I wish I had a talent and the patience for game programming. It is a wonderful and still largely unexplored medium for the detailed expression of complex ideas.
I think Pottermore is a genius creation. I loved buying a wand, getting sorted, generally re-living the glorious moments of first discovering those books as a child. Then it was three hours later, and I had done all there was to do and was sick of it.
Love Pottermore - curious about the longevity of it.
Anyone with a pottermore account:
Add Me!
Queenstrike96 (lame name, i know. but my friend made the account)
I'm a slytherin! Add meee