MMO Veterans Koster and Donham Found Areae

Newly formed San Diego-based studio Areae has informally announced its inception, via a press release-less announcement on its official web site. Areae was founded by MMO veterans Raph Koster, best known as lead designer on the original Ultima Online and creative director for Star Wars Galaxies, and John Donham, who has several years of production experience on various Sony Online Entertainment projects including Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest II. Despite the pair's MMO-centric credits lists, Areae's specific development model is not yet clear. According to the company site, they are "working on some new tech that will literally change how virtual worlds are made," with "a cool world or two incubating on the back burner." An interview with Koster on Gamasutra reinforces this currently vaguely stated goal. "We're trying to reinvent how virtual worlds are made, how customers are treated, how they're accessed, how the business models work, pretty much everything," he said. "The way to put it is that we're really looking to bring the qualities of the web, especially of Web 2.0, to virtual worlds. There's a lot of things wrapped up in that--everything from very low-end user costs for being able to participate, lots and lots and lots of listening to users, having them involved, having them contribute." Gamasutra speculated that this might indicate something along the lines of the successful Second Life virtual world but, according to Koster, "there are as many differences from Second Life as there are from Everquest." Areae is currently hiring, and has several positions listed on its site.