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Re: Web 2.0
I think you might be misunderstanding what Web 2.0 refers to. It's not a codebase of any sort. It's a very very very general and vague series of principles by which to build a so-called "second generation" online service. The term itself is kind of starting to feel a little dated so now people are even starting to talk about Web 3.0. (Frankly, every time I hear that I want to punch the person saying it, and it took me a long time to not feel the same way whenever anyone said, "Web 2.0".)
Wikipedia has a decent article on it:
I tend to agree with Tim Berners-Lee that the term is almost devoid of meaning given that there's nothing particularly new about so-called Web 2.0. Nevertheless, while they may not be new the way that many of the successful web 2.0 sites (like Flickr or Facebook) use the internet and the energy of online communities is something that MUD and MMO developers should be paying attention to.
When you look at where the vast majority of the most popular virtual worlds are coming from these days, it's the web side of things rather than the game side of things. The most successful are mixing them both, such as in the case of (recently sold to Disney for $350 million + an extra $350 million in incentives for the three founders).
Right now there's a lot of talking past each other though. A lot of the pure game developers are clueless about what so-called Web 2.0 can teach and a lot of pure web guys sound like cute little newbies when talking about adding game aspects their services. I didn't go to Austin Games Conference this year but apparently this division was pretty notable there. (Mike Morhaime's - leader of Blizzard - keynote was packed while Sulka Haro's (from Habbo) and Min Kim's (from Nexon...who did more than $400 million in virtual asset sales/pay-for-perks last year) were reportedly ill-attended by comparison.)
--matt
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