Ok guys, here is the deal. You know your mmo ( apart from Crixx) ...so I need your expert advice.

I have been tasked ( seriously ) with pitching an idea to the London 2012 Organising Commitee concering the online game/social networking arena.

My company, has the It contract for the Olympic Games, and basically want to pimp themselves into the 'cool new exciting' online world. Think cliche businessmean hearing about Second Life, and seeing IBM/Reuters/Yahoo and asking themselves..why arent we doing this?

So they come to people who play MMORPGs for ideas. They have had talks with
www.footballsuperstars.com people about an olympic mmo theme. Think
part management, part player development, part 11 a side virtual game, part second life virtual world.

Could work..but my first thought was competing with companies that make good computer games could be a downfall.

I would say my company wants profit and brand awareness.

Ok..so my ideas were as follows :

Construction of Olmypic village in Second Life..however it would only serve to look good..unsure of functional usage. You probably couldnt compete etc...

Creation of a social networking site for schools ( initially anyway ) focused around sport in schools and recording performance times..then uploading them to a national league table. bit of fun, sport in schools, etc etc.

so if you had the chance to developer an Olympic themed online world/website ..what would you create?

Ok, Im assuming its going to be a free thing used within the whole web promotion of the games?

I would say that, to promote the games and athletes, and educate a bit, perhaps having something that involves training regimes for an avatar, to help people understand just how much goes into becoming an olympic standard athlete for each event would be a good idea.

Free or pay for - could be either.

The suits would want revenue streams from it tho!

Micro payments for better training equipment or medical treatment could be the best solution, rather than fixed fees.

Even SOE have said its the future of online games, it doesnt feel so bad as signing up for x amount per month or whatever.

Plenty of scope for advertising revenue as well, sposored training equipment,clothing, food suppliments etc.

Create an old school Ben Johnson type character, get him smacked off his head to run 200 mph.
The kids would love it

Create an MMOFPS where you have shootouts in various olympic villages.

Munich is the end-game raid.

lol ^^

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L2P Quotes of teh Year 2007
kitchens kitchens kitchens

On a more serious note, an online game involving the Olympics could be something where you design an olympic stadium, and other people can vote on how good it is. Think SimOlympics

Or perhaps focus upon the athletes themselves - an MMO where you grind up athletic skills would be boring as shite to me, but maybe the target audience would like it? DING! Level 10 longjumper!

Just pray to various gods and godesses they don't plaster that god-awful logo all over it.

Ooh or an olympic quiz - very easy to envision, but can draw a lot of people to a website if it's done well. Conversly, the web is full of shite quizzes, so it has to be fairly decently made.

hehe yeh. you know those old olympic games where you had to mash the keyboard..haha. 2012 version, rawr!

A simple MMO of the olympic village. You have to train in the event you've chosen to raise your stats, have to socialise to help your character relax so you can train better. Make the game skill and stat based. Let schools set up their own private olympics, the best people from there go to a national one.

And like Vob said add in the micro transactions for better equipment, company sponsorship for equipment and ingame advertising.

Have a SIMs type olympics where you can feed all your mens with drugs to boost their performance and make their man bits shrink.

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IQ of a cow.

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."

BBC News, 17th July 2007.

Think "Theme Olympics", you can create your own Olympic events and charge people loads of money for burgers with a crap load of salt in them.

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skill based and good competition !

lol

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How about "Budget Challenge"?

The aim of the game is to work together with your online chums in the organisation of the 2012 Olympics. The key to success is to go as over budget as possible. You could hand out prizes to the teams who go the most over budget. Bonus points can be earned in the "down to the wire challenge"; The closer to the deadline you finish preparations the more points you get. But if you don't make it in time you lose all your points.

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The key to victory is spending thousands of pounds designing a goddamn logo.

It would never work unless free to play, as there are so many good games out there.

However... there could be some great short term revenue to be had from advertising and sponsorship. Some of the big brands will pay big to be part of an olympic based game with no subscription costs as it will give them the largest target audience possible, especially around the time of the games.

Ideas? That's the hard part. You could go for a simple social game that is part generic sports game (train, compete, rinse, repeat) with some nice downtime that is really just a huge chat-room.

It may also be a nice idea to include a dream-team element to keep people interested. They choose their ideal team from the athletes taking part and they score points based upon their performance. Almost like a fantasy football league without the football. Again, a free forum and free signup would get a lot of people involved and then you have the huge sponsors all pay cash for advertising on there. Also have the fuckers stump up some sexy prizes (tickets to football games when the olympics have ended, clothes, etc).

Remember: Nobody in their right mind is going to pay for these services, but a lot of people will take part if it is free, especially if you can get the newspapers to promote it. It could then be a nice short-term profit maker for your company but will be worthless once the games have ended.

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Set it in Ancient Greece and make it really violent. But also Historically facutal to play the education card.

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Make a game where you get to make a new fucking logo.

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http://lern2play.mine.nu/ !