A friend of mine, Michael at MMOGNation wrote a good walkthrough of the demo of Free Realms he was shown at the last SOE community summit.
It’s definitely worth a read if you’re interested in the game, which I certainly am. 
Cute? Check.
Minigames? Check.
Faeries? Check.
Small download? Check.
Web integration? Check.
Casual? Check.
I’d hit it. Twice.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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I’m still not entirely sure I understand the philosophy behind putting an MMO on the PS3. MMOs, by definition, require a “massive” audience. And roughly a thirty or forty people own a PS3. And most of them live in Japan, where crippling xenophobia prevents them from buying a real system.
And, either way, it’s SOE. They’re the Uwe Boll of game development. If we just ignore them, maybe they’ll stop destroying the medium.
“And roughly a thirty or forty people own a PS3.”
It’s Hyperbole, sure, but that line made me laugh.
For some reason the above comments seem hugely out of context to me. As far as I know, Free Realms is a PC only game. Aside from the fact that they can’t even get the numbers right… PS3 has sold over 10 Milion units.
At any rate, I think Free Realms sounds like an interresting piece of game design, and I’m definitely going to check it out when it becomes available. Thanks for linking, Cuppy!
Yeah, I’m not sure where the ps3 comments are coming from either….interesting…
Free Realms, along with The Agency and (likely) DCU, are all going to be PS3/PC titles. SOE and SCEA have formed a much closer relationship recently, and one result of that is there are going to be a bunch of MMOGs on the system.
Interrestingly enough this is not mentioned on the SOE press site, nor any official press releases have mentioned Free Realms as a PS3 title (Source: GamesPress & SOEPress websites). As such I assume this is all pure conjecture at this point.
The Agency has been a PS3-title since launch, and frankly, as they’re using Unreal Engine 3, the porting time is minimal, and shouldn’t take more than maybe porting or choosing a network library.
Yeah, I’d like to see where Free Realms is going to be a PS3 title. AFAIK it sure isn’t.
err … in the interview that’s on my site the lead designer talks about the UI being specifically designed to work with the PS3.
It’s in the audio recording/podcast #6.