With DC Universe Online set to makes its hands-on debut on July 23 at Comic-Con, Sony Online Entertainment offered a video of the game with concept art, environments and some gameplay, along with developer interviews from Sony’s Austin studio.

SOE debuted the first playable build of its January 2009 release, Free Realms, in its booth. The game goes into beta this September and a PlayStation 3 version is scheduled to ship later next year. Free Realms, a Shrek-like faerie tale world filled with colorful characters and humor, will be available to play for free through in-game advertising sponsorship. Gamers will have the option of paying a small monthly subscription to access additional content and areas. Micro-transactions will also be part of the world.

In addition to forgoing any retail box, the game seamlessly streams onto a PC from the client server. By the time the player has created his or her own character, everything needed to play the game is already on their hard drive.



The world of Sacred Grove, which is part of a much larger universe, looks to offer diverse gameplay experiences aimed at different age groups. Snow Hill is aimed at younger boys and girls and is filled with mini-games, while Briarwood skews older and is more combat-driven. The Wilds is geared to the game’s Nintendogs-style pet simulation, which allows players to train cats and dogs and play with them in parks.

“The world will be filled with in-game mini-games like a soccer field, as well as 2D flash games like Mine Shop Mula, which are embedded on the FreeRealms.com website,” said Sebastian Strzalkowski, associate art director. “We’re also working on a race track that will offer Mario Kart-style gameplay.”

Similar to Animal Planet, Strzalkowski said each player can customize his or her home and park their race cars in the garage and showcase trophies and other items in displays. It’s also easy to swap between any of the 12 “jobs” the game offers on the fly. This game has a huge development team and is being designed just like any traditional MMO, despite its free play business model.

Another big PC and PS3 MMO game that serves up something not yet seen in the MMO space is The Agency. In development at SOE Seattle, a taped walk-through demo of the game was featured in the booth. The game is close to alpha and is expected to release next year.



Players will be able to choose between two very different spy organizations when first entering the world of The Agency. Headquartered in Prague, UNITE is a typical True Lies or James Bond-style agency with the tuxedos, gadgets and cars that come fully loaded with toys. And there’s PARAGON, a mercenary agency that features more gruff personnel who prefer to drink Jack Daniels instead of “shaken, not stirred” martinis. Each of these agencies opens up diverse options of gameplay and a completely different experience for gamers to tackle. Gamers will be able to fully customize their agent before jumping into the game.

“When you enter this world it will be like Disneyland. People will be zipping in on hook-lines and explosions will be going on,” said Hal Hamilton, lead designer of the game. “There will be hundreds of players exploring the game’s public areas.”

A flower shop serves as the front for UNITE’s headquarters in Prague. Within this ultra-hip hidden locale is a waterfall, an open bar with a shark tank behind it, and even a few arcade games like Q-Bert (which are unlocked through a tech operative). The PARAGON headquarters is located in a different city and it features a UFC-style ring and a mechanical bull for its agents to use.

The Agency comes stacked with 480 operatives to work with. Each player can build up a roster of 100 operatives over time. Hamilton showed a short video of one such operative, a sexy cowgirl named Round-Up, who will only join a player’s crew if they can master the mechanical bull.

Although still in the planning stages, The Agency could follow Free Realms’ business model of offering at least part of the gameplay experience for free and generating revenue through additional subscriptions to red carpet areas and through microtransactions.



by John Gaudiosi