From the BBC comes this fascinating piece about a company that has developed a way for anyone to start their own virtual world in a few minutes. Spearheaded by Ralph Koster, who, if my memory serves me correctly, cut his teeth on developing Star Wars Online, the development is a a classic disruptive innovation.

Rather than needing serious capital to start your own virtual world, anyone can now play – in every sense of the word – in this space.

Quoting Koster, the article says :

Developers, he said, cannot afford to get it wrong when they are juggling multi million pound budgets. He hopes that his free tool will start to solve this.

“We want to see 10,000 virtual worlds so that lots of wild and crazy stuff gets made because that is the only way it will advance as a medium.”

This will certainly pave the way for the development of communities which the corporate world cannot hope to foresee. Expect lots mistakes, but plenty of fringe innovation which leads to bigger things…