The traditional D&D/Lord of the Rings/Fantasy genre used as the setting for MMOs have been giving up market share to new genres; space/SciFi, Comics, and even sim soap opera/cartoon worlds have had successful MMO releases. Do you think that setting has any bearing on how future MMO games will be perceived by the gaming community?

I think this question boils down to "Where are MMOs going?" I think that setting will definitely affect it, but I don't think it will effect it any more than in the single player arena. Over time we are going to see as much diversity in the online games market as we see in the single player market in terms of genre, setting, design and game mechanics.

We are seeing the hint now with games like City of Heroes, Planetside, SWG [Star Wars Galaxies] and others where we are moving beyond the "Tolkien" settings and expanding, slightly, into other genres. I think we will continue to see more of that. There's even World War II Online set in a historical combat setting and A Tale in the Desert, set in Ancient Egypt, so I think that is going to expand as more products come to market.

I'm glad to see it. I think that online games are going to start to cater to even more specific interests. Just like magazines, where you can have a smaller hardcore audience, I think there are games that can be successful that aren't targeting a large group of people, but their audience is very loyal to the game.

That's a big thing that David James, developer of Puzzle Pirates, says; where you don't have to spend $20 million dollars on a project, you can do something that's smaller and simpler like Puzzle Pirates that has a smaller audience and still be successful.