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Iona's "Dream Warrior" on-line video game is designed to entertain users who have an interest in real-time fantasy war games. And through the game, software developers can pit armies of sword-wielding solders, trolls and wizards against each other. But Iona also has a secondary motive; the introduction of its own software tools to thousands of developers, who could someday become paying customers.
Already, the game has racked up 7,000 registrations with 20,000 unique visitors in its first three months, Iona said on Thursday. And the company says it hopes more will sign up to play "Dream Warrior," which also serves a training ground for developers of Web Services Description Language (WSDL) software, specifically those using Iona's WSDL development tool Orbix E2A, XMLBus Edition.
"We're sending a subliminal message to people," said Simon Pepper, Iona's director of product marketing, for the EMEA region. "When they realise that they can create gaming components to a common standard across the Web, they'll quickly realise that WSDL can be used for many other applications."
Developers who participate in the Dream Warrior Challenge are provided with access to Iona WSDL developer tools and tutorials, which allow them to build game components, such as weapons and armour, which can be adopted by participants in the on-line fantasy battle game.
"We're trying to reach the kind of people who would have adopted the CORBA, Java and XML standards during the early stages," he added. "These aren't the kind of people who learn about new technologies while sitting in a classroom, they like to play with them to find out what they can do."
Developers are awarded points based on the number of participants who use their components during the course of a game. And developers who accrue a sufficient number of votes are awarded prizes, such as cash and holidays.
Iona made its name with Orbix, its implementation of the CORBA middleware standard. CORBA allows software components to communicate using a common standard. "WSDL works better than CORBA across the Internet, in terms of dealing with network gateways and firewalls," said Pepper. "But CORBA and WSDL are similar in their approach and we provide and support both."
Dream Warrior is only available in the US because the game is regulated by the state gambling commissions of a number of states. Although there were plans to roll it out in Europe, Iona has decided that regulatory issues would make it too complex to introduce here.
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