Where Facebook and social networks are for keeping up with friends, virtual worlds are more like the traditional MMOs, they're about having fun and making new friends.

The difference between a massively multiplayer game like World of Warcraft and a casual world like Club Penguin is that players either can't or don't want to spend their time leveling up. Casual worlds pull back those traditional MMO dynamics in order to create a game anyone can play.

As casual world developers since 1999 we've found that while virtual worlds are accessible to everyone, by removing those traditional MMO game dynamics we loose the addiction and immersion characterized by titles like World of Warcraft.

The key to engaging a mainstream audience is a great story or great narrative. Everyone loves a good book, and much like a good book, the player becomes immersed in the narrative, cares about the characters, and wants to know how the story ends.

Indeed, we like to think of virtual worlds as interactive cartoons. A cartoon that the player can take part in, and effect the ending.

We believe the best people to write these stories are the same creative people who are creating cartoons, books, and new properties now. These writers, dramatists, and creatives are unlikely to be programmers, so we needed to find a way to 'script' the world without programming.

Before we started there was no way to write a story or script for a virtual world, so we invented one, we call it GAML. GAML is a scripting language that can be used by almost anyone to create great quests, conversations, collectables and in world narratives. Like a script written for the performing arts, our GAML scripts tell the virtual actors how to talk, where to go, and what to do.

Its through this scripting language that we believe our partners will be able to build a new generation of narrative worlds with stories and episodes that bring players back week after week. Without a scripting language content creation takes longer, costs more, and is limited to the programmers.

You wouldnt wait a month between each episode of CSI, so don't make your virtual world players wait a month between each update. Use a scripting language so its fast, cheap, and the creatives are in control.