With big name Hollywood talent like James Cameron and Jon Landau on its advisory board, Mountain View, CA start-up Multiverse hopes to even the playing field in the massively multiplayer online (MMO) video game space. Multiverse is building a network of MMO games and other virtual worlds by giving away the technology for free in an effort to increase the amount of creativity and genres within the MMO games space.

"Hollywood sees there's an opportunity to make money on these types of games," said Bill Turpin, co-founder, president and CEO, Multiverse. "James Cameron is looking to introduce an MMO game on Multiverse before his movie comes out. This allows a director to create different events around the game and the movie within the same world that takes advantage of both media."

Turpin spoke with a TV network that's interested in bridging the gap between TV seasons by introducing an MMO game. This will allow viewers to keep in touch with these characters between shows. The first game of this kind is expected out later this year.

Multiverse has shown their technology to Hollywood studios and entertainment IP owners. Turpin said there are a lot of big brands that can enter the Multiverse and target specific demographics with a shorter development time and lower cost of entry.

Currently dominated by big game publishers like Sony Online Entertainment, NCsoft and Blizzard, development of an MMO game can cost $20 million to $55 million to create and can take three to four years to launch. But when an MMO game hits pay dirt, the rewards can be staggering. Blizzard's World of Warcraft game has 5.5 million global subscribers paying about $16 a month to interact with thousands of other gamers in this fantasy world. That game, which is rumored to have cost $55 million to create, is generating approximately $50 million in monthly revenue and will bring in close to $1 billion in a full year.

"It's very difficult and expensive to build a World of Warcraft today, and the virtual worlds that do exist offer gated communities," said Corey Bridges, co-founder, executive producer and marketing director at Multiverse. "You can't jump from Star Wars Galaxies to World of Warcraft without paying multiple subscription fees and content cannot be shared across worlds."

That's all about to change with Multiverse, which offers game developers, Hollywood studios and any IP owner the opportunity to create an MMO game for a fraction of the cost (as little as $10,000) and in a shorter time frame (as much as one to two years off the current development cycle).

Multiverse offers free technology to developers that opens the MMO gaming world to the masses. Multiverse offers common technology with open standards that are expandable on a universal client. Similar to a Web browser, once a consumer installs Multiverse on a PC, he or she can access and play any MMO game built with this platform.

"The MMO gaming audience is already growing beyond the 18 to 34 year old male gamer," said Turpin. "More wives and girlfriends are playing these games."

Bridges compared the current MMO games space to that of the Internet 10 years ago. The bulk of Multiverse's seven full-time employees came from pre-IPO Netscape. Before Netscape, companies like AOL and Compuserve offered gated communities to consumers. Netscape's open architecture allowed guys in garages and dorm rooms to create Web companies like Yahoo! and Google and the World Wide Web was born.

"Netscape allowed these guys to prototype something without a huge up-front investment," said Bridges. "The result was a rise in targeted content on the edge of the network. New business models emerged through online transactions of Ebay, Amazon.com and PayPal."

Bridges hopes that Multiverse opens up similar doors. With monthly subscriptions currently powering the MMO game universe in North America, Bridges expects more free adverting-based games to enter the market. In addition, in-game transactions, which are already huge in Korea, should give game companies alternate revenue streams through MMO games.

By the end of this year, about a dozen mainstream MMO games are expected to be up and running on Multiverse. Hundreds of smaller, alternative and independent games are also expected to be available. Bridges said there are currently four games in development in the $500,000 range. One large MMO is in the works with a $5 million price tag, while there's another game being created for $10,000.

A Tale in the Desert, an MMO game that took over three years to develop and now has 2,000 subscribers, is likely what will inhabit the Multiverse. The cerebral puzzle game does not involve combat, and its gameplay focuses on competitions among online players, rather than quests.

Bridges said that established game publishers that could create an MMO game on their own are interested in Multiverse because of the one to two years they can shave off of development time.

Multiverse built a fantasy MMO game, Kothuria: The World's Edge, to show other publishers and developers how easy it is to use the new technology and to show that they can achieve parity with what's in the MMO games space today, said Bridges. Kothuria is an open-source, modifiable game.

Developers can host their games themselves and Multiverse offers tools to handle the back-end of subscriptions and billing. If developers charge consumers for content, Multiverse takes a share of the revenue generated.

"Independent films didn't replace Hollywood blockbusters," said Turpin. "There's room for the big MMO games, and now there's an opportunity for smaller players to get in on the market."

Michael Pachter, video game analyst for Webush Morgan Securities, said that if Multiverse expands the MMO market, it could actually lower overall revenues.

"Getting the formula right is tough, and the lower price subscriber is more price sensitive to increases," said Pachter. "It also limits the 'premium' service price point, because the World of Warcraft player has to justify why it's worth paying three times what he pays for another game, and if the games are good at lower price points, World of Warcraft players will shift."

Too many games could be bad for the overall MMO games market. Pachter said that with cable TV's 200 channels of nothing, ad rates for the big networks dropped and ad rates for the smaller networks are much lower than the big ones.

"It's possible that we will see 200 online games with everyone losing money," said Pachter.