Project Darkstar from Sun Microsystems a bright spot for gaming developers

JavaOne, the Sun Microsystems annual conference, launched today with a schedule packed with sessions for techie gurus.

Sun’s chief evangelist and chief gaming officer, Chris Melissinos, led a session about Darkstar, Sun’s gaming and 3D developer platform.

The online gaming market (or “men in tights’ to the insiders), has seen a massive explosion in recent years.

For the first time in history, people who grew up surrounded with personal technology are now raising kids and participating in online activities and online games with their kids.

The market potential for online gaming is estimated at $52B next year. It is enabled by broadband and mobile technology, and the first adopters are kids ages 5-14. Melissinos also expects large growth in virtual world technology applications in entertainment, finance, government and enterprise.

Project Darkstar provides the infrastructure for online game and virtual world development. It is an open source project developed in Java at the Sun Microsystems labs.

A fun and interesting game created on the platform is the Snowman game. Teams of snowmen armed with snowballs try to prevent the other teams from capturing their flag. The game showcases the capabilities of Sun’s platform and can be seen and downloaded here. Are you an online gaming fan? If so, drop a line and let me know.

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