GamesRaid has interviewed Laralyn McWilliams, Creative Director of Free Realms, Sony Online Entertainment to discuss the new casual, free MMO which has grown exponentially since its release.

1) What is Free Realms?

Free Realms is an online virtual world where players are free to do or be anything: Fight like a ninja, cook a tasty meal, raise a pet, battle goblins, set out on epic quests or connect with friends through a safe, social networking site. Also available is the Free Realms Trading Card Game: a full-featured trading card game, playable both digitally within the Free Realms online game and offline via physical card decks sold wherever you buy trading cards.

2) Free Realms mainly targets the younger demographic and those new to MMO’s, how do you appeal to this different market and set the game apart from games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft?

Free Realms has a lot of unique features. It has a highly stylized, terrific look that can run on a wide variety of machines. Changing jobs on demand is really different from other free games (from other MMOs, really) and it’s also got a unique approach to installation—just go to the website, and you’ll be playing in a few minutes with no long installation download or patching process.
We intentionally designed it to be easy to start, easy to understand, and easy to enjoy. You can play Free Realms for 15 minutes and feel like you’ve accomplished something!

3) Free Realms will be coming to the PS3 soon, what changes, if any, will be made to accommodate the different userbase and control scheme, and how will you work alongside Playstation Home?

We’re very interested in a PS3 version of Free Realms and it was designed with the console in mind. I don’t have any more information I can release quite yet though.

4) What would you say to people looking to go into games developing?

Education and passion are both important in game development. There are lots of great schools that can teach you about game art, design or programming and you can also teach yourself. One of the best things you can do to help get your foot in the door is to make your own game levels, or even your own game!

Thanks for the interview, and for those of you who still haven’t done so, check out Free Realms now.