The `buttering' edge. (editor's note).(Column)

Last mouth in this column, I urged developers of interactive 3D computer graphics to look to innovation as the means to expanding the Web 3D market. But are there really any applications on the Web that can support 3D content pioneers willing to jump into this historically unfriendly void? Or will they lose everything, like so many Web entrepreneurs before them, and do nothing more than educate another thin slice of the mass market for their successors?

Well, the good news is that there is at least one application positioned to lead the deployment of 3D content on the Web. And, not surprisingly, it's the same one driving development of 3D content in general: computer gaming, indeed, the future for Web-based gaming looks bright. The game industry has already proven enormously successful with computer users offline. So there's a ready-made, and growing, potential audience. Moreover, the advantages of moving games to the Web are obvious: Users could receive games at home and get continuous upgrades instead of being limited to a finite program.

To understand the value of this proposition, one need look no further than the television industry, which has proven to be a more popular, and profitable, medium for delivering content than its historical alternative, the motion-picture business. In fact, computer gaming today is not unlike movie going, in that consumers pay one price for a single experience. But given a Web-delivery system, tomorrow's gaming may be consumed more like television.

One proponent of this theory is Alex St. John, president of WildTangent, a maker of tools for building games and delivering them online. "In the future, you will more likely pay for gaming by subscription or get it for free because it will ...