I had the fortunate experience to sit down with Margaret Wallace, CEO and Co-founder of Rebel Monkey recently, and discuss not only their hit virtual world CampFu, but where Rebel Monkey comes from, youth oriented virtual worlds, microtransactions and much more!
Speaking to the fact that the youth oriented virtual world space is becoming increasingly crowded, Margaret presents Rebel Monkey’s take on how and why CampFu stands out in the crowd. “We really wanted to focus on cooperative gaming. We really wanted to emphasize the idea of the individual player being part of something bigger than themselves.”
Moving on to microtransactions and how they factored into the development of CampFu, Margaret tells me that the inspiration for CampFu came from her and co-founder Nick Fortuno’s views on the success of the free-to-play model in Asia, and how it was a good fit for what they were planning with their virtual world. “Free to play was definitely the way to go for online. It’s no longer a question of if microtransactions will take hold in Europe and North America. …Now everyone’s onboard and trying to figure out their offering.” Looking forward, Margaret shared with me her thoughts on where microtransactions are headed. She sees the marketing becoming much more ubiquitous, with not only innovators like Rebel Monkey experimenting with optimizing revenue streams, but also larger portals, and even the old school powerhouse portals migrate (at least in part) to utilizing microtransactions. Wallace also sees microtransactions becoming much more wide spread across various platforms, and moves towards universal wallets containing currency that can be spent across these platforms. Using CampFu as a prime example of this prediction, Wallace goes on to tell me that while CampFu is only available on a browser on a computer right now, down the road she envisions an iPhone component that would carry a level of virtual goods offerings that would tie back in to the main ‘home’ of campfu that lives at campfu.com. Wallace also hinted at an xbox component, all leading back to a total CampFu experience.
Looking ahead, talking about what’s next for Rebel Monkey and CampFu, Wallace tells me that the virtual world is only in it’s infancy right now, with plenty more additions and revisions planned. A ton of social networking features are planned, and plenty of new virtual goods, both clothing and virtual housing decoration are on the way. Rebel Monkey will also shortly be launching new games for CamFu players, and focusing on the way teams can form and support themselves, as well as creating API’s for developers to create their own real time cooperative games to be used within CampFu.
Rebel Monkey also isn’t just satisfied with one virtual world, but as Wallace explains, the engine that powers CampFu will be utilized to grow and develop further virtual worlds, making CampFu just one of several virtual world offerings from Rebel Monkey.
Wallace admits that Rebel Monkey is still ironing out the details surrounding a universal currency that would cover all of Rebel Monkey’s planned virtual worlds, but she does say that it has an undeniable appeal. “We definitely are leaning towards having a universal currency that would work with all of our virtual world offerings, because if we have a player that has FuCash from CampFu why would we want to establish all these hurdles for them to use their FuCash in other properties that we launch.”
First and foremost, Free Realms includes simple mechanics, with a very, very low barrier of entry. Basically all you need to get up and running, is a windows based machine (although it will run on Parallels and Boot Camp for mac users, I wasn’t able to test VMware), and a browser. Browser based gaming is continuing it’s upswing, and I’m more than certain industry experts are certainly going to point to Free Realms’ success in future PowerPoint presentations. Rated at E10+, the game is marketed at the 10-14 age ranged demographic, but this low target group can also provide hours of fun for those much older.
To be fair, the report does acknowledge a recent “softness” in the in game advertising spend, but goes on to list a number of advantages the medium has over other delivery systems, concentrating on the increased opportunity to communicate with varied demographic groups that are increasingly hard to reach via other media (I’m looking at you 
The survey also indicates that the increase in gaming is directly correlated to the increased availability and visibility of new and existing outlets for playing. While not an overwhelming number, overall 10 percent indicated that they’d played a game on a social network, and 5 percent said that they’d paid to download a game from the web, a 2 percent increase from the same question last year.
