Posts Tagged ‘margaret wallace’

Turbine lands (yet another) influx of cash, Masher Media scores for development of Myminipeeps

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Despite disparaging reports of VC’s tightening the screws on who gets their cash, and who doesn’t, yesterday’s news of major player Turbine and startup Masher Media both receiving investment money sheds a new light on the state of play.

Westwood, Massachusetts based giant Turbine, developers and publishers of the successful Lord of the Rings Online series, recently scored $6.6 million in series D funding, part of a planned $50 million investment round. This funding comes just one month before the planned public release of their Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberon title goes live. As you’ll remember, Turbine made some waves a few weeks back when it announced that their long time subscription based title Dungeons and Dragons Online would be going the free-to-play route. The title will still incorporate subscriptions, qualifying these paying players as VIP members with a monthly allowance of in-game currency to spend, but otherwise, it’s wide open for free gaming.

The yet again in the title stems from the fact that over the past several years of operation, Turbine has raised literally tens of thousands of dollars in venture capital. The lions share arrived via GGV Capital and Time Warner in 2008, where the company saw $40 million in investments. Previous investors include Columbia Capital, Tudor Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, and Granite Global Ventures.

On the other end of the spectrum, August 11th also saw VC money flowing into (yet another) virtual world for children. Tech Coast Angels has invested $300k in Masher Media Inc., who are currently working on MyMiniPeeps.com, a virtual world aimed at kids ages 6 to 13. This new virtual world is billed as, “an online experience as exciting as a video game but with more social networking, multiplayer, and complete and enriching real-world content.”

Masher Media Logo“Even in this difficult economy, Masher Media is a good example of how a great new company with an exceptional market opportunity can get investment money and get it fast,” said Richard Sudek, president of TCA.

And as evidenced in our video interview with Rebel Monkey CEO Margaret Wallace, the kids virtual world space is becoming an increasingly crowded space, Masher Media is holding one particular ace-in-the-hole that would certainly be attractive to any investor: CEO Sherry Gunther. Counting over 20 years experience entertaining kids, Gunther has produced animated hits including The Simpsons, Rugrats, Family Guy, and PowerPuff Girls to name a few. She also has two Emmy Awards and a Cable Ace award in the trophy cabinet.

Tech Coast Angles founder Luis Villalobos comments, “As investors, first and foremost we bet on people, and Sherry Gunther, the founder and creative genius behind Masher Media is one of the most accomplished people in her industry. Moreover, Masher Media has a terrific concept in a fast-growing market. This was an easy investment decision.”

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This week at Electronic Arts – more action than Medal of Honor

Friday, June 19th, 2009

To say that there were just a few things happening at EA this week would be just shy of an understatement.  Not only did now former COO John Pleasants more or less lay out EA’s plan to get back to the top of the gaming heap, but they’ve also stepped things up a bit by publicly posting a job ad for a “User Experience Designer”.  Oh, and shortly after Pleasants’ interview (literally his last day), he left EA to become the new CEO of Playdom.  Right.  Let’s get started.

john_pleasantsOn Wednesday, paidContent.org ran a very informative and interesting interview between reporter Tameka Kee and at the time EA COO John Pleasants.  Kee’s interview focuses mainly on what EA’s up to in regards to the strong push to an online component to their latest games, citing The Sims 3 as a prime example.  Pleasants admits that EA is, “…creating a live service across a portfolio of titles, with some social aspects and a variety of business models, including micro-transactions and subscriptions.”

Speaking to the social aspect of gaming Pleasants gives a strong nod to free-to-play/microtransaction supported gaming studios such as Playfish and Zynga, and states, “we’re in investment mode, and we’ll be announcing deals with companies that will be of note sometime in the near future.”  To this end, it’s also come to the light of day (although nearly half a month old now), that EA recently posted a job listing for a “User Experience Designer” that can “lead the design and prototyping of applications for online games, community features and e-commerce transactions” for a “new social gaming platform.”  Read: we need someone with experience in building social networks, communities AND has microtransaction experience.  To be honest, that sounds more like three jobs in one, but then again, I’m no staffing director.  This new developer would be ‘the man’ to drive the reigns at EA’s Ontario, Canada based Waterloo studio.  Looks like Margaret Wallace’s predictions on some of the old school giants investing in social gaming is right on the money.

Ok, fine and dandy, the world at EA is looking bright and shiny.

But hold the phone – what what?  John Pleasants has been named the CEO of Playdom.  Say wha now?

They say hindsight is 20/20, but if you read the interview that Pleasants did with Dean Takahashi from VentureBeat with this knowledge now in hand, you might be able to detect just a splash of animosity tossed in there.  Such statements such as, “Yeah, he tells me what to do and I do it.” In regards to his working relationship with CEO John Riccitiello, and “I don’t want to sound like I’m countering my boss. But I think quality is an overused word for a dynamic equation.  Trends are changing. You have to have quality, following the right trends. You have to make quality stuff, but it can’t be in a category that is disappearing or becoming a niche. John has been vocal about saying that our marketing didn’t work well. We didn’t manufacture hits. To make a hit, you have to both make the right thing through high product quality and also hit the market in the right way.”  Sir, it not only sounds like, but in fact, is, a direct counter to your bosses’ statements.

Perhaps there is in fact no bad blood going on here, but you’ve got to admit, the timing and the nuanced phrases are remarkably suspect.  With Playdom reporting numbers close to $10 million per quarter via microtransaction sales, it looks like Pleasants just made quite a wise move.  His departure only hails a continued mass exodus of top EA execs, but then again, former EA exec, John Schappert who left to go work with microsoft, is now heading back to NoCal to replace Pleasants.  Need a road map by now?  Me too.

While EA’s clearly trying to head in the right direction with casual gaming, social networking, and microtransactions, the question remains,can the behemoth get it together in time and can they really deliver what we want, before we know we want it?

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Video: Interview with Margaret Wallace of Rebel Monkey – creators of CampFu

Friday, May 29th, 2009

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.”

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Over 100,000 happy campers worldwide at CampFu

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

NYC based Rebel Monkey has recently announced that they’ve surpassed the 100,000 registered players mark in their Casual MMO CampFu.  Launched only in February of 2009, clearly CampFu is on to something special, not only attracting, but engaging and retaining users.  Rebel Monkey reports that they have users from every continent except Antarctica, encompassing 110 countries around the globe, with users spending on average over 60 minutes on site both playing games and socializing with other users.

logoNaturally, as will most virtual worlds, CampFu offers users a wide variety of online activities and features including a virtual CampGround, chat, hundreds of virtual goods and avatar costumes, but what truly sets them apart from the crowd is their innovative real-time co-op games.  This co-op gaming experience leads to a natural formation of teams and alliances that carry over outside the games and into the social area, the CampGround.

“CampFu is a fun and fresh online hang-out that is different from anything else out on the market,” said Margaret Wallace, CEO of Rebel Monkey. “Players have really responded to the look of our avatars and that you can actually use your avatars inside of the games in real-time – unlike a lot of online multiplayer sites out there where avatars are usually relegated to the sidelines.”

Another interesting aspect of CampFu is the user demographics.  It’s very difficult to call CampFu a ‘youth’ virtual world, but it’s also not quite a ‘hardcore’ gamer virtual world.  Spanning the masses is one of the keys to CampFu’s success.  Some arrive headed straight to the games, while others simply enjoy the social networking and community aspect of CampFu.  Globally, there are an estimated 231 million casual gamers worldwide, with 180 of them estimated to partake in virtual worlds such as Club Penguin or Habbo Hotel.  Given these numbers, and CampFu’s wide reaching appeal, Rebel Monkey and CampFu stand at a very interesting crossroads that could eventually see them skyrocket to the top of the virtual world scene.

Powered by the company’s own Monkey Wrench multiplayer gaming platform, CCO Nick Fortugno states, “if you want to play as a group with your avatars inside of a real-time casual gaming environment, you are really only going to find that at CampFu.  Expect more kinds of real-time co-op games to come – exploring deeper levels of team play and collaboration.”

Rightly so, Rebel Monkey is doing a bit of celebrating this week, and sharing the love with these 100,000 registered users.  They’ll be launching new parts of the CampFu CampGround, along with a full site re-design.  If that wasn’t enough to keep current and future users coming back for more, Rebel Monkey has also slated a number of new co-op games, social networking features, and avatar and cabin customizations later this spring.

If you’ve not done so already, head on over to CampFu.com and see what’s got over 100,000 registered users entertained and coming back for more.

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