Posts Tagged ‘virtual world’

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Secret Builders lands an additional $2.3M in funding

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Announced late last Friday, kid focused virtual world Secret Builders has recently secured $2.3M in new funding.

Initially launched in December of 2008, Secret Builders is doing seemingly well in a ‘what what as the time’ highly competitive market. They’ve organically grown the online destination to over 1 million users, and currently see 350k – 400k unique monthly visitors from around the world. One of the keys to Secret Builder’s success has been the interaction and cooperation from educators around the world. Since Secret Builders focus is placed primarily on education through fun, approximately 800 schools participate in the virtual world.

“We’ve weathered a tough time in the market,” Khan said via VentureBeat. “Spending money to get users was a good way to go out of business. Now the investors are looking for traction and your long-term success in attracting users.”

Based on the free-to-play/microtransactions business model, Secret World players can play as much as they want without charge. However, if players would like to do so, they can purchase a virtual currency in exchange for real-world money in order to purchase virtual goods and decorations for their home.

What’s more – the company is now also offering a white-label version of their own software, thereby making it easy for advertisers to simply adopt a world from Secret Builders, rather than sink million of dollars into developing their own virtual world.

The average Secret Builders play is between 8 – 12 years of age, logs in approximately 3 times per week, and spends roughly 30 minutes playing.

To date, Secret World has raised over $4M and staffs 24 employees. Investors include The Entrepreneurs Fund; Michael Tanne, CEO of Adforce; David Jeseke, former director of applications at Google; Sheila Marcelo, CEO of Care.com; Carl Page, co-founder of eGroups; John Welch, CEO of Making Fun; Sohaib Abbasi, CEO of Informatica; Scott Hassan, co-founder of eGroups and founding team member at Google; Carlos Cashman, founder and CEO of CourseAdvisors, and Ken Morse, a professor at the MIT Sloan School and co-founder of 3Com.

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Moshi Monsters tops 15 million players – FusionFall goes free-to-play

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Moshi Goes Big

383567-aUK based, children’s free-to-play game developers Mind Candy has recently announced that they’ve passed the 15 million registered players landmark with their hit Moshi Monsters. The game, aimed at the children’s market allows players to adopt their own digital monster to play mini-games, solve educational puzzles, customize their homes, and explore the in-game world.

Players can choose from one of six unique monsters that they may then customize and nurture. Once satisfied with their custom creation, players navigate the virtual world by solving puzzles that are designed to increase the player’s skills in basic math, spatial awareness, logic, and vocabulary. As a reward for solving said puzzles, players receive Rox, Moshi Monsters’ in-game currency that can be used to purchase accessories used to customize their pets’ home.

“The ongoing global growth and success of the game has amazed us,” said Michael Acton Smith, CEO of Mind Candy. “Moshi Monsters has been adding over 150k new players a day and is now one of the fastest growing children’s games in the world.”

To commemorate this landmark even, Mind Candy will be hosting a “15 Million Monster Party” at the London Aquarium. Dubbed a “Green Carpet” event, Mind Candy is inviting hundred of the game’s most loyal players to the event.

Fusion free-to-play Fall

fusionfall-300x226Lanuched in January of 2009, Cartoon Networks’ FusionFall is based on the idea of bringing content from multiple Cartoon Network shows (Adventure Time with Finn & Jake, Generator Rex, Symbionic Titan, etc…) all under one virtual roof, and accessible via a monthly subscription.

Whether that business model is working or not, the head honchos at Cartoon Networks have decided that the free-to-play model works better for them. As noted by Virtual Worlds News, post April 19th, FusionFall will go strictly free-to-play. Those that had paid subscription time past the April 19th deadline are expected to receive a refund. As a final adieu to the subscription fee, paying members will receive a steampunk inspired exclusive armor kit.

No word yet on how or if Cartoon Network will choose to monetize the new free-to-play property. They may go the microtransactions route, charging for individual virtual goods to be used within the game. However, they might simply opt for the advertising supported route, and use the platform mainly as a marketing and promotional tool for their television based properties.

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Females are big casual gamers, but don’t ask them to pay

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

A new study released by Q Interactive further confirms the results from their earlier study released last November, indicating that women are big social gamers. But don’t call them gamers, nor ask them to pay to play.

770 women were surveyed in January and questioned about their knowledge of online gaming and virtual worlds. 36 percent indicated that they regularly play games on Facebook, with 54 percent admitting that they play at least on social game per day. Mafia Wars and Farmville scored top ranks on female gamers’ choices.

“This provides a terrific opportunity for brands to serve as a trusted, valued partner to them. By having a presence in the game and app space, brands get the benefit of reaching an influential consumer set,” said Ian Johnson, Director, Social Media World Forum. “With the support of brands, advance in games and apps and we’re finding also get information from brands they value.”

And while women may be huge consumers of casual games, please do not refer to them as ‘gamers’. Less than half of those surveyed (42 percent) would call themselves a ‘gamer’. However, these ‘non-gamers’, 67 percent of them, consider between 1 and 5 hours per week a socially acceptable amount of online play time. Likewise, when asked if they would pay (i.e. use real money transactions) to play, over three quarters of them (77 percent) indicated that they would pull the plug on their ‘non-gaming’ addiction playtime. 97 percent said that they would rather ‘earn’ virtual currency through games rather than investing actual, real-world money.

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Sony rolls out impressive numbers at CES 2010

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Sony has spent much of 2009 not only slimming down it’s flagship console the PlayStation3 in both size and price, but ratcheting up their virtual world hosted on said platform: Home. And while not exactly first on the scene with lower prices, or a slimmed down version of it’s previous self, Sony’s work has been rewarded, especially this past holiday season. At yesterday’s presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show held this year in Las Vegas, NV, Sony revealed sales numbers for this past holiday season. During the traditional consumerfest that occurs between the American Thanksgiving holiday and Christmas, Sony moved nearly 4 million PS3 consoles worldwide. To put this in perspective, looking at year-over-year numbers, Sony increased sales by 75 percent.

At the end of the day, this upswing in sales, combined with increased efforts to make ‘Home’ a serious part of the package bodes extremely well for Sony. As with size and price, Sony’s Home hasn’t exactly lived up to the hype. It’s already been through a few iterations, but it seems as though Sony might very well now be on the right path. They recently drove the “we’re serious about Home, MMO’s, and microtransactions” flag into the ground with the launch of Sodium One. Early reports have indicated that players have taken to Sodium One, which again, bodes well for Sony. They’ve now got an attraction within Home that has not only generated a bit of press, but is also getting the people through the door.

Electronic Theatre ImageNot coincidentally, VEEMEE, an independent creator of branded and original content for platforms and virtual worlds, yesterday launched The London Pub for PS3 Home users. Priced at €4.99 the virtual watering hole and hangout features a mulit-player darts game, a roaring open fire to chat by, comedic beer taps, crank phone calls, and hand dryers that don’t dry your hands. Kirk Ewing, Creative Director at VEEMEE comments, “It’s always nice to inject a bit of humor into the games industry. In a virtual pub you can get all the banter but obviously none of the booze. Also offering a real world tie-in, VEEMEE has partnered with Unicorn, makers of fine dartboards, and will be giving away 30 real Eclipse Pro Dartboards within the first 30 days of the London Pub’s opening, and tops the pub darts leader board on PlayStation Home.

Late last year at Sodium One’s introduction, Sony rolled out some Home user numbers, touting a decent 10 million users. With a lot of wrapping paper now making it’s way to the incinerator, there’s sure to be a whole new onslaught of Home users, as they plug-in, fire-up, and (hopefully for Sony) start enjoying home so much that they’re ready to make a microtransaction. Or two. Or 10 million.

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Zynga brings Black Friday madness to social gaming

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen – let the holiday shopping season…..begin! It’s post turkey day in America today, which can only mean one thing: Black Friday. Traditionally, Black Friday is the kick off to the massive holiday shopping spree that most retailers depend on to bring the revenues home. Perhaps even more so this year. But that’s not to say that the virtual world is free from any mass marketed consumerism.

black_benjaminWhile there’s a number of virtual goods price drops headed our way today, the biggest fish in the sea, Zynga is offering virtual world players some serious Black Friday offerings.

Starting out with their biggest bread winner, Zynga’s Mafia Wars will be offering discounts on some of it’s most in demand items. Starting today, and running the entire weekend (including Monday until midnight PST), Zynga will be running promos and deep discounts on “Limited Edition and consumable items.” To up the ante (and sales figures), users can track how many items they’ve purchased on a “mastery bar”. Once said users acquires a minimum of 20 items, they’ll received a special gift “über” gift.

But wait…there’s more. Mafia Wars will also be offering an hourly featured item (blue light special) that’s reported to be insanely cheap. The Black Friday promotion is tied to the already running Thanksgiving Fight promo, in which both mobs have the chance of dropping Thanksgiving themed items.

If Mafioso aren’t your thing, fear not, Zynga’s serving up other tasty Black Friday treats. Their 15.5 million monthly users Roller Coaster Kingdom will also feature a number of promos. The concept of Roller Coaster Kingdom is simple – build a world class amusement park. Not always something accomplished on the cheap. Therefore, Zynga is offering steep 25% discounts across the board. I.e. not only are they offering a 25% discount on in-game coin purchases, but also those of RMT’s.

These discounts are great for fans of the game, but they also bring up an interesting case of controlling a virtual world economy. If said ‘desireable’ objects in Mafia Wars are suddenly common (due to the large number of purchases of these items), do they still retain their desirability – and associated price point? On the other side of the coin, this might be a good way for Zynga to unload a large amount of virtual content, preparing the way for newer, rarer, and therefore more expensive items to be released into the game in the near future? Say….around Christmas? We’ll have to wait and see – but my money’s riding on new, rare content soon.

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Educational virtual world SecretBuilders wins NAPPA Award

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Billed as a virtual world “ powered by a web 2.0 community of children, parents, educators, writers, artists and game developers” SecretBuilders have been secretly building a massive following and winning some high praise.

Specifically not targeting the SecondLife demographic of 30-40 somethings, SecretBuilders is aimed at the 7-14 year old market, thereby putting it in the same genre as Club Penguin and ZooKazoo, an already boiling hot market. However, SecretBuilders have set out to introduce a new standard to kids’ virtual world experience. Instead of just another “do this, play this mini game, go do that” format, SecretBuilders focuses on teaching through interactive learning.

In the virtual world children live and play with significant historical figures. Players may complete quests alongside the likes of King Lear or Galileo. Naturally, these NPC’s will aid a player’s quest – as well as provide some historical facts about themselves along the way. Likewise, kids can tour through Frank & Stein’s art gallery, or order up some slimy treats in the Weird Brew Café (as inspired by the weird sisters from Shakespeare’s MacBeth).

This commitment to learning through fun is something that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the National Parent Publications Awards (NAPPA). SecretBuilders were selected earlier this month as a 2009 NAPPA honors winner in the Children’s Products competition.

“Being chosen a 2009 NAPPA winner is a high honor for SecretBuilders,” said Umair Khan, CEO of SecretBuilders and parent of three. “It goes a long way to validate what we at SecretBuilders have been working so hard to achieve: a website that parents want their children to visit that children also want to go to. And it is especially gratifying that the NAPPA award selection includes the opinion of children.”

With eMarketer placing 53% of all kids involved in one virtual world or another (or several) by 2011, bringing home an award like this only further validates SecretBuilders’ commitment to educational excellence through fun.  Currently, SecretBuilders is averaging around 180,000 unique visitors per month, with an average of 450,000 visits per month.  And again, their commitment to a quality educational experience has been validated by the 1000+ schools and libraries around the world that have SecretBuilders installed at their institution.

“Typically, children’s web sites offer pure entertainment but little nutritional value – ‘chocolate fudge’ – while educational sites sugar-coat skills-building programs but lack real appeal – ‘chocolate-covered broccoli’,” says Bob Brattesani, VP of Creative Design. “SecretBuilders is neither ‘chocolate fudge’ nor ‘chocolate-covered broccoli’ – it is more like Cheerios, both appealing and nutritious. And we are delighted that NAPPA agrees!”

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Meez coming to MySpace. Meh.

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Popular social networking avatars developer Meez has recently announced that they’ve inked a deal with MySpace to provide it’s users with a virtual meeting point where they can play games and interact together in a virtual world inside the MySpace home. Running on Java, Meez Nation won’t require users to download any additional software. Likewise, a portion of Meez’s monetization, pre-roll and banner ads, integrates seamlessly with MySpace’s current platform.

generic_avatarMeez will naturally also be capitalizing on their other form of monetization: virtual goods sales. Using their proprietary form of virtual currency, “Coinz,” users can make RMT’s to fully customize their avatars. In addition to purchasing currency directly from Meez, users can also pick up pre-paid “Coinz” cards at major retailers such as Target and Best Buy. Users can also earn virtual currency by participating in ad supported games – a win/win for Meez. Meez CEO John Cahill stated that virtual goods sales constitute 30 percent of the company’s revenue, but also notes that Meez “hasn’t yet had the conversation” with MySpace execs to discuss a revenue sharing model based on ad generated revenues.

If we rewound to April of 2008, this deal might be a fantastic score for Meez, but in late 2009, this integration can only be described as: Meh. While social games developers reaping profits hand over fist on the ‘other’ social networking giant, why would Meez take the MySpace route over Facebook? CEO Cahill explains that a “significant” number of Meez’ 3 million monthly visitors actively spend time on MySpace as well. He also notes that MySpace’s target demo is more closely inline with Meez’, a predominantly female, teen group. Furthermore, Cahill comments that the way and manner of connections on MySpace is a better choice for Meez integration, “Many people use Facebook to stay in touch with real friends; MySpace is more about discovery—meeting new people that like the same music, movies or games that you do. Meez Nation creates a similar friend-discovery space.”

Cahill is also quick to point to a recent Nielsen study that place MySpace at the top of the social networking pile in terms of video streams. Since a portion of Meez’ revenue is derived from pre-roll advertising, he considers MySpace to be the right choice. He noted a Warner Brothers promotion that received 50,000+ views per day when run as part of a campaign in Meez Nation.

facebook_members_2But here’s the rub: The same Nielsen report provided a plethora of usage statistics that clearly indicate that Facebook is blowing MySpace out of the water, at least in terms of time spent on the site. Since April 2008, Facebook has seen a steady increase in activity, amounting to a 699 percent increase. While at the same time, MySpace saw a 31 percent drop in time spent on the site. So while Cahill can justify the Meez integration with MySpace as much as he wants, just by looking at the numbers, he’s chosen the wrong platform. The target audience may be more closely inline, but at the end of the day, isn’t product integration about expanding markets and thereby, posturing your product in the biggest marketplace? Even if video content consumption is higher on MySpace, is Meez now a video provider? Or virtual world builder? Or virtual goods vendor?

Or….as there’s no hint of exclusivity in this agreement (remember, the Rev Share conversation hasn’t even been put on the table yet), perhaps this just a stepping stone to get ready for ‘The Big One”?

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Zynga helping Haitian charities through virtual goods

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

While doing good and giving back are nothing new to the gaming industry, as there are a number of small-ish projects that have taken on the challenge over the years, Zynga’s new campaign is the first microtransaction based charitable cause donation program we’ve seen. According to VentureBeat, social games developer and publisher Zynga has struck upon an idea that they believe will allow them to do a great amount of good in a relatively short amount of time.

haitidonateCentered around their wildly popular farming game, FarmVille, Zynga’s 56 million users of this app have donated $487,500 over the past three weeks to the company’s campaign to help children in Haiti. Titled the “Sweet Seeds for Haiti” initiative, this program is the opening phase of a larger plan to promote what Zynga calls “social goods.” These goods function just like any other microtransaction purchasable item within the virtual world. I.e. instead of purchasing a tractor to up their farming, players can purchase Sweet Seeds, those that are directly connected to the charitable donation. Likewise, Zynga has run a similar promotion in the virtual world YoVille, whereby the games 140 million inhabitants could purchase virtual bulldogs and tabby cats from a virtual animal shelter. These purchases helped raise money for the San Francisco SPCA.

Zynga reports that approximately 50 percent of these purchases are contributed directly to one of two Haitian charities, FATEM.org and/or FONKOZE.org. Jacky Poteau, FATEM president, stated that just from Zynga’s donations alone, the NPO has made possible the reality of a quality education to more than 500 Haitian children.

“The sheer scope and reach of social gaming to affect people’s lives in a positive way wasn’t even a reality a few years ago,” said Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive of Zynga. “Today, with ‘social goods,’ we are enabling players to unlock their power to change the world and impact the lives of children. ‘Sweet Seeds for Haiti’ is an early step for Zynga with more to come.

Obviously, a great plan of action, for a great cause. And again, as stated above, there are a number of games or games relation projects that do give something back to a community and/or make donations to communities that need it most, but most require a concerted effort to find. The Zynga initiative is front and center, cleverly integrated into the hugely popular social gaming format. As I talked about at the beginning of this month, with competition heating up in the social gaming space, developers and publishers are, and will continue to need to separate themselves from the pack. While I’m not certain a charitable donation program is going to do this for Zynga, it’s certainly a noble and worthy project, and obviously, a great PR move.

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$1 Billion of user-to-user transactions taking place in Second Life

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Building on their information released at last week’s GDC Austin, Linden Lab has recently revealed some truly staggering numbers with regards to their secondary market transactions platform. The company stated that Second Life residents have transacted the real world equivalency of over $1 billion in player-to-player transactions, while spending over 1 billion hours inhabiting the virtual space.

Second_Life_LogoAgain, adding to their statements at the GDC focused on retaining current users, the company revealed that Second Life’s economy has grown 94 percent year-over-year from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009. “Now at nearly USD50 million each month in user-to-user transactions, the Second Life economy is on an annual run rate of more than a half billion US dollars, making Second Life the largest virtual economy in the industry,” the company stated. With an economy like that, it’s no wonder Linden Labs is focusing on keeping current players happy, and staying right where they are. Perhaps a larger challenge than originally thought, as Linden Lab received an F from the better business bureau back in February of this year.

Linden Lab was also quick to point out that the total in-world hours, approximately 1 billion, has the real world equivalent of 115,000 years. But what exactly are these users doing? “Everything from meeting and socializing with friends; to attending live concerts; to creating, selling, and shopping for virtual goods; to learning a foreign language; to attending business meetings; and much more. User hours grew 33% year-over-year to an all-time high of 126 million in Q2 2009,” stated Linden representatives. On average, Second Life residents spend approximately 100 minutes in-world per visit, which the company is proud to point out is, “significantly greater than those seen with popular social networking Web sites and reveals the uniquely high level of engagement Residents have with Second Life.”

Specifically speaking to the in-world virtual items trading and sales, Linden Lab reports that residents are creating over a quarter of a million new good each day. These items may range from clothing to vehicles to buildings to automatic language translators, and just about everything else imaginable under the sun. At the time of the statement, Linden Lab reported that more than 270 terabytes of content is available within Second Life, with a growth rate of around 100 percent each and every year. Speaking from a primary marketplace point of view, since Linden Lab is the creator and vendor of virtual land, the company is not only the worlds largest platform for user-generated virtual goods, but also an industry leader in the sales of virtual goods. Perhaps the virtual world equivalent to Donald Trump?

Other statistics from Linden Lab include:

  • More than 18 billion minutes of voice chat have been used in Second Life since voice was introduced in 2007. Voice minutes grew 44% year-over-year from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009, and more than 6 billion minutes of voice have been delivered in 2009 alone, making Linden Lab a major VoIP provider.
  • Approximately 1,250 text-based messages are sent every second in Second Life, and more than 600 million words are typed on an average day. Roughly 60% of active Second Life Residents are based outside of the US, representing more than 200 countries, and the Second Life Viewer is available in 10 languages.
  • The total land area of Second Life is now equivalent to approximately 2 billion square meters — roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island. Land in Second Life has grown roughly 18% since Q1 2009 and approximately 75% since Q1 2008.

“These metrics give a sense of some key aspects of Second Life — the deeply engaging nature of the 3D world, the immense use of Second Life as a communications platform and the scale and strength of the economy based on the huge number of unique virtual goods users are creating,” commented Mark Kingdon, CEO, Linden Lab. “These numbers are a snapshot of the success of Second Life and its Residents today, and a validation of Linden Lab’s leadership in the virtual worlds space, but there’s much more to come. This is a year of renovation for Second Life, and we are well positioned for reinvigorating our growth in 2010 with a range of strategic initiatives that will enhance the experience for existing Residents and propel our expansion with new users.”

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China says “Take the Canoli, Leave the Mafia Games”: Official ban on Mafia-esque games

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Sure, we’ve all read the reports about the runaway surge and success of the online and mobile ‘mafia’ type games and applications that are attracting record numbers of users on a daily basis, but it looks like it’s not all about the fun and games. At lease the Chinese Ministry of Culture doesn’t see it that way.

china-flagIn a statement released on Tuesday, the Chinese Government has officially banned websites from “running, publishing, or offering links to online games featuring mafia-like gangs.” The government is also threatening “sever punishment” for anyone violating the ban.

Again, if you’ve not already been asked to join so and so’s mob, ‘mafia’ type games involve virtual world simulations of gang mentality and actions. The way the Chinese Government sees it, these games “advocate obscenity, gambling, or violence,” and “undermine morality and Chinese traditional culture.”

The government has issued, in no uncertain terms, that internet operators of said titles should stop running, promoting, or offering links to these (now) “illegal” games immediately. In a show of “we’re not kidding” the Chinese Government has appointed law enforcement officials to step up their oversight of these activities, and inflict harsh penalties and punishment upon anyone caught offering links to or promoting Gangster/Mafia type games. “These games encourage people to deceive, loot and kill, and glorify gangster life. They are a bad influence on youngsters,” says the government statement.

Three of China’s go-to gaming destinations immediately pulled their mafia offerings as of Tuesday. Kaixin.com’s “Godfather”, mop.com’s “Jianghu” (gangster community), and xiaonei.com’s “Guhozai” (young and dangerous guys) were removed, with little to know warning to active players.

Naturally, the immediate removal of these games has set off a barrage of comments ranging from “It’s totally irresponsible” to “I just stole 3 million yuan in the game when the website suddenly went blank. I just can’t take it!”

With these gang type games being replicated by countless app and online developers, the removal of the Chinese market can only be seen as a major setback. Granted, this removal probably isn’t going to break the bank for major mafia type game producers such as Zynga’s Mafia Wars or Playmesh’s iMafia, but smaller developers may now have to refocus or re-develop their apps with this recent Chinese ban in mind. To that I say – is that necessarily a bad thing? With the market flooded with these types of games, perhaps this ban is just what some studios need to start working on ‘the next big thing’.

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