Posts Tagged ‘virtual world’

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KZero clocks 579m registered virtual world accounts

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Virtual Worlds consultants and analysts KZero recently pumped out two mid-summer virtual world statistics that should get you to sit up and pay attention. They’ve provided not only a breakdown of where people are headed, but what age groups are predominant in these virtual worlds.

kzero_full_circle

Admittedly, the first set up stats is slightly complex at first glance, but upon further inspection, these charts are nothing short of eye opening.

This chart visualizes ages breakdowns and the associated virtual worlds that these ages are taking part in, along with each individual world’s launch data and timeline.

If pretty circular chats with fancy blue and red dots don’t really do it for you, KZero has gone the extra mile and broken things down even more. According to their research, the Q2 2009 virtual worlds sector inhabitant count now stands at 579 million. This number represents a 38.6 percent increase over Q1, where inhabitant totals stood at 417 million.

q2-2009-reg-accs-chart5

Taking data-points of the average age of users within each world, and then allocating this data to all accounts, KZero affirms that predominant age in these worlds is 14. The majority of these VW inhabitants come from big players including Weeworld, Habbo, and Stardoll.

Having a different look at the same data, the graph below represents cumulative registered accounts by age.

q2-2009-reg-accs-chart3

There’s obviously a plethora of activity in the 5-14 age group, a moderate increase from 15-20, but after that, a relatively flat curve. For the purposes of this study, Second Life was excluded.

As KZero points out, the majority of activity, and associated monetization scramble, is happening in the 10-15 year old age group. Totaling 334 million registered accounts, over 57 percent of the entire segment, this age segment represents the largest potential for growth. Holding 19 percent of the entire segment is the 5-10 year old age group. Clearly, youth oriented virtual worlds such as CampFu are smack dab right in the middle of the majority of virtual worlds citizens’ radar.

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Sweden wants to tax MMO Items and Avatar sales

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Be forewarned Swedes and those the trade/sell with Swedish residents – the taxman commeth. The eagle-eyed folks at GameCulture caught the Stockholm News report detailing efforts by the Swedish government to come to terms with the growing global virtual economy.

swedishchef460According to the Stockholm News, “The Swedish Tax Agency [Skatteverket] hold that you have to pay tax for selling an avatar from a computer game. The agency has investigated the trading in avatars during a 14 month period and found the advertised sum of avatars for sale by Swedes to be 662 million SEK [$85 million]. But no one has ever declared any income for trading in avatars to the Tax Agency.”

In other words, if you sell your account either in Sweden or to a Swedish national, the government wants a piece. As much as I can moan and groan about this, I almost kinda/sorta see their justification. However, this is where all logic and reasoning end, as the Swedish government may legally push things a bit further, and have the option to enact taxation on purely in-game/virtual world sales. Courtesy of the Virtual Economy Research Network, an interpreted snippet of Swedish Tax Law states:

“Transactions between participants in a virtual world, where the deal is about the sale of a “product” or a “service” against reimbursement in an internal currency, should be considered, according to the Swedish Tax Agency’s ruling, [actual] sales of electronic services, if the internal currency can be exchanged to a valid legal means of payment.”

In other words, if you need the services of another in game character, let’s take blacksmithing for example, if the crafter charges you 10 gold to make your new mace, if s/he’s Swedish, technically, s/he should be charging you 13 or so gold for this, as they will then have to pay a real world tax on this virtual transaction. With that said, obviously, this argument hinges on proof that this in-game currency can be “exchanged to a valid legal means of payment.”

And while most major MMO publishers, and even the Chinese government have put actions in place that should prevent real world trading of virtual currencies, a quick perusal of eBay shows no shortage of characters, virtual goods, and virtual currencies all for sale, i.e. “valid legal[?] means of payment.” Obviously, this is highly suspect, as eBay trading isn’t an officially recognized trading platform, with no organized currency exchange, rates, or even oversight. However, this does constitute a form of virtual to real currency exchange, and therefore, would fall under the “we want a piece” Swedish taxation law.

Moreover, what does this mean for the free to play market? MMO’s with secondary markets could be a prime target for Swedish tax officials. What’s even more disturbing (as noted above) is that even residing outside of Swedish borders could have far reaching consequences. Regardless of your nationality or place of residence, if you sell/buy/trade with a Swedish national, the Skatteverket might want a slice of your purchase. According to the Economics of Virtual World’s:

[Note that] a sale has taken place in Sweden if the seller is a Swedish trader who sells [to]… a private person in Sweden or another EC [European Community] country. A sale from a foreign trader to a Swedish trader has also [legally] taken place in Sweden. The same applies if a trader from outside the EC sells services to Swedish private persons.

Thus, even U.S. citizens are subject to Swedish taxes in virtual worlds, as long as one of the participants is Swedish. The implication is that if similar tax rules are adopted around the globe, U.S. citizens could end up owing taxes to Sweden, Japan, South Korea, and other nations (depending on which and how many worlds they are part of) – all because they played some games…

Obviously, this is something that could effect gaming on a global level, and something we’re watching with great interest. On a lighter note, is it just me, or did every Swedish MMO player just get a seriously bad name, and can get used to grinding as no one’s going to buy/sell/trade a single thing with them?

“LF Enchanter”

“I can Enchant”

“Nationality?”

“Swedish”

“K. TNX. BAI.”

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eRepublik lands a cool $2.8 million for new type of Virtual World

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

In a further show of support for blossoming virtual worlds, Madrid, Spain based eRepublik has recently announced that they’ve secured €2 million (approx. $2.8 million) in Series A funding from AGF Private Equity.  Coining a new term, and dubbing themselves a MOSS (massive online social strategy game), eRepublik had previously secured just over $1 million from the VC firm as well as multiple angel investors.  This new injection brings the total up to $3.8 million.  Not bad for a small company for only about a year and a half and staffs just 30 employees.

erepubliklogoThe MOSS is a browser based virtual world that closely mimics today’s real world.  Additionally, this virtual world contains no A.I., and relies solely on the participation of players (called appropriately, citizens).  Somewhat like, but also different from Second Life, eRepublik allows citizens to participate in politics, the economy, set up businesses (currently at 17,502), interact socially with other citizens, and just to spice things up a bit: engage in wars with other countries (citizens live in eUSA, or eCanada, for example).

Live for only 576 days, eRepublik reports that the MOSS has over 350,000 citizen accounts, with 120,000 of them regularly logging in and participating in the active community.  Taking a look at the traffic numbers, eRepublik is reporting that they’ve received over 3.7 million visits in the month of May alone, generating 95 million page views.  Citizens have arrived from over 200 countries worldwide, and spent over 55 million minutes within the world.

eRepublik’s co-founder and CEO Alexis Bonte says that this new injection of fresh funds will be put towards fleshing out the existing world, as he says the current eRepublik is only 25% of what’s planned.  They’ll also continue to expand eRepublik’s language offerings, as they just released a Spanish speaking version earlier this month, and move ahead with launching a host of new games.

eRepublik is free to play, and monetizes via sales of their in-game currency, eRepublik Gold.  While no mentions were made about expanding out virtual goods offerings, something tells me that a bit of the $2.8 m has already been earmarked to ramp things up in the in-game store.

Hear what eRepublik is all about directly from Alexis Bonte in his TechCrunch pitch from last summer.

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BOOM! Virtual Worlds expect explosive growth

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

According to yesterday’s release from market research firm Strategy Analytics, the virtual worlds sector is set up for some truly phenomenal growth.  The Boston based firm projects the global virtual world population to grow from today’s approximately 186 million inhabitants to a whopping 640 million (the equivalent of twice the current US population) by 2015.  That’s nearly a 25 percent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR).  Say it with me now….holy crap!

39306The largest growing sector should come as no surprise, kids between the ages of 5 and 9.  Strategy Analytics predicts that this demo will grow 27 percent, while tweens and teens should see a growth rate of 21 percent.  This growth rate may be effected by what I discussed yesterday, regarding NPD’s reports on a younger trend of consumer electronics consumers, particularly regarding laptop computers.

In the report, “Virtual Worlds Market Forecast 2009-2015,” Strategy Analytics goes on to predict that virtual worlds will continue to improve the overall user experience, and thus convert registrations to active users at a 38 percent CAGR through 2015.

“The high conversion of registrants to active users demonstrates that users are finding value – in the form of entertainment, engagement, and social interaction,” according to Barry Gilbert, Vice President of the Strategy Analytics Gaming Sector and author of this report. In addition, Gilbert noted, “Access to virtual worlds across a variety of platforms, from consoles to mobile devices, will help catalyze growth.”

And now for the almighty Dollar.  Where’s the money coming from?  Well, according to the report, the top three to take to the bank are microtransactions, subscriptions, and advertising/sponsorships.  Said microtransactions are expected to grow from slightly over $1 billion in 2008 to….wait for it…..wait for it…..$17.3 billion in 2015 accounting for 86% of the revenue generated by virtual worlds.

Here’s how Strategy Analytics numbers break down (in millions):

picture-13

Obviously this is outstanding news for youth focused virtual worlds, including fatfoogoo client CampFu.  If there’s ever been a doubt about the staggering growth potential hidden in these virtual worlds, and the monetary potential stored away in virtual goods, if Strategy Analytics projections are spot on, these doubts could be summed up in one word: Shattered.

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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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MindArk receives real world banking license

Friday, March 20th, 2009

MindArk and their wholly owned subsidiary Mind Bank AB made virtual world history earlier this week when the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen) granted a license to ‘conduct banking activities’ in MindArk’s virtual world(s) Entropia Universe.  This license officially sanctifies Mind Ark AB to act as a central bank within the Entropia Universe and conduct real world banking, and all associated financials for users.  This announcement follows the January announcement of MindArk launching their first planet company to oversee Planet Calypso.

“This is an exciting and important development for the future of all virtual worlds being built, using the Entropia Platform. Together with our partner planet owner companies we will be in a position to offer real bank services to the inhabitants of our virtual universe.” Says MindArk CEO Jan Welter Timkrans.

Again, MindArk is the first virtual world that has incorporated a real world bank into it’s systems.  Millions of transactions can be prcessed by the bank for further transfer to MindArk and the virtual universe.  Mind Bank says that they are also planning to offer selected banking services to customers on the conventional (read: real world) market.

So if running an MMOG wasn’t enough for the growing virtual world developer, they’ve now jumped into the unbelievably complex world of financial institutions.  Fighting fraud and microtransaction/monetization leakage is a topic that even the most savvy in-game monetization experts battle everyday.  MindArk is now taking this issue to an entirely new level by adding financial services.  Granted, they’ve segmented this operation into it’s own free standing business, but it is still plugged into the entire operation.  Since MindArk is the first Virtual World to brave these waters, they’re clearly blazing a trail, and my guess is will be watched with eagle eyed scrutiny.  If they get it wrong, the fingers are sure to be pointed in their direction very quickly.  If they get it right – well, now that’s something to study, isn’t it?

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Sci Fi partners with Acclaim Games and ZooKazoo

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Launched in parallel with Sci Fi’s recent announcement of the formation of Sci Fi Ventures, a long-term growth project initiative to diversify Sci Fi’s portfolio of offerings to include media and non-media businesses into a global lifestyle brand, the company has announced their partnership with Acclaim Games.

syfyBoth free-to-play based Acclaim and ZooKazoo are slated to develop a new series of online games and entertainment destinations, further leveraging the love that Sci Fi fans have for one of the world’s most lucrative entertainment genres.  Acclaim will create an exclusive label for Sci Fi, and will jointly develop games, with the ultimate goal of spreading these titles out across various platforms, products, and other forms of media.  First out of the gate will be a new game currently titled ‘Tales of Magic’, and is expected to launch on scifi.com this spring.

ZooKazoo, a virtual world focused primarily on the 6-12 year old age group will create the ‘Sci-Fi Club’ that will reside inside ZooKazoo’s world.  Only one year old, ZooKazoo focuses on collaborative games and youth generated content and already has some impressive user statistics including average user sessions lasting over an hour per login.  Given that one of ZooKazoo’s tenets is to provide a safe environment for kids to develop and create their own ideas around imagination, the Sci Fi Club area of the world could very well be a massive hit with users, and naturally draw in an entire new segment of future rocket builders.

This move into the gaming space also heralds the beginning of a strategic move by Sci Fi, or should I say SyFy, as the company will soon be known as, to bring the genre to the masses.  Sparked on by an entire new generation of Science Fiction fans (I’m looking at you Battlestar Galactica), SyFy’s opening of the Sci Fi Club in ZooKazoo is the network’s first strategic move into a youth market.  And as the old saying goes, “There’s proof in the pudding”, Sci Fi has recently acquired big gun Alan Seiffert to fill the role of Senior Vice President at Sci Fi Ventures.  Seiffert is currently in the role of SVP of business development and partnerships for CNBC Asia Pacific in Singapore, and will assume his new position beginning in May with Sci Fi Ventures.

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Fail: Worlds.com – Patents FTW!

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

In what may very well go down as the WTF of 2009, Worlds.com CEO Thom Kidrin has put the entire Virtual Worlds industry on notice.  He claims that his company patented and owns the IP rights to scalable virtual worlds.  Let’s let that soak in for a moment. ….and we’re back.  In essence, what Kidrin and Worlds.com are doing is threatening the livelihood of an entire industry.  And yes, this lawsuit and IP infringement applies to the big boys as well, including Second Life and World of Warcraft.

It's a Whole New Worlds - of LawsuitsAnd while I thought Atari and Codmasters legal assault on gamers was pretty up there on the ‘say what now?’ scale, Kidrin and Co. may have just taken the number one spot.  Worlds.com is already taking action against NCSoft, creators of City of Heroes and Guild Wars, filing in East Texas, an area know for it’s plaintiff friendly rulings in intellectual property cases.

Speaking to Eric Krangel from The Business Insider, Kidrin said that he “absolutely” intends to pursue follow up suits against Second Life and WoW.

But let’s take a step back and find out where all of this is coming from.  Back in December ’08, the then relatively unknown Worlds.com claimed to be holding a patent on virtual worlds ideas from 1997.  This patent originated from a developers work on a Steven Spielberg backed ‘Starbright World’, a part of the Starlight Starbright Foundation’s work with seriously ill children.  Wanting to protect the privacy and relative closed network feature of the virtual world, the Starbright folks, rightfully so, kept the project quiet.

Fast forward 10+ years, and a number of Starbright’s patents pass from the original creators to Worlds.com.  And while these patents do not cover ‘Virtual Worlds’ per se, and how we view them today, they do cover an architecture for enabling thousands of simultaneous users in a 3D virtual space.  Lawyers from General Patent Corporation pointed at this patent to the Worlds.com management, and encouraged them to pursue licensing deals.

Kindrin asserts that he’s not out to take any companies down and put them out of business, it’s just that he wants to get paid for what he and the Worlds.com management see as their lawful intellectual property.  Ummm, right.

Given the amount prior art available, chances are that this patent lawsuit is already moot.  As WoW Insider deftly points out, the same case could be made around the term ‘Cyberspace’.

However, let’s take a look at the definition of Cyberspace. It was first used in William Gibson‘s 1982 story “Burning Chrome” and again used in a few of his books, with “Neuromancer” being the most popular. Gibson’s definition for Cyberspace reads:

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.”

Now there are a few interesting parts there, in that the Gibson created a fictional representation of a world that was shared graphically with billions of legitimate operators. Sound familiar? It’s exactly what WoW is: a graphical world shared by millions of legitimate operators, abstract data that is unthinkably complex, arranging lines of light in the nonspace of the mind, and teaching children mathematical concepts (ie: threat, gear statistics, etc…)

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Free-to-play Maple Story ranks among top moneymaking MMO’s of 2008.

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

DFC Intelligence is gearing up to publish a comprehensive study of MMO worlds next month, according to GigaOm.  Wagner James Au got a special preview of the report and shares some initial estimates.

DFC’s David Cole says that the 2008 numbers are on the “very conservative” side, indicating that the 2008 numbers are still being crunched, and more exact numbers will be reflected in the February 16th reports.  “We indicate ranges because these numbers are estimates for 2008 based on where we think these products will end up,” said Cole.  And while the numbers are still being tallied, Cole estimates that the rankings should stay more or less the same, with “maybe a slot here or there” changing.

And while it shouldn’t come as a shock that the Blizzard powerhouse World of Warcraft takes the number one spot, Cole believes that if viewed from a pure profit margin, WoW wouldn’t be taking home the gold.  Asian MMO’s, which are traditionally developed at far lower budgets, have a much higher profit margin.  “Profit margin on Asian games is incredibly high,” says Cole, noting that Asian MMOs charge on or around 5-6 cents per hour with prepaid usage cards, a business model that has yet to proliferate the western gaming market.

What’s interesting to note in this projected report is the high ranking of Nexon’s free-to-play Maple Story (supported by microtransactions, prepaid cards, and international licensing), and the catalogue of Shanda’s games (Virtual item sales, prepaid cards, and freemium subscriptions).

1. World of Warcraft, launched 2004
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG; client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Monthly subscription, retails sales, prepaid cards (in Asia)
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $500 million-plus

2. Fantasy Westward Journey, launched 2004
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG, client install with 2.5D graphics
Revenue sources: Prepaid cards
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

3. Maple Story, launched 2003
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG for kids, client install with 2D graphics
Revenue sources: Microtransactions, prepaid cards, international licensing
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

4. Shanda (company, includes Legend of Mir and World of Legend series), launched 2003
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG, client install with 2.5 graphics
Revenue sources: Prepaid cards, virtual item sales, freemium subscriptions
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

5. Lineage I and Lineage II , launched 1998 and 2003
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG, client install with 2.5 graphics (Lineage) and 3D graphics (Lineage II)
Revenue sources: Subscription, prepaid cards
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

6. Runescape
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG for kids, web-based with 2.5D graphics
Revenue sources: Premium subscription, prepaid cards, real-world advertising
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

7. Club Penguin, launched 2006
Genre/Platform: Virtual world for kids, web-based 2.5D graphics
Revenue sources: Premium subscriptions, prepaid game cards
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

8. Lord of the Ring Online
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG, client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

9. Warhammer Online
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG, client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

10. Age of Conan
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG, client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

Wagner continues his conversation with Cole around the most popular, in terms of active players, MMO of 2008.  To answer this question, we’ve got to go even a bit further out on the speculation branch, but Cole points out that Fantasy Westward Journey registered 2-3 million concurrent players back in August.  And although Warcraft likes to beat it’s own drum regarding their estimated 11 million+ players, “You’re lucky to get 5-10 percent [of them] playing at the same time,” says Cole.  Minho Kim, developer of Maple Story said in December that the title has 87+ million registrations, but wouldn’t comment on how many of these registered users were/are active monthly users.  Joost van Dreunen from DFC’ estimates the number to be more in the 13 – 17.4 million regular Maple Story players, roughly 15-20 percent of Kim’s estimation.

Cole admits that this year’s list looks remarkably similar to the 2007 list with Conan and Warhammer being released in 2008.  And while only 2 of the top 10 contain some type of microtransaction support, I’d estimate that this list might look very different one year from now with a number of highly anticipated (think Free Realms and Battlefield Heroes) free-to-plays coming online in ’09.

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Virtual Worlds receive over half a billion dollars in investment in 2008

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

New market research provided by Virtual Worlds Management reveals that 2008 saw approximately $594M invested in the virtual worlds space.  This capital was invested in 63 companies across the virtual landscape, with $101M going to 13 virtual worlds companies in Q4 alone.  While this in itself is a decent number, it does indicate a decline, with Q1 showing $184M invested, Q2 $161M, and Q3 $148M.

Although figures may be sliding, the youth-oriented virtual worlds sector managed to take home more than 10 percent of the total capital invested: $70.47M, spread across 19 companies.  The majority of this funding occurred in Q1 and Q3.  Possible reasoning behind the variances point to this particular sector gaining massive traction, with some investors speculating that the space is already over crowded, while others seeing the market ripe with potential.

Developers active in the non-youth, i.e. adult virtual world space saw a bit slower growth in their sector.  11 companies saw $47.721M, which, proportionally does better than youth oriented virtual worlds, but is spread out amongst a smaller developer base.  Nurien Software was the biggest winner, bringing home $15M for it’s social network/virtual world/casual games products, FooMojo (no affiliation) saw $9.9M flow through the coffers for it’s virtual pets project (see facebook), and EveryScape landed $7M for it’s mirror world that also introduces an advertising play.  Appealing to a wide audience in platform format, Metaplace added $6.7M to the bank account in 2008.  And while not everyone received funding directly, it’s noteworthy to point out that YoVille, a social networking world virtual world was acquired my Zynga, and Metaversum received an undisclosed multi-million Euro investment for it’s virtual world: Twinity.

Given the current global economic slowdown, these figures shouldn’t really come as a surprise, and I don’t see them as any sign to worry, anytime soon.  Investors are simply responding to current market conditions.  What is interesting to note is that virtual worlds investors have made it quite clear: the value of the marketplace is becoming diluted with more and more players involved.  Instead of a massive influx of investment capital over the course of 2009, I believe we’re more likely to see existing cash being leveraged by virtual worlds leaders to merge or acquire lesser players, and induct their users into these newly forged virtual worlds.  And what’s more, these virtual worlds will aggressively start seeking methods to help them monetize.  fatfoogoo anyone?  Let’s talk.

View the full Virtual Worlds Management report here.

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