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25 Oct

Mechatars launches to link off and online play

Kids/Tween Worlds, Videos / Machinima

Following the trend to link toys and virtual worlds together, here’s a new example of exactly that called Mechatars.

Created by a company called ILoveRobots, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, Mechatars is a toy line consisting of three different robots (Alpha, Wrexx and Kodar). The price point is $39.99. And, clearly the company is keen to promote the different ‘attitudes’ of each toy because they even have their own twitter accounts.

Accompanying the physical toy range is a virtual world called the Mechaverse. Progression through levelling within the virtual world opens up and enables additional features from the real world toy. CEO Martin Hitch states:

“We’re the first company that has successfully connected physical products with virtual environments,” he said. “We’re the first company that has been able to make our product evolve over time.”

The play mechanic is primarily ‘battling and fighting’, similar to UK property Fight My Monster. Here’s one of their launch videos and a link to the full press release.

Our latest report – The Golden Triangle, explains the opportunties available for toys and virtual worlds. Here’s an extract from the report highlighting the strategies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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24 Oct

Kids virtual worlds gatecrash the BAFTA awards

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nominees have just been announced. Looking through the Children’s Awards Nominees highlights both the growing popularity of virtual worlds as well as the emerging trend to tie film and TV properties into them.

In the Animation category, Muddle Earth from CBBC is nominated. This property has an accompanying virtual world created by Dubit.

In the Comedy category, Horrible Histories is nominated, which also has a virtual world.

In the Feature Film category, Harry Potter and Kung Fu Panda are in the running, with the latter prepping Pottermore for launch and the former already with a virtual world in the market.

In the Interactive category Mindy Candy are short-listed for Moshi Monsters.

There’s also a special Kid’s Vote BAFTA award.

Within this award section Cars 2, Harry Potter, Kung Fu Panda and Transformers feature in the Film category. Cars has an accompanying world called World of Cars and there’s a Transformers Universe MMO in the works being developed by Jagex.

In the Web section we’re delighted to see two of our clients, Bin Weevils and Stardoll nominated alongside Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters.

The British Academy Children’s Awards will take place on Sunday 27 November. Let the voting battles commence!

Our latest report, The Golden Triangle, explains the strategies available to IP owners in the kids TV and Movie sectors. Order it here.

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24 Oct

Golden Triangle Slideshare presentation

Strategic Marketing, Virtual Goods, Virtual World strategy

Our latest report, The Golden Triangle is now available on Slideshare.

This report explains and positions the opportunities available to IP owners in the toys/games and tv/movie sectors with respect to virtual world integration. The full high-res report can be ordered here

The Golden Triangle

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17 Oct

Quick stats: VWs by Size and Region

User Analysis, Virtual Research

Following on from a recent client request to see virtual world registered accounts by major region, here’s a quick chart visualising the findings.

The data is based on cumulative registered account data from Q2 2011 and clearly shows the dominance of Western Europe and North America. Keep an eye on South America and Eastern Europe though, with Brazil and Turkey (classified into Eastern Europe) on the rise.

 

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14 Oct

What Lady Gaga should have done….

Kids/Tween Worlds, Metabrands, Virtual World strategy

Lot’s of newsflow in the last couple of days about Lady Gaga gaining an injunction against Mind Candy, owners of Moshi Monsters.

Moshi developed a character called Lady Goo Goo and placed songs onto YouTube, with plans to release a song on iTunes via their new music division Moshi Music. Here’s the news report.

Unofficial re-creations of brands inside virtual worlds are nothing new. Back in 2008 we identified this trend – primarily inside Second Life with residents (as opposed to Linden Lab) creating and in a lot of cases actually selling these virtual goods. Furthermore, the concept of users re-creating music videos as machinima is another interesting topic.

This case is slightly different because it’s the virtual world company itself creating the unofficial brand as opposed to the users – but it seems the Moshi users really love the character.

In response to the trend of unofficial brands and virtual goods, we developed the ‘5 Rules of Virtual Brand Management’ back in 2008. It’s a set of principles that brand owners should consider before taking action. Perhaps Lady Gaga should have read this first. The full report can be ordered here and shown below is a quick summary presentation.

Five Rules of Virtual Brand Management

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11 Oct

New KZero report: Toys, Media and Virtual Worlds – Creating the Golden Triangle

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Teenage+ Worlds, Virtual Goods, Virtual World strategy

We’ve just released our latest report called ‘Toys, Media and Virtual Worlds – Creating the Golden Triangle’.

The report, in presentation format, aims to provide professionals in the toys, games, TV and movie sectors with guidance and insight into the key opportunities and strategies available in the virtual worlds sector.

Importantly, it also recommends how to align all three elements into a cohesive community building and revenue generating platform.

Areas covered include branded virtual goods inclusion, community and awareness building, research and development, character development and many others.

Also included in the report are examples of projects deployed to date. The free report can be requested here.

 

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10 Oct

Minecraft vs. ROBLOX

Teenage+ Worlds, Videos / Machinima

Looks like we’ve got some competition.

And there’s more insight into Minecraft here.

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KZero Research and Insight

9 Oct

YouTube,Machinima and the Content Creation Revolution

Videos / Machinima

I’ve been following this trend for a while now and have decided it’s finally time to bash out a post – it’s about the amazing popularity of gamers posting videos about gaming. In some cases it’s a video about their own gameplay (solo or multiplayer) and in other instances it’s round-ups of other peoples play.

Take a look at the iPad screenshots below taken from the YouTube app (UK-centric). The first screenshot shows the Most Viewed videos this week. Take a look at the Minecraft videos. 1.1m and 831k views. I bet you didn’t realise the nuclear-powered diamond factories could be so popular. Battlefield 3 is a FPS (first person shooter) not actually released until later this month. It has 1.6m combined views. Rage is another FPS and has 858k views.

 

 

The second screenshot shows the Top Rated videos this week. Minecraft features again as does Battlefield 3. Call of Duty: Black Ops makes an entrance into the top rates videos as well. Continue reading →

6 Oct

Some Monsters are for Nurturing, some are for Fighting

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, User Analysis, Virtual Research

Leading UK virtual world Moshi Monsters is getting a lot of the limelight at present with various brand extension strategies such as toys, tv and music. Hot on their heels are Bin Weevils, going from strength to strength from a user acquisition perspective. Now there’s a new contender in the mix, or rather a Monster – Fight My Monster.

Whereas Moshi Monsters leverages a core play mechanic of Nurturing (definition:Interested in looking after their avatar and pet if applicable. Likely to be younger boys and girls, plus older girls), Fight My Monster focusses on pvp battles adopting a trading card style mechanic. Of course, like most other worlds and online games in this demographic there’s also a raft of mini-games.

Fight My Monsters is growing relatively quickly, up to 300k users since their launch in Jan 2011 (91% from the UK). The chart below shows registered account growth (summer holidays are always good for acquiring users in the KT space).

Average session lengths are also on the rise, indicating a strengthening user engagement relationship. Continue reading →

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