Here’s the latest trailer for the upcoming Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return movie. Created by Summertime Entertainment, KZero was tasked with creating the virtual world strategy to support the film. Development of the virtual world is nearing completion, coinciding with the pre-launch promotional activity for the film. Watch this space!
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Here’s the presentation Nic delivered at the Digital Kids Conference in New York yesterday.
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With above average ARPPUs and paying user conversion rates, the UK market has long been a high-value territory for virtual world companies targeting kids and tweens.
And, whilst the likes of Moshi Monsters, Stardoll and Club Penguin lead the way in terms of user penetration, a group of newer virtual worlds are activating UK TV advertising in order to grow their userbases and take a piece of the market.
At present, Minomonos, Space Heroes Universe, Fight My Monster, Herotopia and Bin Weevils are all buying UK air-time across the major kids channels. Here’s a selection of TV ads shown in the UK.
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Generating revenues of almost $240m in 2012, Minecraft is the juggernaut of the virtual worlds sector. The key to its success? – User Generated Content. It’s long been known that giving users the ability to create content is a powerful stimulant for both usage and virality.
Although the forecasted average user age for Minecraft users is late teens, it’s interesting that the UGC factor resonates just as much with younger users as it does older ones. The video below demonstrates this well. Check it out.
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Related article: The State of the Virtual Worlds Market
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Here it is – the updated KZero Radar chart for Q1 2013.
Whereas the Universe chart shows the number of registered accounts for each virtual world and MMO in the market, the Radar chart segments these companies by genre and operational stage. The segments are:
Each virtual world / MMO is colored according to their operational stage. Red for active, green for in-development and black for closed (here’s some reasons for those closures).
We have a full presentation report showing each segment of the Radar chart that can be ordered here. Shown below is the segment covering TV/Film/Books, Sports and Content Creation.
Focusing on the TV/Film/Book segment, expect a number of new companies to bring their existing IPs to market this year (many of which are still in stealth mode and therefore not listed). As publishers and IP owners seek to drive digital revenues, creating online worlds is a key strategy for them. Good examples in this instance include Toonix (from Turner), Adventure in Oz, Transformers Universe and PBS.
Moving to the Content Creation segment, although Minecraft and Roblox are the dominant players, the power of User Generated Content is expected to stimulate activity across all age ranges.
Order the full presentation here. The Slideshare version will be posted shortly.
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Later this week we’ll be publishing the Q1 2013 Radar Chart. In the meantime, here’s a thematic visual showing the levels of competion (companies) by genre and age for the virtual world and MMO sectors.
The dominance of the Kids and Tweens age group can be clearly observed below, especially in the Casual Gaming, Existing IP and Education/Development sectors.
This thematic looks at the number of operational companies (as opposed to the size of user bases) and marks each genre and age range into High, Medium, Low and Zero competition. The upcoming Radar Chart will be naming the actual companies in the market and indicating their operational phase.
That is all (for now).
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Later this week we’ll be released the Q1 2013 Radar chart. The Radar chart shows Virtual Worlds and MMOs by genre and status (live, in-development, closed) and is a great tool to assess sector competitiveness.
In addition, we’ll also be publishing a thematic chart visualising the hot (and not so hot) spots – useful for companies trying to understand the underserved segments.
If you’re currently working on a VW/MMO that’s coming out of stealth mode, or one that didn’t make our Q1 2012 release (which you can order here), please let us know asap!
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