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22 Oct

Are you on the Radar?

KZero Clients, Virtual Worlds Radar Chart

The KZero Radar chart is a visualization of all the operating and in-development virtual worlds and youth MMOs in the marketplace.

Alongside the Universe chart, the Radar is often used at industry conferences, academic presentations and in investor slidedecks to easily explain the sector. The Q1 2012 Radar is shown below and an extract right.

Well, we’re in the process of updating the Radar and we will also be re-adjusting the category names to reflect a greater number of IP and brand-led virtual worlds in the market.

We’re already aware of a lot of the in-development worlds and MMOs (because we assist them in getting to market) but there’s bound to be some we’re not aware of.

If you’re developing a virtual world or MMO targeting the KT&T (kids, tweens and teens) sectors, let us know and we’ll make sure you’re on the Radar!

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12 Oct

EDGE Magazine: How children are transforming gaming

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients

EDGE Magazine has just published a great article about ‘How children are transforming gaming‘. The piece contains references to how kids are being drawn to digital brands as opposed to those originating on TV and includes companies such as Rovio, Stardoll, Dubit and Fight My Monster. Dylan Collins from Fight My Monster is quoted as saying:

“The next Disney is going to be a company that can produce really amazing content, but also one that can develop tools for kids to create their own. At some point in the near future, you’re going to see the first 15-year-old millionaire being created – [teenagers] now have the tools and frameworks to create their own games, apps and movies.”

KZero gets a good mention as well:

Meanwhile, Nic Mitham, CEO of KZero, believes that “the majority of new massmarket kids IPs will begin life as games, then port over to other media channels”.

The size and influence of kids’ gaming raises the question of why major social publishers seemingly haven’t embraced the trend yet. “Social game companies do not have direct access to the kids market [because], primarily, Facebook can’t reach these younger gamers,” says Mitham. “Social gaming companies are heavily reliant on leveraging the Facebook social graph and exploiting push mechanics, email, messaging, etcetera. [The kids market requires] a totally different mindset, and requires much more agile marketing and user profiling.”

Full Article on EDGE Magazine.

 

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5 Jan

Quick stat: Top 15 Virtual Worlds

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Teenage+ Worlds, Virtual Research

Yesterday we released the Q4 2011 Universe chart along with updated market numbers. Extracted from this analysis, here are the top 15 virtual worlds for under 25’s by total cumulative registered accounts.

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4 Jan

Universe chart Q4 2011: Avg User Age 10 to 15

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Teenage+ Worlds, Universe Graph, Virtual Research

The release of our Q4 2011 data headlined with total cumulative registered accounts reaching 1.7bn (read that post here). Here, we’re showing a segment from the Universe chart for virtual worlds with an average user age between 10 and 15. This age segment is the largest in the sector, closing with 787m registered accounts as at Q4 2011. Here’s the segment.

Stardoll and Club Penguin are the leaders in this age segment both with 150m registered accounts. Following up behind these two are Moshi Monsters and Neopets with circa 70m each.

Looking at virtual worlds with a heavy focus on user generated content, Roblox and Minecraft reside within this age segment with 3m and 18m users respectively. Expect these worlds to post significant increases in users during 2012. Of course, we’ll be following their progress.

Our has the full set of Universe charts and you can order the full KZero Universe chart presentation with high-res imagery can be here.

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4 Jan

Virtual World registered accounts reach 1.7bn in Q4 2011

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Teenage+ Worlds, Universe Graph, Virtual Research

Strong growth in the virtual worlds sector throughout 2011 saw total cumulative registered accounts reach 1,772m at the end of Q4 2011. This growth was driven by booming user bases from worlds such as Poptropica, Habbo, Moshi Monsters, Stardoll and Club Penguin.

Encouragingly, whilst the top-tier larger worlds (with over 50m registered users) continue to attract users and leverage their brands, mid-tier worlds (10m to 50m registered users) such as Bin Weevils, Wizard 101, Minecraft, Meez and Fantage also posted positive increases.

The table below shows quarterly numbers by major age range.

From Q3 to Q4 2011, total cumulative registered accounts grew by 282m (an 18.9% quarter on quarter increase), compared to a 141m increase in users from Q2 to Q3 (a 10.4% increase).

The 10 to 15 year old segment continues to set the pace in the space, closing with 787m total cumulative registered accounts in Q4 2011, with the 15 to 25 year old (average user age) element coming in second highest with 596m total accounts.

The chart below shows total cumulative registered accounts by major age range.

We’ll be posting the Universe chart segments on here very shortly, but in the meantime you can get a sneak peak over on our .

The full KZero Universe chart presentation with high-res imagery can be ordered here.

 

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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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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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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 →

1 Sep

Fans flock to Virtual Worlds on Facebook

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Teenage+ Worlds, Virtual Research

A year ago we looked at the popuarlity of Facebook fan-pages for a number of popular virtual worlds, including those with users under 13. The results, i.e. the number of respective fans for each virtual world were not surprising, with the larger worlds enjoying a higher number of fans than the smaller ones.

The chart below shows the same analysis one year on. Across the board – increases. But of course that’s to be expected as these virtual worlds (and most others, regardless of target market) use Facebook for a variety of reasons. And, of course Facebook itself is grown.

Some worlds actually use Facebook to communicate directly to parents of their users, whilst others promote events and competitions. Another growth area is using Facebook during beta trials to both recruit new users and . Probably the area with the biggest potential is . More about that in a future post.

 

So what do we see here?

maintains pole position with a huge number of fans (in reality they actually even more fans then we’re showing in the chart but we’ve taken the fan-page with the highest following).

They’ll be breaking through 1m fans and on the tails of pretty soon. We’ve taken IMVU out of this analysis because this focus is on KT&T.

has grown massively during the last year with 500k fans now with Hello Kitty Online (note – a young brand) coming in with over 300k fans.

Another future post and supporting report will look right across the spectrum of all virtual worlds using Facebook as an acqusition and retention tool.

Moving on, some of you may look at the chart above and comment that Facebook itself has grown significantly over the same 12 month period so seeing increases in the fan-pages of virtual worlds (and any other group on Facebook) shouldn’t be a surprise. We asked ourselves the same question and did some further analysis. Continue reading →

23 Aug

Branded Virtual Goods – The (Virtually) Definitive List

KZero Clients, Virtual Goods, Virtual Research

We’ve updated our popular presentation, Branded Virtual Goods – The (Virtually) Definitive List. This presentation shows screen-shots of branded virtual goods and branded virtual experiences taken from MMOs, social games and virtual worlds. A high-res version is available by requesting it here.

Just in case you were wondering, there’s now over 150 brands!

Branded Virtual Goods, The (Virtually) Definitive List
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