For all those who desire to take the bench like Judge Judy or Judge Joe Brown, you now have your chance in a new virtual “courtroom” JabberJury.com launched this week, giving people around the world a chance to air their frustrations and settle everyday conflicts by presenting their case to a jury of their peers to determine, once and for all, who is right.
This new collaboration capitalizes on the strengths of both companies to make a virtual fashion and gaming experience a reality at the retail market. Stardoll has built a large and loyal following among fashion-minded teen and tween girls with fun, interactive games that allow users to create and dress their own personalized “MeDoll” avatars.
Grateful Dead fans know what they like and, unsurprisingly enough, what they usually like is anything related to the Grateful Dead. In the past, Dead Heads have devoured live, bootleg recordings of any show they could get their hands on, followed the band’s tours across the world and, of course, bought nearly anything with those iconic Grateful Dead related symbols emblazened on them. Now, however, the Dead are set to give their fans something entirely different: a virtual reality game.
FashionWorld, a social game on Facebook has found itself in hot water with users who are demanding justice and blaming Metro Games for not being more responsive. When consumers now pay with virtual currency for virtual goods, how do you reach a virtual justice?
I recently had a chance to chat with several leading executives from top social gaming companies for my first Social Times Pro report, “Virtual Goods in Social Games: What Sells Best, Who Buys Most, and How Your Company Can Profit”. This is a must read if you’re in the industry.
Second Life was rocked yesterday by an announcement that “Emerald”, an open source software client that can access Linden Lab’s 3D virtual world, had been de-listed from the company’s directory of approved, third-party viewers. This news came days after revelations that Emerald’s mysterious lead developer had used the software in a denial-of-service attack provoked unrest for many of the world’s one million active users. Because by the time Linden de-listed it, Emerald had already become incredibly popular with SLers; by some reliable reports, it accounts for nearly half Second Life’s total user hours. And this being Second Life, the scandal also involves a confluence of anonymous avatars with bizarre names, open source, and, of course, bouncing breasts:
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Backyard Monsters, from Casual Collective, is the social game for gamers who usually hate social games. Mixing real-time strategy gaming with offbeat visual cuteness, it plays like a slow motion version of Starcraft crossed with a Pixar movie, and while most of the biggest social games have recently hit a growth plateau, Backyard Monsters has been growing quickly since July. It now boasts nearly 900K monthly active users, and CEO Will Harbin told me it should reach a million monthlies in a couple weeks. Given current trends, Harbin believes Monsters could ultimately grow to 15-20 million monthly actives; even more impressive, Harbin says the game is already cash flow positive. So its success is proof positive a relatively complex “gamer’s game” can work on a social network, and offers a bunch of interesting takeaways for developers and gamers alike:
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ResLive is a new 3D web-based virtual world which aims to become the ultimate destination for live music performances in an MMO space. (Though still in early Beta, you can join now with a special Social Times code at the end of this post.) As a number of musicians and DJs have learned, 3D worlds like Second Life are a great place to perform live from the comfort of their computer, even earning a decent side income with tips. But as they and their fans have also learned, it’s extremely difficult to get more than a couple dozen people in the same performance space without lag ruining the show. By contrast, ResLive’s project manager believes his world’s architecture can support 100-150 avatars in the same venue, and with the company’s sharding system (which creates multiple copies of the same virtual space), up to 5,000 attendees can concurrently enjoy the same show. That’s a bold claim, but considering who’s developing ResLive, I’m inclined to believe it:
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Hello Kitty Online, the upcoming free-to-play MMO based on the gargantuan franchise of the same name, has selected PlaySpan to handle its monetization services when it launches commercially sometime this year. Players will be able to buy Hello Kitty virtual goodies in the game’s Item Mall via PlaySpan’s UltimatePay service, handling transactions via credit cards, PayPal, mobile, and its pre-paid retail card sold in tens of thousands of locations across the US. With all those payment methods, Sanrio anticipates at least 3-8% of their players will buy Hello Kitty virtual goods (since those rates are the general industry standard for online games.) Read more
Meez, a web-based virtual world/online community, is drawing the best engagement rates of any virtual world in the US, according to ComScore’s June 2010 figures. The traffic measuring service reports that Meez users visit the site an impressive 203 minutes per month on average, just a few minutes behind YouTube, and sixth place in engagement overall. (Casual game site Pogo and Facebook hold the top two positions with 377 and 263 minutes, respectively.) According to Meez CEO John Cahill, there’s a correspondence between those high engagement rates and users spending on virtual items for their Meez characters: Read more
