There.com Opens Club Scion

Scion is the busy bee of auto brands in virtual worlds. It's in Gaia, Second Life, and Whyville. Now it's coming to Makena's There.com. But instead of distributing free cars for users to drive, the Scion xA, xB, and tC will be turned into three towering clubs for users to take over and host events. Michael Wilson of There.com told VirtualWorldsNews that "The whole thing about cars and virtual worlds has been done to death, and we wanted to do something different. Our world is fundamentally a social world. Instead of getting another Scion to drive around, we said, "'Why don't we do something different?'"

 

 

Through a partnership between Makena and design studio Metaversatility, the cars have been "customized as sleek nightclubs, complete with music, dance floors, seating, hot tubs and even transparent walk-ways and ladders that let consumers explore the interior features of each car model in detail."

Scion has previously worked with Millions of Us in its design projects, but Wilson said Metaversatility just  had the "best bid and creative concept. I think Scion is trying to use different designers as well as different worlds."

With so many different virtual worlds projects, Scion seems like an ideal example for a case study. As Wilson said, "I think Scion is doing what any good advertiser is doing. They're spreading their bets. If you have a sign on Van Ness and another on a different street, you don't tear down the Van Ness sign if the other does better. You learn from it and keep going."

With users responsible for creating the attractions inside the club, it seems as if Scion is letting go of its brand control a little, but Wilson emphasizes the safe nature of There.com.

"Since There is PG-13, we want to build a world that's acceptable to as many people as possible. We're not going to have events where there are going to be naked people and ohters dressed up as animals."

But it could be a simpler matter of the entertainment just not fitting in with Scion's hip, youth-oriented image. What if one user decides to host a Michael Bolton concert?

"I don't think that's going to be an issue," said Wilson. "They're not going to be having scrabble contests."

That seems reasonable. The club is tailored to an urban feel, with dancing, fog, lights, and socializing. When users take a break, they can go to interactive kiosks for "further information about the Scion product line and lifestyle."

 

 

 

Comments

[csven]

Interesting. Looking at Metaversality's "Services" page, I wonder how they'll handle asset development.

[Peter Haik]

How specifically do you mean csven?

[csven]

Functioning 3D assets.

[Peter Haik]

As mentioned on the comments on our blog, we have a team of professional 3d modelers who worked with 3DS max and Maya on this project. We have screenshots of these functioning assets here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/metaversatility/sets/72157601329114857/)

[SuezanneC Baskerville (SuezanneCB)]

My understanding is that there.com has cars with nice physics. If this is true, it seems a shame for a car advertiser to choose the virtual world with the nice physics for vehicles to be the one where you don't make drivable vehicles.