Star in Me Announces New Children's Virtual World, Electric Sheep Take Equity Stake

Star in Me, a children’s virtual world under research in development in stealth mode for over a year announced yesterday that it would launch in the second quarter of 2008. It also confirmed that the Electric Sheep Company had taken an equity role. “We’ve been working together now for about five months or thereabouts,” said Star in Me Chairman and Founder David Post. “And we were working so well together that we thought maybe we should look at a relationship that was not the norm for them. So they will have much of their upside tied to our success. They will be an equity holder in the company. There’s cash involved as well as support. And there’s a name that was over there [gesturing at the Virtual Worlds Fall Confernce and Expo exhibit floor] that will hopefully be the next thing we announce.”

Much of the relationship can’t be disclosed yet, including the money involved, but both parties seem enthusiastic.

“Going to the kids thing [the panel on kids and teens virtual worlds], I left there very optimistic,” Post continued. “It feels like the early days. We’ve done our homework. We’re very happy working together.”

The Sheep’s taking equity in a new virtual world seems like a different direction, but GM of ESC Solutions Don Bain sees it in line with the company’s activities.

“When you start thinking about creating a compelling, sticky user experience that people get a lot out of, I don’t think it’s that different,” he explained.

The ideas that have been released are fairly broad, but the world will be built on technology to monitor children as they play and deliver input to parents about “natural talents, their socialization, whether they like being a leader or a team player, whether they like to do new things or improve things that are already there, and much more.”

GM ESC Software Giff Constable pointed out that the Electric Sheep have always been platform agnostic, “looking for the right platform for the right application.” However, no business model has been announced as of yet. He views the relationship as a “tight partnership.”

“We are investing in IP, and we’re a diversified company,” Constable continued. “We’ve got the consulting business, the software business, the ad network we’re starting.  And we’re developing our own virtual property. There’s the stuff we’re doing with Novamente in artificial intelligence. There’s no one path. With the market developing at an early stage, you have to work in different areas.”

“It’s our lingua franca to have cool, creative ideas,” Bain explained. “We just happened to find a client here who had the same ideas.”

“They’ll give us the attention anyway, but we built it in because if there’s a passionate relationship that in the future our success means they make more money, I’m happy for that,” said Post.