Interview: Meez Brings Games to the Roomz (and Facebook, Blogs, and Everywhere Else)

We reported last week that Meez had opened up its platform to game developers interested in adding Meez to their casual games and integrating the games with the rest of the Meez network. Now the company is looking to take its interaction even farther, creating a full-on virtual environment. CEO Sean Ryan explained that the company had always conceived of itself as a social media company, bringing identity to games, blogs, emails, and more. "Once we got that down, and we have 5 million avatars so far, what do you do with it?" he asked. "When we looked at gaming, we saw that the opening was to move into Web gaming. What’s funny about casual games is that they used to be Web-based, and then downloadable came along, and then everyone focused on that. Now with much more Web-focused, social media environments, the move is to see how I can enjoy the game in that environment. And then what do I do with them?"

"In our case the avatar comes into the game on some occasions," Ryan continued. For example, last week saw the release of a DDR-style game featuring DJs based on the users' Meez. "It’s simple play mechanics, but it’s really about personalizing the game. Where the game doesn’t allow for it—where it’s not a human-based game, like Bejewled—then the avatar comes into the frame next to the game, reacts emotionally to the game, and so on. It’s about bringing identity to the game, like with the Nintendo Wii. It’s what Nintendo has done so well on the console side that we think we can do well with on the Web. We don’t want to develop the games. We’ve got the avatar technology and ways to monetize the platform, now we want to work with the developers and creative drivers behind it."

Going Inside

With the early success of the program--50 games are in the pipes--the company is looking to continue expanding its platform.  When I spoke to Ryan last summer, he said that "The absolute trend, beyond worlds, is identity. I want something that expresses who I am.  [...] An avatar does that more than a world."

The company had plans to allow its users to expand into 2D and 3D environments, but the clamor has been moving them along even faster.

"We had a long discussion looking at 3D or 2D, Flash versus other things," Ryan said of the search for a world. "Our avatars are in 3D, so we looked at all the options out there and to see what our users want. They want three things: different body types, so we rolled that out. It sounds like a minor thing, and men don’t understand. We started out with different bodies in 3D. All the men choose 'buff.' On the other hand, women choose a wide variety of body types. Now 6% of our women choose 'pregnant,' 16% choose 'plump,' 4% choose 'booty butt'—it’s a whole variety of things. The second thing is that our users wanted to play games and generate coinz, so we did that.  The third thing, now number one on the list , was 'I want to chat with my friends. I want to walk around and chat with my friends.' After a while we thought, 'Wow, well maybe we should listen to our users. Well, what the hell?' Crazy, right?"

Joining the ranks of Gaia and ActiveWorlds with embedded worlds on social networks. Meez Roomz soft-launched on Facebook at the beginning of the month, and Ryan describes it as "a sort of Club Penguin for adults."  It's a far cry from  client-based worlds like Kaneva, Second Life, or vSide, but the Flash-based environment is also easier to get into. Users that haven't registered can drop in as a generic Meez--"like the boring penguin"--and still interact. The goal is to take existing social network relationships and mix synchronous and asynchronous communication.

"It’s starting on Facebook, but soon it’ll be everywhere.," said Ryan. "It’s synchronous, but we’re including asynchronous elements. Friends can sign your guest book or listen to your music, but it’s primarily about synchronous social media and the world. I can hang out with my friends, I can chat, watch video, I can play games, and I can listen to music, and all in a vertical, online environment with no downloads—none of this Second Life stuff. There’s room for that, but we think the bulk of the room is in the non-downloadable, richer Flash base, where you can put it anywhere. You can put it in your social network profile. You can put it in your homepage or your blog where I click on it and get in your room."

The idea there is that if I include my room on the blog or my Facebook profile, users could drop by and watch video or play games when I'm not there, but the main focus is still on creating spaces for planned social interaction.

"It’s much more about your friends, not just meeting random people in a room somewhere," said Ryan. "There’s room for that, but it’s not us. There are those types of things where you mix the synchronous and asynchronous. On the other hand, we got together, three of us in three different countries, and were watching F1 highlights from Europe. You need to have a mix of these things."

And Heading Back Out

Ryan says Meez is still specializing in avatars, but it's interested in expanding, especially through partnerships. Ryan says Meez can already watch YouTube videos in their rooms and the he plans to add RSS later, but that he'd also like to partner with content providers like Hulu. Meez can provide the platform, and the providers can determine how to monetize their services.  (One example is selling different sizes and shapes of virtual TVs.)

Ryan's goal, instead, is  interested in making all of the experiences stickier by adding identity. The trend for many casual games is for users to pick up a title, play for a few days, and then move on. Adding an avatar makes it easier for the user to connect. If that avatar and game are then tied to a social network or virtual space, they can invest even more emotionally.

"We iterate weekly to add more content," said Ryan. "You'll see eventually games that winning them unlocks rooms for you to go into and more spaces  to explore. We're all about tying the experiences together. Some of that should be available in the next month or two and into Q2."

Likewise, Ryan would like to take the connection with Facebook, and other social networks, even deeper. Right now the roomz simply sit on top of Facebook, without connection to Facebook's currency or virtual goods. Meez already has its own infrastructure for developers to work with, but more of a tie-in would be nice.

While Meez has already seen 5 million avatars, its demographic--60-65% female with an average age of 18--sits nicely on top of most social networks, making the connections even more appealing. That said, Ryan is always looking in other directions as well.

"We’re the number one avatar site for pregnant women," he explained. "How do we know that? I look at my stuff every day and where my users are coming from.  It’s not the bulk of our users, probably only about 10%. But we realized 9 months ago that Café Mom, Two Peas in a Bucket, Baby Center are sending thousands of people to us each day. It turns our that we have a set of body types that look slightly  older as opposed to the  anime or South Park look, and it works for older women. We still have a block of users who come in and keep asking us for more pregnancy items. It’s not what we focus on, but we still have it."

 

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

I liked Meez when I tried it for awhile, and I liked the avatars, but it's shallow, there is no user-generated content. The "virtual world" is a shallow space that has no geographical contiguity, no land where you come in and walk around.

When Ryan says he doesn't want a downloadable, and none of that Second Life stuff, well, understood: the client viewer in a downloadable, in Second Life or World of Warcraft, is what contains the world, the contiguous space and the ability to interact and have an economy, closed like WoWs, or open like SLs.

I can well see where these different philosophies will somehow end up bumping into each other as they back up and up and up.

The flash people will back up to add avatar interactions...back up further to add manipulable content...back up further to add user-generated content...back up further to add rooms with depth...and then perhaps stop just before they bump into Linden Lab coming in the other direction, as they will back up out of the heavy download into making a thinner client that can just have an avatar chatting and not able to spend money as it moves around...back up further and have the avatar but only on one sim...before they nearly bump into the flash people backing up in the other direction.

So I guess those who can make that space now in between those two things backing up could really succeed.