Virtual Worlds 2008 - MTV and Neopets: New Worlds, vMTV 2.0, and a Partnership with Garnier

Kyra E. Reppen, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Neopets, opened up the morning keynote to share her thoughts on the future of the virtual world and her lessons from the first decade of the virtual world industry. "Perhaps it's no surprise that virtual worlds are not just the next generation og games, but the next generation of entertainment," Reppen said. "Audiences are telling us they want us to give them better, faster, and deeper ways to communicate. This is where the future of technology lies." [Ed: Lots of good numbers and announcements below (mostly bolded).]

Kids Worlds

"The tipping point for virtual worlds has already happened," she said. "It happened in the kids space. Other sites may have gotten some buzz, but its the kids space that has been popular."

Millions of kids are spending at least an hour in virtual worlds. eMarketer predicts that by 2011 53% of all American child and teen Internet users will visit virtual worlds at least once a month.

"Knowing the audience is the key to the secret sauce," said Reppen. "It's the difference between being a fad and a phenomenon."

She likened virtual worlds to party planning: you open up the space, invite the right people, and provide the entertainment. There are five basic ingredients

1. Users want to have fun, and gaming is the secret ingredient.
   1. 80% of Reppen's audience says games are the #1 reason for going to virtual worlds. 20 mIllion members a month, according to Comscore, are reaching games through the meta-games of Neopets and Nicktropolis.
2. Control: Empowering kids is key
3. Social needs: "Our audience wants to connect and socialize. Now kids can have social experiences online any time they want rather than waiting for Mom to drive them to a friend's house."
4. Likewise, virtual worlds offer self-expression
5. Safety: Parents and kids both ask for a safe environment

Neopets and Nicktropolis

"When you mix these ingredients and get it right, you get incredibly engagement," said Reppen. Neopets has 70% awareness among kids 7-14 and also has a loyal adult audience, making up about 20% of the world's members.

Reppen then profiled three Neopets members to show how they consume media.

1. Lowell, a girl, has been a member for 10 months and participates in pretty much all the options avilable.
2. Addie is a 26-year-old woman from the UK and has been a member for 6 years. She's a Neopian millionaire.
3. Wong is a 17-year-old boy in Hong Kong and has been on the site for 2 years. He doesn't customize his Neopet, but he's a game champ.

"These are all very different people that come together as a part of the same community," said Reppen. "It should be impossible to satisfy all three of them with the same site, but virtual worlds do the impossible by giving users the ability to use the world as they want to."

Those lessons were applied to Nicktropolis which now sees about 7 million members and average of (Ed: I think this is right) 47 minutes spent on the site.

"To kids, technology is actually invisible," explained Reppen. "They want their entertainment on their own time on their own terms."

Multi-tasking, kids fit hours of entertainment into minutes.

"Later this year Nicktropolis will evolve with original elements, more tools, additional elements, and premium services," said Reppen.

Along the same lines, Neopets added consumer products this year with toys offering codes to loop back to the site, showing a conversion rate of 50% in the first few weeks. Neopets also added virtual goods this year, partnering with Nexon, and offers pre-paid cards at retail.

"We're taking a similar approach to our television shows at MTV Networks," said Reppen. "We have virtual worlds that reach to every demographic across our audience."

It's possible for the network to reach 20 million gamers across sites like AddictingGames, promoting new worlds and new shows.

"We're taking NIcktropolis international with a space in the UK next month and we're rolling out new areas this month," she said. "We're also introducing PetPetPet Habitats, a  real-time strategy game on the desktop with Adobe's new Air technology."

She then showed off the first world created by Neostudios, the upcoming World of Neopia. Graphically and, from what I know of Neopets user-experience, it looks like a pretty good jump up.

MTV

Jeffrey B. Yapp, Executive Vice President, MTV Networks Music And Logo Enterprise Group, walked through MTV's existing worlds, upcoming vLES, and lessons learned.

Over 2007, the number of registered avatars in virtual worlds increased almost two fold. We now have close to 350 million avatars in existence--more than the U.S. population.

"Virtual worlds are evolving the media model marrying great television programming to great online content," said Yapp.

As we overcome the technological hurdles of today's usability, said Yapp, the potential is even greater. Downloads are a major barrier to adoption.

"We tested a browser-based virtual world with our partners at Gaia online," said Yapp. "The results were pretty amazing."

The site attracted more than 3 million unique visitors in 3 weeks. The average user spends 28 minutes per visit. The demand is there, but the technology is in the way. Research shows that the audience is making fewer distinctions between online interactions and real-world interactions.

"This summer we plan to launch vMTV 2.0," said Yapp, a platform linking the 2D sites to 2.5D experiences to full 3D virtual worlds.

4D TV is hybrid media: "We like to refer to it as social networking on steroids, with avatars serving as the touch point."

MTV has seen over 20,000 in-world clubs created by fans and almost 1000 in-world events per week. Yesterday vMTV announced the introduction of VooZoo; it's also rolling out Voki messages for avatars and new research.

"Viewers who watch The Hills on air and go online are 300% more likely to show positive feelings for that brand," said Yapp.

There are three rules for success:

1. Marketing campaigns must ring true and feel authetnic.
2. They must be transformative, turning users into brand ambassadors.
3. It must be ominpresent: more touchpoints and more screens.

For example, in a partnership with Ford Models and Elizabeth Arden to hunt for a virtual model, the site generated nearly 2 million pageviews and saw almost 250,000 model videos in-world.

Today MTV announced a program with Garnier, giving emerging musical artists a shot at presence on a variety of screens: TV, microsites, and vMTV.

The company is also launching a new world this summer with Vice Magazine, vLES. Indie artists can sign up and get exposure to fans around the world. In a contest to find new bands, the average user spent 40 minutes on the site looking at thousands of bands.

vLES recreates the real locations of the Lower East Side--"and the grime that gives the area character."

"If 2006 was the year media companies like ours saw the potential in virtual worlds and 2007 was the tipping point, 2008 and 2009 will see the mass explosion of mainstream consciousness," said Yapp. "The question is if your brand is ready."