Ekoloko, a new virtual world aimed at 7-to-12-year-olds from the aptly named Virtual Tweens, is prepping to launch into public beta early next week. Ekoloko, in alpha since July, is part of the trend of green-themed virtual worlds for youth, but one twist that sets it apart is its dual-language nature. The world is already localized for English and Hebrew (Vtweens is based in Israel), and when users opt for canned text messages over open chatting, their conversations are automatically translated.
"In Israel, the Hebrew part is a huge deal at this age group as opposed to Club Penguin where they're not really chatting, to really understand the world," said CEO Guy Spira.
"It's a world with a full storyline," Spira continued. "The world has good characters and bad characters, and the kids are supposed to team up with the good guys and deal with the bad guys. The content is all about the environment. The kids don't feel like it's an educational site—they have an individual path where they can advance and make achievements and save the world. There's a social path where they interact with their friends, chat, make groups, etc. While they do that they learn about good values and helping the community."
In each screen an NPC offers users guidance, advice, or quests to go on and solve, but a lot of the interaction is simply based on users themselves. While helping to save the world through missions (featuring casual games and trivia) earns characters points towards leveling up and earning the ability to wear new clothes, users can also give each other points or take them away, one per day, towards leadership skills. As they move on, users will eventually be able to organize groups and new modes of working together.
"It's one way we have to increase communication between kids. In the alpha we already saw lots of activity around it," said Spira. "It's basic for us to have the community interaction later on."
Other games are scattered throughout the environment. The world is littered with garbage, which users can pick up and deposit in recycling bins (or shoot hoops with) to earn the virtual currency. Throughout the tour I found myself picking up as many cans and bottles as possible for a little recycling basketball--it's simple, but addictive. The goal is to make environmentalism and community values fun.
"Every adventure is a pretty attractive Flash game. We take games that are market proven, give them our graphics and look and feel, allow kids to play with their characters, which is very important because there's the huge emotional attachment, and tie it into the story. At the end of the day, kids are playing games they like and on the way they absorb some knowledge," said Spira. "We've done some research with an external company and asked them to tell us what the kid conveys to them, what type of kids need to be there, and asked some knowledge questions about content that we communicated, and they actually knew it."
Business
Virtual Tweens raised $1 million in a seed round with private U.S. investors this July, which Spira says is smart money due to the strategic value each investor brings. He expects to launch the beta, work towards more partnerships, build a community with a live launch planned for February, and raise one more round to bring the company to profitability.
"The idea for us is to find partners with significant reach in our target market and create that critical mass," he explained. "Based on that we plan to employ a lot of viral techniques. In Israel where we're going to do the initial effort in terms of marketing—it's our home market and things are easier—we're talking now with several of the leading portals for kids. The deal is we give them content and an opportunity in the future to make money out of the community, and they bring the initial traffic. They are very, very positive."
Virtual Tweens plans to expand through similar partnerships in additional markets, but with a focus on the less crowded zones. While Israel has a high penetration rate for games like World of Warcraft or Maple Story and virtual worlds like Club Penguin, Spira says actually being localized in Hebrew is a huge advantage, particularly in social worlds that emphasize communication.
"If you go into even big countries like Germany, Spain, Turkey, Portugal, Italy, the amount of competition is several levels under the US. The markets are huge, but either they're not from the Far East or English-speaking, so the competition is significantly lower and the demand is significantly high," said Spira. "It's not that we're afraid of competition. We think we have a really, really good, unique product, but right now as an early stage company, we need to spend our marketing money in the smartest way possible."
The current plan is to launch the live version of Ekoloko as a free-to-play with virtualw orld with subscription options. Later on, Spira hopes to treat Ekoloko like any other popular kids brand and move from the virtual world into other media.
"We feel we're one of the only social worlds with actual content and characters and a real way to create a brand," he explained. "We believe in the characters in the world and the people themselves and the story and the interaction; we're going to be able to create our own brand. Once you have a brand, taking it into offline sales, like merchandise and accessories, or other platforms, like mobile, or creating other stories or animations around it--the expansion is on our side."
Amazing website, I hope it succeeds, they (and we) deserve it!
Posted by: Gali Meiri | October 09, 2008 at 09:21 AM