Webcarzz on Building Virtual Worlds for Boys

Webcarzz  announced yesterday that Nique Fajors had joined the company as Executive Vice President to oversee marketing, sales and licensing. Not much has been said about Webcarzz since the company announced $4 million in funding in August. At the time it wasn't even clear exactly what sector the company was aiming at, but I spoke yesterday with Fajors, who most recently served as VP of Marketing at Capcom, and CEO Chris Bergstresser, who last worked as SVP at Atari, about where they were headed.

"I think the most important thing is that it is a car-themed casual MMO specifically targeted at boys 6-12, with the primary target being 9-12," explained Bergstresser. "The idea came around from looking at the marketplace and having a lot of nephews who love on line games but seem to be dedicated to consoles. I was asking why, and they said that other than Miniclip or AddictingGames, there really wasn't a destination for them."

"I said they had Puzzle Pirates and Club Penguin, and they just said that was all for girls really," Bergstresser continued. "We started digging in on demographics, and we were finding that truly indeed they're heavily female. When we were looking at why boys don't go or just aren't interested, we found that the one thing boys really like is measurable objectives, like having your high score posted or badges or things like that."

Activity is a driving force for Webcarzz. The company describes it as a large virtual world split into different cities. The different zones are filled with games, but the environment itself will allow for even more options.  Users can join in games of hide and seek or tag with friends or simply play by themselves in waypoint tag or driving around.

"Instead of just having games and saying, 'here are the rules and the linear path,' we took the approach of looking at how boys like to play and interact with one another," said Bergstresser. "We kept coming back to how they interact on a playground. On the playground, you have a lot of emerging gameplay  going on and also socialization. We wanted the environment to be more about emerging gameplay where you could take your car and play. Number two is interacting with the environment. You can bump into buildings and they wobble, bump into them again and the wall down, you can climb up the buildings, make your car do barrel rolls and flips. There are multiple gameplay options so you can combine capture the flag with these trick components."

Of  course there are still options for customization and personalization. Users will be able to build their own cars, molding them from shapes into wholly unique creations that they can move into the play environment, promises Webcarzz. Once users are in the world, they'll be able to work on the cars in their garages and customize them further.  That offers opportunity for the shared creation and socialization of other virtual worlds, but the company is unsure exactly how boys will react.

"As it relates to the game, I think one thing that's going to be a learning lab for us is the garage," explained Fajors . "The garage is the place where we want people to congregate to look at each other's cars, there's an opportunity to leave messages, but we're not sure how the garage is going to morph as a clubhouse or a place to gather before a race. It'll be interesting to see how the boys take the tools we've provided or the playground and go with it."

Webcarzz is currently in pre-alpha, launching to alpha next week, and has been testing with around 60 kids, said Bergstresser, who have had access from early builds through the current set up. The group ranges from 6-14 and has been an active part in shaping the company's understanding of what Webcarzz should be, from providing activities to socialize around to making it clear that you should be able to drive up buildings to how cars should crash.

"There are certain things that we wouldn't have thought about, me being a 41-year-old male," said Bergstresser. "For example, we had made it so that cars can't stop in the middle of the road and block everyone, so you have a pass through. A lot of kids have said, 'I just passed through the car and it didn't make noise and it seemed impersonal.' We never thought of that, but it seemed important to them to have some sort of feedback. Another point was the idea of crashing. We got feedback that kids love to crash, but don't love to crash. They like hitting the buildings and having a controlled crash where they're bumping stuff and interacting, but they don't like it where you lose control and are sliding and can't get up to the high speed."

Business and Revenue

Webcarzz will operate on a variety of revenue streams. The world itself will be free to play. As users play though the game and participate in activities, they develop skills, earn achievements, and can upgrade their cars on a performance-level just like the paid members. Subscribers, though, will gain access to more personalization options.

"Let's call it vanity stuff," said Bergstresser. "The reason we have the dual economy with the earned currency and the paid membership currency, if you look at some of the failures of Kart Rider, they didn't take in some of the sensibilities of the Western market on earning and buying. If you just use your money to buy the best engine instead of earning it, people get frustrated."

Subscribers will also be able to expand their car collections and modify their garages in unique ways, like adding the ability to host car shows or add other community features. They'll also be exposed to different levels of advertising.

"We embrace advertising," said Fajors. "There's a right way and a wrong way. We're really focused on sponsorship opportunities and integration. When someone's making their cars, they'll have the opportunity, like Nascar, to put decals on their car from real-world brands. When you enter the race tracks integrated throughout the cities, they'll have typical race track banners around the courses. If you are not a paid member, then you also have more traditional banner ads, whether that's interstitial or integrated into parts of gameplay. It was important for us that we have a diverse range of revenue streams supporting the game."

Fajors said the company is already reaching out to major brands, though he couldn't disclose any specific relationships. Even amidst concern that marketers are cutting budgets for experimental advertising, including for virtual worlds, Webcarzz reports strong interest.

"Let's just say there are some key brands that we've been talking to that have some very strong interest in specifically reaching out to kids, especially in our demographic," said Bergstresser. "Some of them feel they're a little hard to reach other than in television. And even that's declining in effectiveness, so we've found. Even with the economic downturn, you're finding people a little more conservative, but also experimental and trying to find ways to reach out to a broader audience. We're finding in our discussions that there's a sense of openness we haven't seen before."

Some of the backlash against virtual worlds advertising was originally directed at broad campaigns in open environments. As a result, marketers predicted more success in niche environments.  Fajors is seeing similar responses to Webcarzz' targeted audience and its integrated advertising.

"The interesting thing is that the number of brands that are keenly interested in building relationships with the audience we're trying to reach is much higher than you'd expect," he said. "There are a number of brands that you may consider adult brands, but they share concerns of how to get in front of the boys in this segment. I think one of the reasons is the uniqueness of the proposition and that there aren't a lot of alternatives. People look at the sites targeting this group, and you reference the quality factor and the appropriateness of interacting with the audience. With things like the decals where consumers are self-selecting to interact."

There aren't all that many alternatives. While the youth virtual worlds market is booming, much of the activity is either unisex or targeted at girls. There are a few more car worlds on the way, though, including Disney's own upcoming world based on the movies "Cars." Bergstresser is unconcerned, though.

"Disney's Disney and they have lots of money to throw at it, but it's not going to make the product similar to ours," he said. "We have something very unique. Cars is about anthropomorphizing your vehicle. There's a human element. The things I've seen, it's essentially a Club Penguin environment with anthropomorphized cars. There's a little racing, but nothing along the lines we're talking about. It's about the car and expression is through the car. There's a definitive difference, and I think there's room for both."

Instead, Fajors says more competition is coming from the toy companies, as more and more are packaging their toys with connections to a virtual world. With Webcarzz focus on the pure digital experience and background in games combined with the toy companies' split attention, he finds it a different market as well. Accordingly, while neither Fajors or Bergstresser would rule out a retail component down the line, it's not a priority.

As Webcarzz moves into a closed alpha next week, it will have an early release of its car creator. The company then plans to move into a closed beta in mid-December with an open beta following around January 15 and a full launch in Q1 2009 with an eye on mid-to-late February. 

While everything's been fairly stealthy thus far, expect to see a big push ahead of time.

"We're excited that we think we're breaking new ground in the space. We're working really hard to combine the strengths of online virtual worlds as it relates to online viral marketing and building up the interest for the product and trying to marry that a little with more traditional entertainment approaches," said Fajors. "There haven't been a lot of companies that have effectively married those. There's some magic if you can get that buzz and word of mouth supplemented by smart marketing."