February 2nd, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Connected Gaming | No Comments »
Yesterday we visited the Cross Media Games seminar, held by Ex Machina in Amsterdam where Soren Ammundsen kicked off the sessions with a speech about WataGame‘s prime community project. Go Supermodel is a community game aimed at young girls and driven on the emotional drift of presenting themselves to the world. During his presentation, Soren gave us a nice look inside the game which will launch next week for the Dutch public.
The Go Supermodel game is truly cross media. Consumers are triggered by playing the game on their mobile phone as well as on the web where both groups can match up. The game has several proven strong community features like chats and internal messaging. Since the game is about showing off, consumers will be earning fame among their fellow models which unlocks additional features.
Since we are talking about a cross media event, Soren addressed the cross media possibility of the community as well. Together with Aller international, WataGame brings the game alive in print media to attract new players. WataGame is also looking for broadcasters to pick up on the format.
Go Supermodel has a young target audience. The main group of players is between 12 and 17 years old, but the database holds entries starting at age 7. The game is played both on web and on mobile. Currently, Go Supermodel has 334.000 registered players over both platforms which trigger 39 million page views a month.
When describing the target audience, which is mainly female, Soren shows to be convinced in building games for girls: “if you design mobile games for girls, they will play them.” Go Supermodel attracts its consumer base by targeting emotions which are important for young females. They are in the stage where they transform from young girls to actual adults. Showing themselves off is sometimes hard and means facing embarrassment if you don’t fit in. Go Supermodel however gives consumers a safe place to do so.
The revenues inside the game come from a variety of sources. Consumers have an in game currency called Supercash which they buy via SMS. Unlike Second Life, Supercash is non-refundable. The micro payments are bringing in 12% of the revenue. Mobile ads are worth 3% while web based ads bring in 41% of the revenues. Product placement however seems to be the primary source of revenues at 44%. A good example is for example offering virtual magazines that can be purchased. For the Dutch launch, the magazine "Girlz" will be available to the players.
