Nickelodeon plans to develop a raft of virtual worlds this year for entertainment and online properties it already owns, along with enhancements to some existing worlds and some new online game projects.
The Viacom-owned kids’ entertainment brand will come out with a new virtual environment for fans of its “SpongeBob SquarePants” animated cartoon, featuring games, avatars and social networking features built around the series.
In addition, Nickelodeon will launch a new virtual destination, “World of Neopia,” which expands the scope of the popular NeoPets virtual world site that Nickelodeon acquired in a June 2005 purchase. A reported 45 million NeoPets members currently adopt and care for virtual pets and play Macromedia games, viewing selected ads in the process. While NeoPets.com is designed to be safe for kids, research suggests that more than half the registered members are over 13.
The “World of Neopia” enhancement will open out the fundamental NeoPets experience to include community features, in-world chart and greater customization. Players will be able to use their NeoPets to explore new areas of the game’s world.
“‘World of Neopia’ will provide our loyal fans with greater interactivity and connection to the NeoPets they love and will attract a whole new generation of users,” said Kyra Reppen, senior vice president and general manager of NeoPets in a statement. “We’re taking the core fundamentals of NeoPets—the game play, the deep, engaging experiences, and the community—and bringing those to life in a more interactive rich experience.”
Neopets.com also unveiled plans to launch PetPetPet habitats, a desktop application built around the pets that users’ NeoPets have—for instance, fleas or other insects. The desktop widget will link directly back to the NeoPets Web site.
The new SpongeBob and NeoPets worlds will be developed by the Nickelodeon/MTVN kids and family group’s Virtual World Studios.
“For our audiences, virtual worlds are the convergence of gaming, entertainment and community online, and by announcing these new worlds, we are ensuring that our content pipeline is going to remain fresh and vibrant,” Steve Youngwood, executive vice president of digital media for Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family group, said in a statement.
The network also announced that it expects to launch a new virtual destination tentatively called “Monkey World,” an original concept not linked to any of its current online sites, including Nicktropolis.com, a 3-D Web playground the company launched online in January 2007. “Monkey World” will reportedly be a massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) and social networking site.
News sources report that the new worlds built by Nickelodeon’s Virtual World Studios will operate under a mixed business model that combines elements of free play with subscriber-only enhanced features. Nicktropolis.com, currently entirely free, will reportedly migrate to a hybrid free-and-fee model in 2009 under which subscribers will have the chance to personalize their avatars.
Nicktropolis will also add new user environments in the next few months, including a comic book store, a pirate-ship themed area and a region built around a new Nickelodeon series “The Mighty B,” co-created by Amy Poehler from “Saturday Night Live.” The company will also launch a regional version of Nicktropolis in the U.K. later this year.
Last summer, Nickelodeon announced that it would invest $100 million in casual games by the end of 2009. More recently in March, the network revealed plans to develop and host 1,600 new games on its extended network of child-friendly Web sites this year. Apart from the main Web sites for Nickelodeon and Nick Jr., that online network includes NeoPets.com, Nicktropolis.com, Shockwave.com, and AddictingGames.com, which Viacom acquired when it purchased Atom Entertainment in August 2006.
MTV Networks, also a unit of Viacom, currently operates 10 virtual worlds for its TV properties, including “Virtual Laguna Beach”, which won an Emmy Award in January 2008 for “outstanding achievement in advanced media technology for creation of nontraditional programs or platforms.”
