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Tucked away in Room 5 on the ambiguously named “Technology & Results” track at the Virtual Worlds Conference, Matt Palmer and Glenn Ginsburg presented a session titled “Stardoll: The Next Level of Engagement”. Stardoll not only represents the next level of user engagement, it also represents the state of the art in brand integration and virtual goods business models.
Stardoll’s Audience
Spreading Like Wildfire
Stardoll has over 16 million registered accounts and is adding 35,000 new accounts per day. But Stardoll doesn’t suffer from registered account bloat; the site reaches 7.8 million unique users per month. Those users generate 600 million page views over 35 million visits per month. Even at a modest CPM, that’s a whole lot of revenue, but Stardoll’s business doesn’t rely on banner ads. Instead, Stardoll relies on virtual good sales and integrated sponsorship. As result, they simultaneously achieve a higher revenue per user and provide a better user experience. But more about that later.
Perhaps you’re thinking that this growth must be the product of a massive, expensive, unsustainable media campaign? Not a chance, Stardoll hasn’t spent a dollar on paid media. Growth is driven by viral buzz and press exposure.
Global Appeal
Stardoll is an international phenomenon. It was started by a Finnish woman who wanted to share her passion for fashion with her friends and family. Today, the 60-70 employee company is headquartered in Stockholm, but commands a global audience (44% in the U.S., 46% in Europe, and 10% in Asia). The site has been translated into 15 languages and additional translations, such as Japanese, are on the way.
Girl Power
Not suprisingly, Stardoll’s audience is primarily female (93.1% female, 6.9% male). The site appeals at a universal level to its key demographic - a demographic that has been notoriously difficult to reach in a meaningful way. Stardoll is attaining scale without diluting their core audience; it has the highest concentration of teen girls of any online service.
In addition to teenage girls, the site has found a surprising audience - their mothers. 81% of mothers visit Stardoll weekly and 63% visit the site without their daughter. Co-viewership on that scale is virtually unheard of on the web.
Stardoll’s “Gameplay”
Who Knew Putting On Clothes Could Be So Much Fun?
At Microsoft Game Studios, we urged our first party developers to identify their game’s core fun as early as possible. Once that core fun is identified and refined, building a great game is actually pretty straightforward. For Halo, the core fun is aiming and shooting with a variety of well-balanced weapons. For Age of Empires, the core fun is establishing an efficient unit production pipeline.
The Stardoll team knows that their core fun is dressing a paper doll. Apparel is dragged off hangers and onto the paper doll. It can be placed anywhere on the screen, and that simple mechanic yields a good deal of fun. Want to give David Hasselhoff that much needed gangsta look? Drag his pants down low. Think it’s about time for Avril Lavigne to ditch that good girl look? Low rise pants and a little cleavage couldn’t hurt.
Stardoll builds on that core fun with an array of thousands of dress-up and make-up options. This gives Stardoll’s entire audience, from Goth girls to Glam chicks, a powerful way to express their unique identities.
From Solitary to Social
Stardoll’s dress-up function acts as the foundation for a broader experience that looks a lot like other virtual worlds. Stardoll users get their own space, called a Suite room, which they can decorate to suit their tastes. A new chat feature lets a user share the dress-up experience by inviting a friend to her Suite room.
The heart of Stardoll is StarPlaza, an online shopping mall that features Stardoll’s internal brands, such as Fudge and Pretty in Pink, and real world brands, such as DKNY. Stardoll also features an active aftermarket, called StarBazaar, where users and buy and sell items in their wardrobe. Basically, its a virtual vintage shop.
To date, all of the apparel and other virtual items in Stardoll have been designed by Stardoll’s creative team. StarDesign is a soon to launch feature that allows Stardoll’s audience to create their own fashions. The combination of StarPlaza, StarBazaar, and StarDesign will enable Stardoll’s users to participate in a rich virtual economy based on the fashion they love.
Stardoll’s virtual world features are complemented by features that are more commonly seen in social networks. Each user is given a profile page that looks a lot like a typical social networking profile page. However, due to the site’s younger demographic, the contents of the profile pages are limited. Girls can’t upload photos, but they can express themselves with images of their MeDoll and a variety of profile customization options. Stardoll also features Clubs that are similar to Facebook Groups. The Clubs feature was launched five months ago and there are already over 500,000 Clubs in the system.
Stardoll’s Business
Virtual Goods Done Right
Six figure real estate deals in Second Life and massive gold farming in World of Warcraft are what get the media’s attention when they talk about virtual goods. But Stardoll is the company that has flawlessly unlocked the power of the virtual goods business model.
The first key to Stardoll’s success is that they’ve found a genre of virtual items that are truly valuable to their audience. Celebrities and their fashion are an aspirational obsession for millions of people around the world, and Stardoll taps directly into the vein of that obsession. That same insatiable desire to look trendy in the real world translates, without skipping a beat, into the online world.
The second key to Stardoll’s success is that they provide an incredibly rich platform with which fashion brands can reach their demographic. As soon as fashions hit the runway or the retail shelf, they are available in Stardoll. If a girl thinks her MeDoll looks cute in that new pencil skirt from DKNY, she can run out that day and grab the very same skirt from her local brick and mortar mall. That same branding extends beyond just apparel. MeDoll make-up is provided under the Sephora brand and jewelry is based on designs from Heidi Klum’s jewelry collection.
All of this makes Stardoll one of the most powerful branding and lead generation tools thats ever been available to the fashion industry. They have even had consumers ask when Stardoll’s house brands, such as Pretty in Pink, will be available in brick and mortar stores.
Advertising Done Right
Stardoll doesn’t fall back on banner ads to augment their virtual goods business. Instead, they weave marketing messages into the features of the Stardoll experience and, as a result, create an advertising experience which is fun, engaging, and far more powerful than static banner ads.
For example, during a recent advertising campaign for Disney’s movie Enchanted, Stardoll took scenes, characters, and costumes directly from the movie and incorporated them into the world. As a result, Stardoll’s users could immerse themselves in the fiction of the movie and develop an attachment to the movie world before Enchanted even hit screens. In a unique twist on banner advertising, Stardoll offered a poster that users could hang in their Suites. That poster was hung in hundreds of thousands of Suites and generated millions of ad impressions. Stardoll’s approach to advertising generated everything from casual brand impressions to deep engagement in a way that added value to the audience’s experience and was elegantly integrated into the site’s core activities.
Stardoll provides a similarly rich branding platform to actors and music artists. Every celebrity featured on Stardoll has their own unique URL so that they can use their Stardoll presence as a promotional vehicle. In addition, Stardoll often runs explicit promotions for celebrities and musicians who are featured on their site. For example, Stardoll recently ran a contest where a member of their audience was flown to an Avril Lavigne concert and got to meet her backstage.
Stardoll’s approach to advertising highlights some important lessons:
- Audiences want advertising, but only for the brands they care about
- Audiences want to chose the brand messages they receive; they don’t want those messages pushed to them
- Just as in the real world, online brand associations are powerful personal identifiers
- Engagement is maximized when branding is woven into the core activities of the site
- Above all else, advertising should be fun for the user, not a distraction
A Model for the Future
Although virtual goods have resulted in extraordinary success in Asia, there has been some doubt as to whether virtual goods would become a mainstream business model in Europe and the U.S. When Cyworld recently close its doors in Europe, some people asked whether virtual goods would ever be relevant outside of Asia.
Stardoll is proof positive that virtual goods have a very promising future in Europe and the U.S. The Stardoll team has hit on a recipe that is uniquely engaging to their core demographic, and they are leveraging that recipe to provide maximum value to their users and their advertisers.
I’m glad that I stumbled into Room 5 at the Virtual Worlds Conference. Stardoll is defining the future of virtual goods today — and I’m amazed that they’ve flown under the industry radar for so long. Stardoll has captured the attention of 16 million girls around the world, but they don’t even have a Wikipedia page.
This article is primarily inspired by Virtual Worlds By The Numbers: Today and The Future, a session in the Marketing and Entertainment track of Virtual Worlds 2008 conference in New York City. The panel included Yuanzhe (Michael) Cai, the Director of Broadband & Gaming at Parks Associates; Jack Myers, President of Myers Publishing, LLC; and Joey Seiler, Editor of Virtual World News. It is part of a series on Virtual Worlds 2008.
In the face of significant competition, the biggest challenge for a new virtual world isn’t attracting new users, its retaining them from month to month. This challenge is particularly acute for virtual worlds targeting a younger demographic who have short attention spans and often migrate between worlds.
In the past, it seemed that the best practice for retaining virtual world users was to provide an open world that put the social aspects at the front and center of the experience. This reflects the notion that virtual worlds are open playgrounds rather than lightweight video games.
Today, there’s an evolution that is happening at both the micro level (i.e., for each individual player) and the macro level (i.e., for the industry as a whole). As the initial social novelty of a virtual world wears off, users seek out more structured activities to keep themselves entertained. Open virtual worlds, like Second Life, give players the tools to create their own structured activities. Tringo, a multiplayer game created by a resident of Second Life, is a great example of how a single user’s efforts enriches the overall world.
However, relying on users to keep themselves entertained can be a tricky business — especially when greener pastures are just a click away. In Designing a Gameless Game, Sulka Haro discusses how Sulake enriched the Habbo Hotel experience with game-like elements and structured activities. In some cases, this involved canonizing ad-hoc activities into formal mini-games and in other cases it involved adding lightweight mechanics that act like the jungle gym on a playground. These additions have helped Habbo achieve its impressive growth.
Michael Cai presented data that confirms today’s conventional wisdom that users want more game-like experiences from their virtual worlds. When users were asked why they participate in virtual worlds, they answered:
- 36% to play games
- 29% to escape real life
- 21% to create and manage an avatar
- 19% to interact with other members
But, as designers add game mechanics to virtual worlds, there’s a danger of virtual worlds losing their distinct identity and being subsumed into MMORPG’s. Jack Myers described what users want in a different way. He proposed that users don’t necessarily want gameplay, they want “curated experiences”.
That’s a brilliant way to describe what users want because its so much more open and appropriate than thinking in terms of gameplay alone. The curator of a user’s experience can take many forms: game mechanics, tutorials, community managers, virtual companions, other users, and even the user himself. And the experience can take many forms as well. It can be as simple as traversing the world or as sophisticated as creating parts of that world.
Ultimately, curated experiences are a way to suggest goals to a user and guide that user to achieving those goals. When a virtual world’s users don’t have goals, wanderlust sets in and that world risks losing its hard won audience. Like an accomplished museum curator, virtual world operators must act with a subtle hand to guide their audience to the most compelling parts of their collection.
Virtual World News announced today that TurboSquid has partnered with VastPark to distribute their collection of 3D assets via VastPark’s virtual worlds platform. Currently, TurboSquid acts in a capacity similar to stock photo agencies such as iStockphoto; they provide pre-fabricated 3D assets to game and virtual world developers. These developers use TurboSquid’s assets to augment their internal art teams in the same way that a book publisher might use stock photos to augment their internal art & design team.
However, the true value of a virtual good isn’t determined by the material from which it is made (in this case, the 3D geometry and textures that TurboSquid sells to developers), rather it is determined by the economy and social context within which it is sold. So an asset that TurboSquid sells for $300 in a B2B transaction may generate tens of thousands of dollars in B2C sales if it is used to create a rare, sought-after in-game virtual item.
Accordingly, TurboSquid seems to be shifting their strategy from a stock asset agency to a virtual goods provider. The first step in this shift is their partnership with VastPark. VastPark has been described as “the Ning of virtual worlds”. Using VastPark, anyone can create and share their own virtual world. With this partnership, VastPark’s users will be able to use TurboSquid’s extensive collection of assets to make their worlds richer and more immersive.
Matt Wisdom, CEO of TurboSquid, describes his company’s strategy:
“Ultimately where we’re trying to go is to take 3D to the consumer marketplace. We’ve done very well with sort of stock 3D and the professional marketplace. The big picture is when regular consumers are buying 3D, whether it’s clothes for their avatar or avatars or any representation they want to have online. We’re trying to connect the consumers to the artists in the virtual worlds.”"
With all the focus on the electronic entertainment industry, its easy to forget that the video game industry has a long lineage that extends back to tabletop games. Tabletop games consist of traditional board games (e.g., Monopoly), pen-and-paper role-playing games (e.g., Dungeons and Dragons), collectible card games (e.g., Magic: The Gathering), and miniature wargames (e.g., Warhammer).
Of course technical advances have thrust electronic entertainment, including video games and virtual worlds, to the forefront of the broader games industry, but the tabletop games segment still attracts both a large casual audience and a smaller, but highly dedicated hobbyist audience. The tabletop gaming industry’s largest trade show organization, Gen Con, draws an audience of over 27,000 consumers to its U.S. Gen Con event.
The collectible card packs and miniatures that form the nucleus of many hobbyist tabletop games is the closest real world analog to the in-game virtual items that are driving the growth of the virtual goods economy. We can gain a new perspective on how to create engaging virtual goods experiences by looking to the example set by collectible card games and miniature wargaming.
Collectibility
Tabletop game manufacturers take significant steps to enhance the collectibility of their trading cards and miniatures:
High Production Value. Each trading card or miniature is designed to have high production value and adhere to an overall artistic theme. This focus on design enhances collectibility by making each piece an “art object” that can be admired and collected based solely on its aesthetic value.
Collectible Sets. Trading cards and miniatures are often grouped into sets of varying size. At the highest level, Magic: The Gathering groups cards into categories based on five different colors. At a more granular level, Magic: The Gathering cards belong to dozens of different sets ranging from 92 cards to 422 cards. By grouping cards or miniatures into sets, tabletop manufacturers take advantage of the natural tendency for people to collect and complete groups of things.
Booster Packs. Collectible card games and collectible miniatures are often purchased as part of booster packs. Booster packs are sealed packages of cards or figurines that contain a small, random assortment of items (5-15 cards or 3-10 figurines). Purchasers of booster packs can generally expect to get at least one rare item per pack. As a result, these packs appeal to the same “lottery mentality” that makes slot machines so compelling.
Uncommon and Rare Items. The supply of trading cards and collectible miniatures is constrained by manufacturers in order to introduce scarcity into the market for their collectibles. Items are typically categorized as common, uncommon, or rare. Scarce items typically have a unique look and higher functionality than their more common counterparts which further increases their value. For example, there are less than 10 copies of the most rare Pokemon cards and these cards trade for thousands of dollars.
Deck Construction. The rulesets of many collectible card games and miniature wargames require players to construct a deck or army by selecting a limited set of items from the player’s full collection. Oftentimes players construct a gameplay deck of fifty to sixty cards from their collection of hundreds or thousands of cards. Players construct decks based on what they know about their opponent, the strategy they wish to employ, and any variants to the game’s rulesets that are in place. This dynamic encourages players to amass as large a collection of cards as possible so that they have the most strategic options when they go to play the game.
The collectible nature of trading cards and miniatures is a significant revenue driver for the tabletop games industry. As a result, tabletop game manufacturers can afford to give their rulesets away for free while generating a lot more revenue per customer by selling collectible content. Virtual world and MMO operators in Asia have already figured this out and now that model is beginning to be adopted outside of Asia.
Personalization
Personalization of miniature figures is an entire cottage industry unto itself. Miniatures are typical sold as cast metal figures that must be painted before they are ready for the tabletop battlefield. For some players, figure painting is an integral part of the hobby, and for others its a job best left to professional figure painters. For the most serious hobbyists, there are even miniature painting competitions.
Personalization goes beyond mere painting. Some hobbyists alter the appearance of their miniatures by swapping parts of their figures, such as heads and arms, with parts from other miniatures or part collections purchased as “conversion kits”. Many wargamers also spend considerable time designing and constructing the battlefield scenery on which the miniature wargames are played.
For many hobbyists, personalizing miniatures and battlefields is actually more fun than playing miniature wargames. Tabletop game manufactures figured out a long time ago that personalization adds an entirely new dimension of enjoyment to the gaming experience.
Functionality
At their heart, trading cards and miniature figures are simply game pieces like a rook in chess. They aren’t just decorative, they are functional. Trading cards in particular have detailed functionality that is described on the card itself - for example, a particular Pokemon card might be able to steal a card from the other player’s deck. Many virtual items, such as a sword in World of Warcraft, are also functional, but there are still lessons to be learned from tabletop games.
For example, scarce items are generally more powerful in both tabletop and video games. However, game balance issues are much more acute for tabletop games due to the need to support fair competition. In other words, a player with the most rare cards should never be the defacto winner in a Magic: The Gathering tournament. How then do collectible card games tackle this issue? Rare cards have more powerful and unique functionality, but they require significantly more resources to deploy (i.e., they are only an advantage if the player has the tactical wherewithal to find the right time to deploy the item).
This alludes to a second lesson from the collectible cards industry. Oftentimes, the functionality of different cards can be used in concert to get a greater combined effect. Players call these combo decks, and these combinations further enhance the collectible nature of trading cards.
So while MMOs have learned the basic lesson that functionality should be proportional to scarcity, there is fertile ground for innovation in thinking about how to balance the impact of rare items on the economy and how to leverage interactions between a player’s collection of virtual items.
Tradability
In many respects, tradability is a knock on effect of the collectable and functional nature of trading cards and miniatures. However, tabletop game manufacturers also take deliberate steps to enhance the tradability of their products.
Firstly, tabletop games are designed to be highly social. When players gather into ad-hoc groups or at formal events, trading naturally occurs. Secondly, manufacturers deliberately create an economy where one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. They do this by creating clusters of items that work well together (so that a player with an existing collection is naturally inclined towards that cluster) and ensuring that booster packs contain a range of items, including rares, from several different clusters. As a result, every time a player buys a booster pack, he may get items that he doesn’t want but are valuable to his friends.
Tabletop game manufacturers know that a vibrant trading community may not directly generate revenue, but it does enhance engagement with the manufacturer’s product and indirectly drives booster pack sales. Instead of prohibiting aftermarkets, MMO operators should be following the lead of their tabletop brethren and doing everything they can to foster an active aftermarket.
Lessons for the Electronic Entertainment Industry
There is currently a raging debate about whether the MMO industry will move to a free-to-play model with virtual goods driving revenue or whether monthly subscriptions will continue to be the modus operandi outside of Asia. As today’s game designers envision the future of MMOs, they will be well served by looking to the past for inspiration on how to create a virtual goods economy that both enhances the game experience and maximizes the revenue opportunity.
Update (3/2/2008): Take a look at Saga which bills itself as “world’s first collectible online real-time strategy game”. Instead of charging a monthly subscription fee, they generate revenue by selling booster packs of troops for $2.95.
