Lessons from In There

Electronic Gaming Business, March 24, 2004

Give the people tropical fantasy worlds to explore, small economies in which to get rich, and loads of chatty buddies, and they still want to play games. That is just one of many lessons we can glean from the first six months of the innovative online community There.com. Launched officially in October, the early experiences in this virtual fantasy island suggest directions that programmers and marketers might take in cultivating interactive entertainment for a broader audience.

Play's the Thing

While There.com has always offered ways users could compete in paintball contests and buggy races, the developers seem to have made the same simple discovery that many game companies are just beginning to see - people want to play simple, familiar games. When There.com started letting users set up card tables and invite others in to play Spades, it proved a tremendous hit. They added emotion and gestures to support the activity, like being able to slam cards down on a table in frustration. Simple card table play has quickly become the most popular activity in this world.

Card parlors have been springing up everywhere. "Cards was a result of listening to members letting us know that they wanted more activities," says Taura Null, vp marketing, There.com. There.com is demonstrating that interactive communities need close stewardship, that members want to engage with one another but need topics of conversation, events and occasions around which to create community.

In and Out

Going for the lower end of the tech range is important to There.com's future since the community is showing how online play can reach beyond the young male demo. According to There.com's latest demographics, "44% are women...about 55% of them are over 25," says Null. This also means that unlike many online RPGs the virtual community needs to be a spot where busy moms can pop in and out for short bits of play or conversation. "It's a U-shaped curve" of use, says Null. There is a large percentage of users coming in for extended periods, over three hours on a daily basis, and as large a group coming in for short periods, often under half an hour.

Users as Creators

In There.com between 30% and 40% of users are content providers, often making clothes for sale in the virtual economy, organizing events or building shops. About 70% of in-world sales in the virtual economy are for goods created by other members.

In a stunning example of virtual community, some There member organized a kind of Burning Man festival in which other users parked their trailers in an open area of the world and started building a massive avatar in effigy. "Members really get into the idea of planning, promoting and participating in really large events," says Null.

Housing Shortages and Organized Crime

The genius and bane of all virtual communities is their unpredictability, what users will want and how they act in ways no designer could anticipate. For a brief while a mafia emerged in the There world, where members took out contracts on one another and performed hits with paintball guns.

But the biggest problem has been housing. Apparently, virtual Therehoovians want to put down stakes, and there just isn't enough zoning regulation or 3D space to accommodate the demand. There.com programmers are working on a solution, but in the meantime "we are having a land preservation controversy," says Null because people are planting their houses in some of the most scenic areas of the world.

There.com is not giving away its early subscriber numbers. "We are very happy with the program," insists Null. "We launched in October and have already had tens of thousands come through. We are seeing really good growth in our paying subscribers."

There.com has taken a marketing approach that emphasizes distribution partnerships and PR more than advertising. Deals with ATI, Comcast and most recently iVillage target putting the software into the hands of new graphics cards owners, high speed access customers and the most popular women's network online. The company also just started an affiliate program in February which awards a bounty to Web sites that drive new paid members. According to Null, however, viral marketing seems to be the way to expand a community efficiently because 70% of new subscribers are referred by existing members. There.com also widened its market potential recently by announcing that an upgrade to the client software now supports a wider range of 3D graphics chipsets, including many motherboard-based Intel sets commonly found on value-priced PCs.

Otherwise, There.com's statistics support the notion that consumers are willing to embrace next-gen technology when they offer rich experiences. For instance, despite the company's early focus on providing satisfying speed and responsiveness to dial up users, 93% of There.com members are coming in via dial-up. Perhaps the days of needing to straddle those two worlds of slow and fast connections is behind us.

The most interesting development in There.com is the popularity of voice interaction. There.com allows for both typed and voice chat, and Null says that a large voice chat club has developed and a fair percentage of members are using their microphones to interact in-world. This bodes well for the headset capabilities of both PS2 and Xbox connected console gaming. Of course, there is a downside. "Some people have weekly karaoke contests," says Null.