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This article was taken from the February issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online
If you haven’t heard of Moshi Monsters (don’t worry – its core market is 7 to 11-year-olds), think souped-up Tamagotchi fused with puzzles and hooked up to a social network.
Players can join for free or pay for added extras, like being able to capture rare Moshlings (pets for their virtual pets) or access new parts of the world. Since Moshi Monsters launched in 2008, its Battersea-based developer Mind Candy has seen this model pull in millions of pounds in revenue.
The company’s 35-year-old CEO Michael Acton Smith, who founded e-tailer Firebox.com in 1998, puts the game’s success down to a few key ideas. Take the marketing strategy: "I’m a fan of businesses growing by word of mouth, the whole viral loop. I believe in focusing all your energy on making the product amazing so people naturally tell other people, rather than just creating something and putting all your budget into publicity." And adding the social features in April 2009, he says, catalysed a popularity boom that has won Moshi Monsters more than ten million users – good news for its backers, who include ad guru John Hegarty and dotcom investors Robin Klein and Tom Teichman.
Now, Smith wants to bring Moshi Monsters into the real world. This might be via a print-on-demand service that lets players create plush toys or trading cards of their particular monsters that then connect back into the game. "They could have codes associated with them that unlock something in the virtual world," he says. "Or, for example, you get the rare piece of treasure in the trading-card game and it has a unique code, you then go online and type in that code and that treasure comes alive."
With other toy companies also looking at real/virtual mash-ups, it’s a trend he wants to be on top of, so expect a monster invasion over the course of this year.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
