Today Ironstar Helsinki, the parent company of mobile-oriented microtransaction virtual world MoiPal, announced that MySQL creator and founder Michael “Monty” Widenius had become one of its investors. The investment comes through Widenius's Open Ocean company which seeks out starts-ups focusing on disruptive technologies and tries to help them find financial success. The amount of the investment or the intended purpose of the funds is currently undisclosed.
“I am excited to invest in the MoiPal world and help it grow even
faster in the future,” says Widenius. “I have always been interested in
virtual worlds and seen how the communities around them continue to
grow. The thing that really stands out to me with MoiPal, is the way it
combines the social networking aspects similar to Facebook, with the
caring of your online character, like you do with Tamagotchis or in
games like Sims. I am looking forward to adding educational aspects
into the game, so that players learn useful things while they play.
When you combine this with open interfaces and engage developers out
there to expand our world in their own directions, I think we can
achieve something really great!”
MoiPal claims a current userbase of about 120,000 people. It stands out among the crowded youth virtual world scene in several key respects, notably its aggressive push for branded virtual goods as a selling point.
MoiPal has partnered with several musical artists, offering goods based on individual bands within the world and promoting the game through artist Web and MySpace pages. Artists can also organize concerts within the world's hub, Pal City. In the future, MoiPal will launch a service that allows bands to create their own merchant accounts in MoiPal and begin crafting their own virtual goods for release to users, who can then buy directly from the band.
“I found it really funny, when I heard that Lordi performed a virtual
concert in MoiPal for thousands of players wearing virtual Lordi
masks," said Widenius. “I can envision this to be a major channel to
launch youth brands in the future. When we reach a million users, I
would hope we could launch for instance the H&M spring collection
simultaneously in MoiPal and in the real world. Then youngsters could
buy the same trendy outfit, both for themselves and for their Pal.”
“Teens are one of the most elusive audiences for marketers to reach.
The success of MoiPal proves that with the right offering users can
have fun for hours while meeting their friends, playing games and
making new friends in a safe environment. This context provides
frequent opportunities for creating immersive brand experiences, which
the users find relevant and entertaining," said Moaffak Ahmed,
Chairman of the board of Ironstar Helsinki.
MoiPal's other major mark of distinction is its emphasis on catering to the needs of mobile users in an open, non-proprietary way. While MoiPal can be played comfortably from a PC, many key elements of the user interface, gameplay, and payment options were designed with mobile handsets in mind. MoiPal is also opening up its APIs outside developers can choose to use MoiPal animations and graphics as part of their own Web implementations. Later this year, MoiPal will also introduce an Open Social Application that will allow third party developers to build extensions onto the MoiPal virtual world.
“We are thrilled to have Monty on board," says Joakim Achrén, founder
of Ironstar Helsinki. “The investment will give us a stable ground for
growing MoiPal to the top league. We believe that Monty’s wisdom will
bring unique knowledge to the company. Ironstar supports open platforms
and will focus on becoming the main open environment amongst teen
virtual worlds.”
We've reached out to Achrén for information about the investment and MoiPal's plans and will update when we hear more.
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