Disney posts

What does Disney buying Marvel have to do with us?

by Shawn Schuster Aug 31st 2009 at 4:30PM

Filed under: Super-hero, Business models, MMO industry, New titles, News items, Comics, Marvel Universe Online

Earlier today, it was announced that Disney is buying Marvel for $4B, divided among the current Marvel shareholders. This type of news is nothing groundbreaking, and it probably doesn't affect you, as an MMO gamer, right?

You're mostly right. Disney's purchase of Marvel will certainly affect the enormous hold that Marvel has on general gaming now (in a good way, we hope), but don't forget there's also a Marvel MMO in the works. When we asked Gazillion Entertainment how this purchase will affect their Marvel Universe Online project, we were told that all they can relay at this point is a quote from Lowell Singer, Disney's senior vice president of investor relations: "On the video game front, Marvel has some smart licensing agreements with some of the best video game manufacturers in the business. As these licensing deals expire we have the luxury of considering what's best for the company and the products."

Gazillion also reminded us that their MMO licensing deal with Marvel is until 2019.

Tags: disney, disney-interactive, marvel, marvel-universe-online

Disney Fantasy Online becoming a reality in Spring 2009

by Alexis Kassan Dec 9th 2008 at 6:00PM

Filed under: New titles, News items, Kids

Last we heard, Disney was interested, but not planning, to come up with their own themed MMO. Now we are told that Mickey and friends are heading to China to star in a new game in Spring 2009 - this from the news that NetDragon and Disney have teamed up to launch Disney Fantasy Online. The Disney cast of characters are set to play NPCs in a game of high adventure and romance where players can quest and level their way through campaigns.

The dynamic sounds similar to that of Hello Kitty Online, where players are able to farm, build, and raise pets in a themed environment without actually being the well-known characters. According to NetDragon, additional expansions and content will be released often to keep the game fresh. No word yet on whether/when DFO might be available outside of China, but we will stay on top of it for you.

Tags: disney, disney-fantasy-online, disney-online, disney-online-studios, kids, kids-mmo, netdragon, new-releases, new-titles

Massively.com giveaway: Pirates of the Caribbean Online skulls

by Michael Zenke Nov 4th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Historical, Contests, Pirates of the Caribbean Online

Arr me hearties! It be time once again for another of Massively.com's giveaways, and this time around we've got a pair of unique sculptures on offer! They're former shipmates of mine, but they'll still do some work ... as paper weights! Harrr Harr Harr! They were made up all good and proper for the first anniversary of Disney Online's Pirates of the Caribbean Online. Each of these skulls is marked with dark magics and is accompanied by a scroll explaining how these mates o' mine met their fate. We estimate their retail value to be about ... arr ... $70 all told.

All you'll have to do to enter, my swashbuckling swillhound, is leave a comment on this here post! Why don't you let us know what yer favorite pirate expression is? This blogger is a big, big fan of the traditional YARRR! You'll need to comment before 7:00 AM EST Thursday, November 6th, me bucko. You can only enter once per person, and after the contest closes we'll ship out these shipmates to two randomly-selected skulltenders! Give us at least a week to ship out this massive pile of booty. To win you must be age 18 or up (Shanghai-ing age). Plus ye must be a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec). For full eligibility details, we suggest you read our official rules, ye scallywag! Good luck, and keep your eyes on the treasure!

Psst, did you know we're giving away additional treasure all week from Twitter? You can only win if you follow us! Yarr!

Tags: disney, featured, massively-giveaways, pirates-of-the-caribbean-online, potc

The Daily Grind: Pancakes?

by Kyle Horner Aug 6th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: MMO industry, Opinion, The Daily Grind

Pancakes, just about everyone loves 'em. They're deliciously light and fluffy and can be sweetened with everything from blueberries to chocolate chips. Just like their flat 'n tasty counterparts, Pancake MMOs are light, fluffy and sweet all over. Hello Kitty Online, Go Pets, Neopets, Free Realms, Club Penguin and the near bouquet-size of franchise-based MMOs coming from Disney seem to be piling up on our proverbial plates. These MMOs can taste great and do tend to venture into fun, experimental game design territory. However, are they also like actual pancakes in that too many will cause everyone to grasp their collective stomachs and painfully moan, "Too many pancakes!" or can we stomach endless amounts of soft, tasty sweetness?

Tags: club-penguin, disney, flapjacks, free-realms, gopets, hello-kitty-online, hko, neopets, pancake-mmo, pancakes, the-daily-grind

Pirates of the Caribbean Online announces privateering

by Shawn Schuster Jul 29th 2008 at 9:00AM

Filed under: Historical, Game mechanics, Patches, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Free-to-play

Yarr! Privateering has come to Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online, so get your eye patches and poofy shirts ready for action! This new feature is sure to shiver your timbers (ok, ok, we'll stop), as it introduces a faction-based way to earn gold and reputation points for players.

This new feature will be accessible to both Basic and Unlimited Access players by siding with either the Frenchman Pierre or the Spaniard Garcia. These Pirate Lords will challenge players with quests where you can earn your very own French or Spanish tattoo. Plus, if you would like to learn more about privateering, you can check out their new Lore Journal The Rise of the Privateer on the PotCO website.

Tags: disney, faction, pirate, pirates, pirates-of-the-caribbean-online, potco, privateering, reputation

E308: Disney Interactive Studios shows off Club Penguin on the DS

by Shawn Schuster Jul 15th 2008 at 3:45PM

Filed under: Expansions, Game mechanics, Club Penguin, Virtual worlds, Kids

At E3 today, Disney Interactive Studios announced their lineup of new titles releasing later this year. All of these titles were developed with family in mind, and most are exclusive to the console market. Yet, in relation to MMO news, they've also shown off their new Club Penguin expansion which will be released for the Nintendo DS.

Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force will introduce kids to all new adventures in the Club Penguin world. They will be able to connect with friends via DGamer, Nintendo Wi-Fi connection and ad hoc play. They will be able to wirelessly connect with the existing virtual Club Penguin world using the Nintendo DS to unlock special features and upload coins to their online penguin account. Elite Penguin Force is set to release just in time for the holiday season later this year.

Tags: club-penguin, disney, disney-interactive, e3-2008, e308, kids, nintendo-ds

Toontown Online makes it harder for griefers

by Robin Torres Jul 6th 2008 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Culture, Opinion, Toontown Online, Browser, Kids

We were swimming in the apartment community pool this weekend and were unfortunate enough to be there when a kid was practicing his griefing skills. He was about 10 years old and was doing the standard stuff: throwing trash in the pool and blaming other kids, stealing the other kids' pool toys, and of course calling everyone "gay" when they left the pool and took their toys with them.

We see griefers of all ages in the MMOs we play and the kids games are no exception. We've discussed before how games like Toontown Online take steps to prevent griefing with canned chat phrases and passworded friend features. The worst thing a toon in Toontown can say to you is "You stink!" which is really not very hurtful. But it is rather bothersome when it is spammed at you until you are able to escape the griefer, say by going home and gardening. .

Tags: children, disney, griefers, kids, toontown-online

The Pernicious Privateers of Pirates of the Caribbean Online

by Brenda Holloway Jul 4th 2008 at 10:30AM

Filed under: Historical, Events, in-game, PvP, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, News items, Kids

Arr! Closer come ye, for I have risen with news of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online!

Be ye an honest captain or be ye a pirate, be there one amongst ye who can clear the seas of the scum that floats upon 'er? Aye, I be talking about Privateering! Turn your sheets into the wind and lash the wheel tight and bring yourself to Isle D'Etable De Porc if ye be friendly to the French, or Isla De La Avaricia if the Spanish have y'r loyalty. Seek ye there crew, provisions and ammo fer the fighting ahead! And may the wind be ever at your back but pass over the sails of yer enemy! Privateering only be available to Unlimited Access members on the Test Server, but it be coming soon enough to the Live servers.

I wager there be more news after yon break. Click ye through to see thar th' rest.

Tags: disney, events, historical, kids, news-items, pirates-of-the-carribbean-online, potco, pvp

38 Studios welcomes Thom Ang as Director of Art

by Samuel Axon Jun 27th 2008 at 10:00PM

Filed under: MMO industry, New titles, News items

Noted industry artist Thom Ang has started work at 38 Studios as Director of Art, according to a press release from the company. He has joined company founder and pro baseball player Curt Schilling, comic book artist Todd McFarlane, and fantasy author R.A. Salvatore to work on Copernicus, a secretive MMO project.

Ang has previously been employed by THQ, where he worked on several titles including Disney adaptations, and Electronic Arts, where he worked on the Medal of Honor series. He's just another of many samples of veteran blood the studio has attracted.

Details about Copernicus are hush-hush. We know 38 Studios is using the BigWorld and Unreal engine technologies. There have been hints in interviews about the direction the project is taking. That's about it, though.

Tags: 38-studios, bigworld, copernicus, curt-schilling, disney, ea, electronic-arts, medal-of-honor, ra-salvatore, thom-ang, thq, todd-mcfarlane, unreal

Blackstar environment art makes our sci-fi hearts melt

by Kyle Horner Jun 19th 2008 at 4:30PM

Filed under: New titles, News items, Blackstar

Spacetime Studios has certainly been hard at work developing their tasty looking sci-fi MMO Blackstar. How do we know this? Well, RPG Vault recently got a look at three pieces of concept art for the game and they all look exquisite. It's just refreshing to see a sci-fi space MMO with such lovingly saturated color. It's a shame that our header images are only so big, otherwise we'd plaster these pieces of art all over the place like a young tween girl obsessed with Disney Channel personalities.

Each of the three images are accompanied by some intriguing descriptions of the harrowing vistas seen. We highly recommend reading them if you're hankering for a digital bite of what will surely be even more amazing in rendered form. Obviously, we here at Massively fully support the design, development and proliferation of non-fantasy MMOs. While do we love our swords n' sorcercy -- as its known to be called by geeks of certain hailings -- there's a powerful cry of joy that spreads from the Massively HQ whenever a sci-fi MMO as promising as Blackstar continues unabated.

Tags: blackstar, concept-art, disney, disney-channel, fantasy, rpg-vault, sci-fi, spacetime-studios

"Free-To-Play" model pulls in a dollar per user in the west

by Seraphina Brennan Jun 16th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Business models, News items, Free-to-play, Casual, Virtual worlds

One dollar per user per month may not sound like a huge revenue for any game, but when you start thinking in the terms of the user base of games like Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and RuneScape you start to realize how much a dollar is really worth.

Lightspeed, a venture capital firm, recently did a few calculations to come up with the figures of how much revenue is generated by a single user in today's most successful free-to-play, microtransaction supported MMOs. What they came up with is a pretty interesting look at how much a "successful" MMO will make. For example, Habbo Hotel pulls in around $1.30 on average for each of their active users per month, while RuneScape pulls in 84 cents per active user per month.

The one figure that stood out from the pack was Second Life, which pulled in 9 dollars per user per month thanks to things like land ownership and the premium subscription that land owners have to buy to be able to own property. Even with Second Life in the mix, it's interesting to see that these types of MMOs don't make much per user, yet still can pull in great amounts of revenue by entertaining huge player bases.

[Via Kotaku]

Tags: club-penguin, disney, economy, free-to-play, habbo-hotel, jagex, kotaku, lightspeed, linden-lab, microtransaction, runescape, second-life, sl, subscription-based

Disney merges their internet and games groups

by Shawn Schuster Jun 6th 2008 at 9:30AM

Filed under: Business models, Events, real-world, MMO industry, Casual, Virtual worlds, Kids

As we reported last month, Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom has closed up shop after several years of operation. This is said to be in anticipation of their upcoming virtual worlds, including one based on the movie Cars and one on Tinker Bell. Yet recently, we've heard a new piece of information in the Disney business plan puzzle.

What they're working on is a merger between the Walt Disney Internet Group and the Disney Interactive Studios, effective immediately. This new group, entitled the Disney Interactive Media Group will be led by Steve Wadsworth, previously the president of the Disney Internet Group. It will cover all of their gaming endeavors from console to virtual worlds, which seems to be a positive step towards the company's focus on online gaming for kids.

Tags: disney, interactive, kids, merger, virtual-magic-kingdom, walt-disney

Club Penguin's screen-size conundrum

by Chris Chester May 21st 2008 at 9:00PM

Filed under: Club Penguin, Opinion, Browser, Casual, Kids

For those not keeping up on their Club Penguin developments (and why not, it's a fairly amusing and eminently kid-friendly flash-based browser game), they've recently implemented a new "Big Screen" version of the client. The gameplay area used to be about 760x480 and now clocks in by default at a robust 910x575 (rough estimates using our Print Screen-fu), allowing us to see our online penguin counterparts in greater detail and clarity than ever before.

Much to our surprise however, there was not universal praise for this graphical upgrade. Mesagirl over at Ten Ton Hamster lamented the larger size playing field, saying higher resolutions are for the elderly and that the bigger size gives her headaches after extended play. They ran a little straw poll to get readers' thoughts on the subject, and the vast majority of them agreed with us that the bigger size is a positive development. It's a moot point anyway, since you just change the screen size with a push of a button. You don't hear most people complaining about the default resolutions for games like Age of Conan; the same rules apply here in this blogger's mind.

Tags: club-penguin, default-resolution, disney, Disney-games, kids, mesagirl, resolution, ten-ton-hamster

Are Club Penguin's days of growth numbered?

by Chris Chester May 21st 2008 at 7:00PM

Filed under: Business models, MMO industry, Club Penguin, Opinion, Free-to-play, Browser, Casual, Kids

An interesting report on social media by the Nielsen group recently found that Club Penguin, the kid-friendly browser-based MMO acquired by Disney last year for a robust $350 million, may be plateauing or even declining in growth in the face of newer, more competitive social media experiences. While the Nielsen methodology is never made expressly clear (and no direct competitors managed to crack the Top 10), the report does indicate that using the same methodology, they found a 250% growth rate year-over-year just last August.

MMO vet Raph Koster is less than surprised by this development, attributing the slight decline in unique visitors more to the increased competition in that space, rather than any specific detriment in Club Penguin itself. Raph speculates that we'll continue to see the market fragment as more kiddie MMOs enter the market. And, judging my store shelves these days, they're coming in droves. While he seems to be of the opinion that the days of these niche MMOs competing in the same arena as MySpace and Facebook are over, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of money to be made and kids to be entertained.

Tags: casual, club-penguin, disney, facebook, kiddie, market-fragmentation, myspace, nielsen, raph-koster, social-media

Disney set to close Virtual Magic Kingdom today

by Michael Zenke May 21st 2008 at 5:15PM

Filed under: Virtual worlds, Kids

Last month it was announced that Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom would be closing down. Fans rallied around their online escape, while the company claimed that the project was actually years overdue for a shutdown. The LA Times is reporting that Mickey's online abode will shut down at close of business today. Speaking to the newspaper, president of the Walt Disney Internet Group Steven Wadsworth offered that the project 'never achieved scale.' The company never had plans to monetize it, and the small but loyal audience it's developed was never intended.

The Times piece also speaks to folks on the other side of the equation, including a young fan of the world with neuromuscular disease. Her experiences in the world were uplifting - she even celebrated her birthday there, apparently. "At Disney, we'd rather do anything in the world than disappoint a guest," said John Spelich, a Disney Internet Group spokesman. "But we hope our VMK players will choose to sample some of the other ways to engage with Disney online through disney.com or through virtual worlds."
[Via Worlds in Motion]

Tags: breaking, closing, disney, virtual-magic-kingdom