MTV, the Viacom-owned music channel, has launched a virtual world: MTV House. It is a 2.5D world built in Flash, similar in that respect to Habbo Hotel. There are several different rooms: MTV One, MTV Two, MTV Hits, MTV Base, MTV Dance as well as MTV Bathroom and MTV Kitchen, all of which are accessed from a central lobby.
The main purpose at this stage seems to be to create another way for users to access MTV’s content. Heavy prominence is given to online videos, for example, which are discoverable in the different rooms. Each room also has a ‘character’ in it, an automatic avatar which, when clicked, gives a list of relevant content. In time, MTV is presumably hoping that a powerful social aspect to the world develops as well. Right clicking on the world reveals that it was built by Yomego, a virtual world development agency which offers a white label solution – it looks like this is what MTV has deployed.
The business model is to be based around advertising, in a potentially win-win situation for MTV; if House is successful, they increase user engagement with their own brand and content, as well as creating more inventory to sell.
This light weight approach to virtual worlds, with barriers to adoption as low as possible, may well be the most successful way for traditional media brands to take advantage of virtual worlds, at least initially. It stands a good chance of mainstream adoption, and is a low cost way for brands to ‘dip the toe in the water’ of virtual worlds.
House has initially been launched in the UK, and MTV intends to role the product out worldwide in the coming months.
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