Looking back, good ol' 2010 was full of shiny new developments, a growing community and broadening Frenzoo to reach new types of audiences... Things were really busy last year:
It wasn't all roses though, there was a lot of hard work to stabilize and speed up the system to handle the increased community side, and many rough edges when we introduced the new 3d system recently (life on the bleeding edge). But all up it was a year for our history books and one to treasure :)
Now the festivities of the season are behind us we're all hyped up at HQ to make Frenzoo way better in 2011..
Which way will the site go? We'll be putting a lot of effort into making the site more fun, social, faster, easier to use, and accessible in a lot more places that today, growing the economy, all while staying true to our roots of stylish avatars for everyone.
To all our fantastic users and supporters, a big thank you and look forward to a fun ride in 2011, come join us!
Well the wait is over, and one of the most requested features is finally here - chat snapshots!
Now you can take pictures from both one-on-one 3d chats as well as multi-user chatrooms. You can choose profile and album pics as well as new full size captures.
For example, here is a extra large picture that was taken from a chatroom using a dual monitor setup:
Click here to view in full size glory (very cool).
You can even take animated GIF snapshots, which can be a lot of fun with friends:
To celebrate the new feature we've launched our first group chat contest. It's a tough one, grab 4 people and wave together and capture at exactly the right one. It took us 4 tries before getting it right, so get your coordination skills in order.
Enjoy chat snapping.
PS - if you have suggestions for chat snapshot contests let us know in the forum!
Hong Kong, May 19, 2010 - Frenzoo.com, the in-browser 3D world with a
user-generated economy, launches multi-avatar chat today. For the
first time, people can now join or host events, create unique venues and more,
all within a web browser. The new release will allow groups of up to
10 or more to interact either in public or more intimate private
scenes.
"Since January our users have been clamoring for
multi-avatar chat on our site. Now it's in beta they can enjoy
immersive group chats, without needing to learn. Our
goal is to listen to users and make the most entertaining and
accessible 3d world on the web," said CEO and Co-Founder Simon
Newstead.
Using the Unity 3d plugin, Frenzoo is a
browser-based 3d world brought to life by user generated content. With
the new multi-avatar chatrooms, members can join or sponsor events,
such as fashion shows, discussions, quizzes and games, roleplays, speed
dates and more. Shop owners will also be able to highlight their items
through showcase rooms.
While anyone can join a chatroom, only VIP
users can create them. They can set the rooms to be either public or
private, and set optional age restrictions of "under 18", or "18 or over".
Frenzoo user Glamorous is hosting
an upcoming "Nature Extravaganza" event. "The new chatrooms are great way to meet
new friends," she said. "I'm excited about holding one of the first
chatroom parties."
Multi-avatar chatrooms are currently in beta and available to try at Frenzoo.com.
About Frenzoo
In development since 2008, Frenzoo Ltd. (www.frenzoo.com),
is the first browser-based 3d world with user generated content. The
destination allows users to create an avatar, meet people and virtual
chat in animated 3d scenes, express their style and create fashion and
content all in their Internet browser. Mod sims and 3d asset import
from packages such as 3D Max and Blender are also supported. The
Frenzoo team is based in Hong Kong, and has been developed with seed
investment from Ambient Sound Investments, established in 2003 as an equal partnership by four founding engineers at Skype Technologies. Frenzoo has a partnership with leading virtual content producer Anshe Chung Studios (ACS). Frenzoo leverages the power of the Unity 3d
engine, used by leading entertainment companies such as Electronic
Arts. The lightweight plugin installs in seconds without any browser
reloads, and enables rich 3D graphics rendered in hardware.
Press Contacts
Simon Newstead, Co-Founder & CEO Email: simon@frenzoo.com Skype: simon-hk
The WETA "Create an Alien" contest winners were finally decided after a long deliberation. For those who don't know, a few weeks ago we opened a very special contest in collaboration with WETA, you know, the special effect provider for movies like Lord of the Rings and the recent hit Avatar.
The objective of the contest was to show new alien lifeforms using your 3D avatar.
The guest judges were Greg Broadmore, designer of the Dr. Grordbort's world of Rayguns and contraptions, and Kogi Ko, Frenzoo's own design director.
The winning entry was the very creative Octopus woman, by NAME:
Congratulations to NAME for the first prize win. The runner up was xoxskittlesxox, and second runner up went to Caleb Emo Zombie.
To see their winning entries, along with other special mentions, check the announcement thread, or see the video.
If you've tried the recently launched "in-page" 3d chat on Frenzoo.com, you may have noticed it has a fixed size 3d window.
A fixed size for 3d window is lame, we admit. Well no more, the chat in Frenzoo now expands to make fill use of your available browser space, automatically.
For example, I'm on a Macbook Pro with 1440x900 resolution. Here's the before and after pic:
We also slimmed down the text part as you can see. I did a quick calculation and in my case ended up with a 116% increase in 3d area. Bottom line, a much more immersive experience.
Side note - this also fixes problems with people are on lower resolutions or using netbooks or widescreen notebooks where the vertical size wasn't enough to support the previous fixed size.
ps - Geek appendix: in planning out this feature, we took a snapshot of our current user base screen resolutions. Interesting to see the growth in the last year in increased horizontal resolutions, corresponding with more widescreen monitor and notebook configurations:
There has been a lot of interesting discussion about the pros and cons and different approaches of linking real life identity and virtual world avatars. Our take on it is that it should be the users choice and freedom to link up their avatar with real life identity or not. In reality there will be users who fall into both camps - those who want a true escape from their real world and those who want friends in world to be able to know and connect with their irl identity.
With that in mind, we just launched our first phase of Facebook Connect in our online world Frenzoo.com, which allows users the option to create a new account using Facebook, and then also option to use real-life name and age or not.
Creating an account using Facebook Connect is a breeze, just a couple of clicks and literally in seconds you're good to go.
Soon we'll also add ability to link existing accounts to Facebook Connect as well as post snapshots, contest entries and more to your Facebook wall.
Speaking of updates, a number of other new things just launched in the last few days:
A new mini-machinima feature that lets you take animated snapshots in GIF format. It's a lot of fun and easy to use for everyone. For example, one made by our Brazilian ztylist Marcy:
We also have a launched a brand new chat system which is much faster and convenient to access - it all runs in a single browser window, like Meebo or Facebook. There is a new chat bar at the bottom of each page where you can start and switch in and out of different chats.
So far users seem to really like it, apart from the new bugs of course, we still have polishing to do this week!
It''s been a hectic week for our 3d startup - a gut wrenching roller coaster ride.
After many months hard work we finally did our big 3d scenes launch with lots to do - managing the tricky migration, cleaning
up the post-launch bugs (not done yet!), acting on user reactions, jump starting creators and getting the word out to the blogger
community for their reviews and feedback ...
The team pose for a snapshot with our strategic partners, Anshe Chung & Guntram Graef
So how did it go?
Good, bad and ugly - User feedback
We were nervous before the launch.
It was a big change, and we know change isn't always easy for people, especially when it concerns something many love already "as is" - the beta before (some classed it as more of an alpha) had 3d avatars but in a flat 2d backdrop.
One of the most popular scenes post launch
The morning after community reaction was overall positive, which let us breathe a little sigh of relief (at least at first):
Hannygirl: "this is the best thing that ever happened to frenzoo !! (in my opinion)"
Stylite: "this 3d scene is a good improvement. And to my
surprise, it didn't eat up any more of my GPU power than I had expected
before the 3d scenes aired...I think it's a success "
Being able to do more, have fun in interactive and more immersive environments seemed to strike a chord with the audience.
However whilst the overall feeling was positive, we got a lot of specific negative feedback about the avatars not looking as good which upset many of our most hardcore fans, in particular with the new lighting, texture and 3d camera angles:
AngelKiano: "I like the 3D scenes, but.. according to me... avatar's
face looks strange..and the avatar's legs look so much shorter!!! "
KowaiM: "The eyes seem strange in general. It looks how to say? Messy. ):0 Um, yea the nose looks weird too..."
There was one particularly distressing post from an active user nom nom nom =3 that brought it home:
"when you take pictures they don't look very good there's not as much
light and they just look weird. i realized that i really really miss
how it was before. i thought this would be awesomeness!!! x3 but i
really do not like it so i'm gonna leave this site"
That woke us all up! So the first couple days after the launch we we dropped everything to concentrate on fine-tuning the camera, angle and lighting settings and get our avatars looking better again.
BEFORE: Camera set too high. Legs appear short. Lighting setting too dull.
AFTER: Camera adjusts to be more horizontal closer up, and lighting enhanced.
To our relief, people loved our fine-tuned avatar settings much better:
Lo_specchio: "Thank you very much for fixing the camera angle and changing it to
horizontal and also for adding back the close zoom! I would be very
glad if we could leave the camera angle that way"
Pikabo: "The angles are much, much better!! It helped a lot with the "big head, short leg" look!"
One other negative aspect was (and still is) the increased loading times to bring up the scenes and slow down and crashes as memory is used up. That part frustrated me a lot, and no doubt others as well. We're making some fundamental changes to how we handle chat and scenes in the coming weeks which will help, although I suspect it's going to be an ongoing effort to get stability and speed up. Did I mention I hate crashes?
We also noticed after launch people were confused how to edit their scenes - which was a worry as it was something unique and interesting in our new product.
Old way
1/ Left click the item (its hotspot)
2/ Move your mouse to where you want it to go
3/ Left click again to put down the item
So we made a little tweak that seemed to make all the difference, and we noticed more people getting into the home arrangement groove.
New way 1/ Left click and drag the item where you want it to go 2/ Release the left mouse button to put down the item
I_eat_cookies: "This is so much less complicated! Thanks a lot!"
Home arrangement in the new scenes.
So overall people are happy with the change, we are attracting more users and keeping them more interested - although still a long ways to go. The stats seem to reflect this - post launch we noticed a good pickup in chat traffic (Sunday was our biggest day ever) which implies people are enjoying the new interactive 3d scenes a lot more, and we've noticed revenue starting to pick up also.
Mixed blogger reactions
I spent a few days before launch trying to come up with our release messaging for the experienced virtual world bloggers. It wasn't easy! In the end I decided on a headline that would emphasize us being the first real browser offering in the UGC 3d world space. I did a lot of research to find any other web based virtual worlds with full 3d creation, and could find none except for arguably Metaplace, but that did not have the ability to zoom or change angles and in my mind wasn't a true 3d environment and was more akin to 2.5D world like Habbo (I got one respected blogger questioning that, and understand his different take).
Once the launch was sent out to everyone I was relieved and appreciative it was covered in several virtual world sites:
"Frenzoo Launches 3D Online World With UGC" - Worlds In Motion "Virtual Beach Resort - 3D scenes launch" - Virtual Style Divas "Frenzoo Update: New Currency, Language, Dev Support" - Virtual World News "Having fun on 3D scenes" - Monoartiztics Blog "Frenzoo Launches Web's First 3D Online World with UGC" - PRLog "Frenzoo included on ArianeB's virtual world list" - ArianeB list "World of 3D chat and creation in your browser" - Hiperia3D "3DアバターのFrenzoo、空間編集機能を実装" - SecondTimes.net "Frenzoo | La red social 3D más Fashion" - Seetio
Coverage from SecondTimes.net (Frenzoo has many languages including Japanese)
Much was straight reporting, some good comments from bloggers and tweets:
"... you can also create your own content in Frenzoo and sell it through their shop. It looks promising!" -Gwyneth Llewelyn
However there was also skeptical or negative reaction from some bloggers including Dusan Writer, an experienced hand in the virtual world space:
"Frenzoo Launches Web's First 3D Online World with UGC. 3D Chat with Style. http://ow.ly/V4Eq - um, FIRST?? Ah, Web-based they mean still."
Key point being not making it as clear enough the release was that it was "web" based, and making it too boastful. Reflecting a few days later, even though we're naturally proud of being the first to be able to make complicated 3D UGC vw work in the browser, Dusans view is understandable. It's not easy to work out what message would generate interest and impact to get coverage in the right spirit. It's something to learn from and put together better for next time.
I also started an interesting thread on a very popular Second Life forum, SLUniverse. Frankly, the feedback from this audience was mixed and on balance, harsh, viewing the product as a juvenile world with little depth. Compared to Second Life itself, that is accurate and very much "by design" - our audience tends to be younger and less hardcore technical than Second Life users, and we want to emphasize accessibility and entertainment in 3d over complex control and power ("creative fun without frustration")- something I believe strongly in for virtual worlds to gain more mass adoption beyond early adopters - I'm always reminded of YoVille for a great example of this.
There was confusion and questioning our lack of free walking and open movement, instead going with a simpler avatar spots system (which I think is better suited for our target):
There were also comments about being similar to SimsIMVU which I think misses the different direction we've taken with easy and online UGC creation tools - but it brings home the point we need to emphasize and highlight our own path better. Especially for new users - so this was helpful.
The thread also was useful to bring out some areas to improve around registration process, tweaking the profiles to appear less "young" and "girly" to be acceptable to more ages and genders, and improving the starting scenes - things we're confronting in coming days and weeks.
Chicken and Egg - creator content
Ah the classic problem of creator based sites... the notorious killer of UGC startups:
You need users to get creators interested, and you need creator content to get users interested. Repeat.
Not much fun if we launch this great tech and 3d marketplace if it's empty for users!
Thankfully we had and have a few factors on our side to make this fight easier for us:
1/ Supporting fairly comprehensive 3d importing from the get go - Max, Collada for Blender, Maya, Sketchup etc. Animations, pose points, interactive objects, scenes, trigger words, we started with a fairly complete set (albeit without much documentation or tutorials), which helps eliminate the most obvious initial barrier.
2/ Anshe Chung and her crew of ninja modelers would jump in from day 1 and produce lots of quality products to get things started in the shop, so users had something to get started with.
My avatar relaxing in a comfortable luxury townhouse, made by Anshe.
3/ We already had a group of talented fashion creators on the site who love designing and bringing out new items (our clothing shop has 1000s of great creations now). It has been something fun and challenging to make the jump into 3d, furniture and scenes. These guys have really gone in head first, learning Blender and having a lot of fun putting up their items. It's inspiring to see how fast they are learning and starting to make items
Talented fashion designer Vera takes the jump into 3d creation - leopard skin TV anyone?
Even with these 3 factors, I know its going to be a hard slog over coming weeks and months to get to critical mass. It isn't easy to bring on board new creators to a platform they may not have heard of before, and it takes time and effort to build functionality and trust, which is what we have to do. Responding quickly to creator inquiries and helping them step by step is going to be important.
We're also putting together tutorials, special programs and other initiatives to try and accelerate the process, and I'm confident things will start to pick up steam..we're off to a solid start.
Where to from here?
Now the cat is out of the hat, what next? Rather than deciding that ourselves we put the simple question to our user base:
"What 3d feature would you like us to add next?"
The results were conclusive, the most important feature is to get multi-avatar scenes, and then allow creation of furniture and scene items in our online tool (right now we only support native 3d uploading for scenes and scene items).
This type of feedback helps incredibly for planning, there is nothing like a reality check from real users to remind you of what's important.
So, there is how our launch went, warts and all.
It's refreshing to kick off the new year with our new beta. Its shaping up as an exciting ride to build it out and navigate the inevitable twists and turns as it grows.
ps - I know this was a long post, if you read this far, thanks!
In this week of december, Frenzoo's online world is marked with two interesting chat events.
On Thursday 10 November an advice session is scheduled from 10:00 pm - 12:00 pm (Est. Time), for those people in need of advice for their personal or relationship problems. This session will be hosted Mr. Therapist, a guy therapist in our community. If you have problems that bother you, pour your heart out and share it.
As the last one was considered a success, a second speed dating event is coming up, this time with a Christmas theme. This Pre Christmas Speed Dating Event will take place on Sunday 14 November from 09:00 pm - 11:00 pm (Est. Time). Make sure to be there and don't miss the chance to meet your more interesting people or even your first virtual love on first sight.
Again, credits to Brad for organizing this speed dating event on Frenzoo.
The first ever Speed Dating event in the 3d online world of Frenzoo took place on Sunday night and was a big hit.
A throng of ladies and hardy band of brave guys engaged in this, the first large scale chat event, and by the feedback a good time was had by all. There was some drama when the number of chat sessions went way up during the event, but the engineers sorted it with admirable calm (phew - no broken hearts)
Two ztylists enjoying a new found connection
ps - many thanks to Brad, the organizer of this fun first speed date. I'm sure it won't be the last <3
Winter is coming, time for something for the new season...
Today we unveil a design makeover of the shop in our Frenzoo online world! In the shop you can buy clothes & accessories for your 3d avatars from talented creators around the world, as well as animations to use in 3d chat.
Our new shop layout...
So what's new? Quite a bit new in the shop, you can now:
easily see prices for items without having to select them
buy an item without trying it (for you inpatient types)
view all items in a creators shop, not just category by category
see icons of what you are wearing more clearly
search within a category, rather than the entire shop
see html media from creators, like slideshows, outfit sets etc
switch categories without reloading - must faster now
Of course, if you're not into shopping you can also make your own avatar fashions in our free web creation tool.
Speaking of that (it's segue time), we have another big update in the site - zoom in the create tool!
Zoom has been number one requested feature - it has has been something our members have been SHOUTING OUT FOR ever since we launched the create web tool! So it's not exaggerating when we say we're happy and relieved to finally be able to bring it to everyone...
--->
Whether you're an virtual shopper or fashion designer type, hope you love the new update...
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