After releasing our lists of the Top 10 most-visited Roblox branded experiences in October and Top 20 in November, we at Metaverse Marcom have been thrilled with the positive responses we've been getting. Professionals from a wide cross section of industries such as video games, toys, entertainment, sports, content, fashion, and retail have read these lists, shared them with their colleagues, signed up to our weekly newsletter, followed our LinkedIn page, listened to our Metaverse Brands podcasts, and reached out to us. We're building a ton of momentum, and we're excited because we're just getting started.
Our Biggest, Best Brand Rankings
In order to share even more valuable insights and analysis on the way brands are activating in the metaverse, we decided to create our biggest and most comprehensive brand rankings to date.
What makes this list so special? Well, first off, we made it much bigger with a whopping 50 brands featured. That gives you a deeper look into the types of brands and industries actively investing in metaverse testing and growth.
In addition, we added several new data points to provide additional context on each game/experience's true performance.
Release Date
The first data point we added is release date. We felt this was important since we are ranking brand experiences based on cumulative lifetime visits, not monthly visits. This means some experiences have been live for a couple of months, while others have been live for almost two years. For example the Stranger Things Starcourt Mall experience (released 10/2020) and NARS Color Quest (released 07/2022) experience both have around 40 million visits, but they were released almost two years apart. Therefore, looking at the release date shows that NARS has performed "better" than Stranger Things because it has accumulated visits over a much shorter time.
Average Playtime
The other powerful data point we added is average playtime, which we pulled from the data-rich website RoMonitor Stats. We love this metric because it adds a different dimension that also speaks to an experience's success. Having a high average playtime of over 10-minutes shows that the experience is working as a game that users enjoy spending time playing. But if the experience has a low playtime of only 2-3 minutes, clearly the game is not delivering fun in a meaningful way.
2 New Additions to Top 5
We added two new experiences into the top 5, which we have not written about previously. The first is Ben 10 Super Hero Time from Cartoon Network, which we discovered via RoMonitor Stats. The second is Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition, based on the New York Times best-selling books, which we were notified about by Coolabi, the company that owns this IP.
We love finding out about new brands we haven't been tracking yet, so if you know of any, please tell us. We'll be sure to add them to our internal database and include them moving forward.
Noteworthy
Warrior Cats
The aforementioned Warrior Cats stands out for not only its massive visit count of over 240 million, but also for its #1 overall average playtime of 20 minutes. Most branded experiences fail to surpass the 10-minute mark, and only Hello Kitty comes close with about 16-minutes of average playtime, which is still 4 minute less than Warrior Cats. Clearly the users who play Warrior Cats are having a great time that's translating into deep engagement.
In the experience, users can design their own Warrior Cat and role-play within the world described in the Warrior Cats books. In that way, this branded experience is different than most other branded experiences. Most branded experiences are not based on existing IP with settings and existing mythology to draw from. But those that do draw on existing IP and successfully translate that IP into fun games can be quite successful: Sonic Speed Simulator, Miraculous RP, Hello Kitty Cafe, and Ben 10.
Squishmallows
I had never heard of Squishmallows before I started tracking their Roblox experience. But once I did become aware of the brand, I started seeing it everywhere. Not only was it available in a wide variety of stores, it was also already in my kids' toy collections. And they wanted more!
What stands out about Squishmallows is the experience has a high 10-minute average playtime and 90% user rating. Both of those metrics are really impressive and once again show that users really enjoy playing this game. What strikes me most about the game is that it brings the cute and cuddly Squishmallows into 3D virtual worlds. Because the Squishmallows look even bigger on Roblox than they do IRL, they seem even more special and appealing. I can see why players would love them in this environment.
The Chainsmokers: Festival Tycoon
From Travis Scott and Ariana Grande on Fortnite to Lil Nas X and Twenty One Pilots on Roblox, there have been many famous music acts to perform concerts in the metaverse. But the Chainsmokers are the first band, as far as we can tell, to build their own persistent metaverse experience with Festival Tycoon.
Festival Tycoon boasts impressive stats with 20 million visits, 90% rating, and almost 15-minutes of average playtime. Those numbers are far better than those of Spotify Island (16.5 million visits, 85%, 7-minute average playtime) and iHeartLand Music Tycoon (3.3 million visits, 83% rating, 4-minute average playtime).
What Stood Out to You?
We'd love to hear what you think is interesting from this list. Feel free to email us at hello@metaversemarcom.io.
Stephen Dypiangco is the CEO of Metaverse Marcom, a strategy and consulting firm helping entertainment and sports brands enter the metaverse.
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