Physical Products and Digital Worlds: Combining Toys and Games

Skylanders has been considered by many as one of the biggest innovations of the year.  Combing figurines and a digital world to form one of the years sleeper hits, but is this really innovative?

As some of you know, WebKins, NeoPets, Magic, Pokemon, and many other titles have been able to successfully merge the Physical and Digital Worlds.  For every success, there have been countless failures.

Having studied this market and reviewed many pitches regarding similar products, I would like to give you my opinion on what makes a successful Physical and Digital tie-in.

Let us start off with a recent experience I had.  Someone wanted to make a game that combined selling cards that could be scanned into a game.  The scanned cards would lock in-game objects.  First, this is not a novel idea.  Many games have tried this successfully though most have been failures. 

Webkinz is a great example of a huge success.  Webkinz can be said to be the evolution of NeoPets.   For those of you who do not remember, NeoPetz was a web game that originally made most of its revenue from advertising sales and micro-transactions.  As NeoPetz grew, it expanded into the retail market by selling plush animal versions of the NeoPetz you found in game.  While NeoPetz went physical, companies like Build-a-Bear and brands like American Girl gave their products a virtual world to live in.  Physical Products and Digital Worlds were starting to converge.  WebKinz took this idea and made it so that you bought a plush animal and then scanned it in game.  You not only had a plush animal in the real world but a copy of your pet in a virtual world.   Today, Moshi Monsters and Skylanders capitalize on this idea.

At the same time, many other companies have tried this and failed and the main reason is that they think that being successful in one channel leads to success in both.   What made the brands I mentioned earlier succeed was that both the physical product and the digital world could stand on their own.  The physical products were collectable, trade able, or playable.  Also, the digital worlds on themselves are fun with social features, persistence, and high usability.  Together, both the Physical Good and the Digital World enhance each other!  People must think of the products as separate but equal and create them with that in mind.  This may seem like a very simple philosophy but may people seem to forget this