Trying out CyWorld
So I went and made a Minihome on Cyworld’s US beta to try it out. You can visit it at http://us.cyworld.com/raph if you like.
A few observations:
They certainly have the microtransaction thing down. I was able to blow through my allotted 50 free acorns in no time at all, without hardly furnishing my minihome at all.
They have a lot of avatar customization stuff to add. I can’t get a beard, I can’t get glasses unless they are sunglasses… most of the clothes are of course for girls, as are most of the pieces of decor; lots of pinks and hearts and other “cute” styles. My minime doesn’t look like me at all — he looks like a member of a boy band. Then again, browsing through the male profiles on there, that’s what most of the actual males using the service seem to want to look like. 🙂
The “worldness” of the minihomes has a ways to go to feel like more than a static backdrop you can arrange; it’s a far cry from Gaia Online, for example. However, it does immediately tap into the “virtual housing” feeling that you get from player housing in an MMO: that compulsion to arrange, buy, and personalize.
It opens a lot of windows, and they seem to pile up over time. Not sure how I managed that. Also the usual beta glitches, but nothing too horrible.
There are already 769 “clubs” created. The largest categories are Fan Clubs, Music, Entertainment, and Schools & Alumni. Most of the clubs are small yet. The Reality TV club is featured right on the front page of Clubs, but there’s no Rock Star subgroup. There’s lots of pictures of dresses from Project Runway, however.
Hitting random minihomes gave me a disproportionate number of Asian kids — most likely because they know of Cyworld from its popularity in Asia (some stats if you’re not familiar with the phenomenon).
On the face of it, this is far slicker than MySpace, but we’ll have to watch and see how the microtransaction aspect does here. To some degree, Gaia may have stolen its thunder, and Gaia’s up to 4.4m registered users already.
11 Responses to “Trying out CyWorld”
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Not to ask a stupid question, but: What is the “purpose” of the house in CyWorld? Sure you can waste some time picking furniture, but is anything more than an image? Can other players’ avatars wander around it? Interact with it? Interact with one another within it? How is player-to-player interaction in House A different from their interaction in House B? (Ex: To use an extreme, in the real world, people will discuss different subjects if they’re in a coffee shop vs. a graveyard.)
About a year ago I saw a TV show about organutangs (sp?). It showed a clip where the organutangs were mimicing their carers/keepers act of washing clothes in a river. The organutangs also pulled out the soap, a piece of dirty clothing, and “washed” it just like they saw their carers/keepers. However, the orangutangs didn’t understand what the purpose of washing clothes was, so they proved to be fairly innefectual.
This sounds like hive7 — is it any different? How do you go from your house to a club? Do you automatically “get a house” when you log on or does it take buying/leveling? Is there an “outdoors” to walk in outside the house or club? Sounds like The Sims Online a bit too.
It’s far more like MySpace with a window into a virtual apartment that you can decorate and park a static avatar in. You do get a house automatically, but decorating it beyond the initial 50 acorns worth will cost money.
Think about The Sims, one of the top selling computer games of all time. I haven’t used CyWorld, but I think the inner “motivation” is closely related here.
[…] Trying out CyWorld on Raph Koster Trying out CyWorld on Raph Koster So I went and made a Minihome on Cyworld’s US beta to try it out. You can visit it at http://us.cyworld.com/raph if you like. A few observations: They certainly have the microtransaction thing down. I was able to blow through my allotted 50 free acorns in no time at all, without hardly furnishing my minihome at all. They […] via Raph Koster […]
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Hi Raph! I’ve heard that what makes cyworld popular is that it works well on mobile devices. You can’t say that of 2L, or some of the others. Maybe the US version isn’t there yet. Its worth looking at, and it makes sense considering the stats on cell phone use across asia.
Interesting, not sure it has enough of a hook to grab US users over the age of 14 though…
There are some significant cultural barriers to entry that games seem to experiance when they attempt to travel either way across the Pacific,
the barriers seem to get higher when its a EU to Asia trip. Thats just my gut feeling though, I’m sure someone has some solid numbers around this, or at least numbers one could use to extrapolate more data points/conclusions from.
There is something quantifiable there I just cant put my finger on it,
which is a shame because I’d like to build some data points around it..
Eh whatever “it” is 🙂
I think what mainstream press had missed is how much pain cyworld endured due to SP2 patch. it was certainly a surprise for me when i stumbled on that few months back
Im 23yr old korean american guy who use korean cyworld and I wondered why I am using this cutesy cyworld in the first place myself. But other than that cyworld is real convenient way to communicate and keep in contact with friends for simple messages instead of using emails or without ever needing to call them to just say the word hi on the phone. You can always know what they are up to without really asking them, and who they are friends with. Ive always suspected cyworld would not last long but to my surprise many people did not give up using them yet which was worhtwhile for me to use it to communicate. But one thing though Im not sure if americans can get over the cutesy part since using anything cute is look at it somehow not good in this culture. Im thinking thats why they changed the minime to look more grown up than the korean version.
I’m thinking such a website needs a critical mass of people to function. So the only real question to me is there a large enough base of people who liked MySpace once but now hate it that they could float to another product and make it work.