DanielRavenNest

I got this email this afternoon:

" We are happy to share that the updated version of our iOS app, Blue Mars Mobile, is now with Apple for approval and will (hopefully) be available on the App Store in the coming days. Among the many new features: In-App purchase of your fashions, accessories, skins and other items. We hope that you are excited as we are at the potential that this opportunity holds to grow your businesses and brands. We also hope that you will be pleased to learn that we are planning an aggressive advertising campaign to coincide with the launch, demonstrating our full commitment to the success of the app and the Blue Mars platform.

Thank you to all for your continued support and partnership. A special thank you to those who offered their creations to be used as default items in the app; creators of chosen items will be notified shortly."

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My comments:

One of my items was submitted as a default item. As of today it's not been moved out of the "Submitted" state, so still waiting to hear on it. I have about 100 other clothing items previously made, and if they sell on the mobile app, I will be pretty happy.

I had a pretty good idea coming from Second Life what people wanted in a virtual world. In this new market of "playing Barbie on an iPhone", I really don't have any idea what people want, who the target market is, etc. I don't even know how my stuff will look on those devices, since I don't own any. This is all untested, and could be a popular app, or utterly flop, I have no idea.

DanielRavenNest

Version 2 of the Mobile App has been approved by Apple, and should go live tomorrow sometime. At the same time, they selected my mini dress as a default item.

One thing we found out today is because of the "Apple Tax" of 30%, then buying blu$ there will net you that much less game money.

Joshua Nightshade

FIC! FIC!

Free Xue

With the indirect ties to Apple now, shouldn't that be FAC?

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Cristiano

It is live already.

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Cristiano

Blech, it is still awful. The UI to change what your avatar is wearing is confusing. Also, there does not seem to be any way to preview how an item looks on your avatar before spending money on it. There are a lot of rendering glitches with the avatars too, and there is a noticeable delay every time you switch back to 3d view. I see where they are going with it, but meh.

eku Zhong

that looks horrible

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Zii

Were Blue Mars' avatar faces always based on FaceGen? I'm getting an Oblivion vibe looking at those screens ^^;

Free Xue

You're starting to thin a bit, Cris.

DanielRavenNest

Avatar Reality made the avatar meshes. I don't know what they used to make them. Content creators like myself can upload custom shapes and skins using that mesh.

@Joshua - FIC and proud of it, but then the BM developer community is so small that *everyone* is inner core, there ain't anyone else.

@Eku - Default male avatars have always sucked on Mars. Their push to get new default items is supposed to help with that.

@Cristiano - Thanks for the snapshots. One problem of designing for the iOS is we don't yet have an editor that shows us how the graphics will look on that platform. All the stuff that's been made so far has been made for the PC, using the Cryengine, which a handheld device isn't capable of running - not in full form, anyway.

Clothing are made as 3D models, just like the avatars, so they can clip/penetrate each other if not set up properly. In the PC version we have a "depth bias" that varies according to what clothing slot you choose. That makes an item render as closer to the camera, so you can control layering of clothes. As clothing designers we can make sure an item doesn't penetrate the skin, or our own items. But we can't in general know what other designers will do with their items. I see the same 10 clothing slots in the photo, but I don't know if the depth bias is functioning on the iOS version.

Quiplash

I just downloaded and installed this on my iPad and I have to say that I am impressed with the added functionality. Good job you guys!!

Everything seems to be working OK, and I only have one bug to report (the same as with the first version): no matter what skin and/or eyes I load, my avatar on-screen only displays blue eyes. Even if I load black or brown eyes, they show as blue. For example, right now I have the Sion oriental skin, shape, and black eyes combo loaded onto my alt female avatar, vanityfair. When I look at the avatar in the app, the black eyes display as bright blue!

Those of us who already were well familiar with the PC version will find this quite easy to use. I was interested in seeing how the items for sale rank against each other. However, I suspect that newbies are going to find this rather confusing, so there is going to have to be lots of hand-holding help included. An explanation of all the layers used, for instance.

Anyways, congratulations! It looks fantastic!
(Cristiano, I have NO idea why your avatar looks so bad!!)

Quiplash

Yes, I had this thought as well. It's a solution looking for a problem to solve, and for that reason alone I feel somewhat uneasy about the success of this app. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, will depend on how -- and to whom -- it is marketed.

Also, even though there are lots of new features, it still is not clear to me exactly how these avatars will relate to each other, other than the stupid ranking system/popularity contest. This needs to be looked at ASAP.

Cristiano

Is there some super secret version? We cannot possibly be using the same app.

Quiplash

Well I don't know if you're using a different app, but here's what I get. I still think it's pretty impressive...they've been able to port over most of the purchasing capabilities of the PC version, and in some cases like face customization, improved on them.



Some of the face customization screens:


I think they did a marvelous job with the shopping features. You can zoom and rotate to your heart's content. It even warns you if you're trying to buy an item you already have. It even links to vendor's websites!

(as you noticed and as I said, hair still doesn't display 100% properly)

You can keyword search for items as well:


Although I have to admit the screen showing what you're wearing needs a lot of work:

Quiplash

Cristiano, looking at your avatar clothing setup screen:


What you need to do to make sure your shirt appears over your jeans consistently, is:

1. delete the Male Tshirt from the first row; and
2. Add the Male Tshirt to a row much further below the jeans line, preferably the bottom-most line under CLothing.

It's all in how you adjust the depth layers of the various clothes. It's a very different system from SL but I am slowly getting used to it.

As for the hair, well I have noticed that hair does not display as attractively as it does in the PC version. That particular hairstyle you have chosen is one that appears to be among those which display the worst. It actually looked worse in verswion 1, and so they tweaked something, but I agree it still needs work.

Cristiano

No offense, but the avatar you showed is hideous as well. Blech, the whole thing is just awful.

DanielRavenNest

This is from the PC version. Is this avatar blech too? (I'm trying to figure out what you don't like about it)

Desmond Shang

They do have a long way to go. If it's this hard to get people to understand the layering, the typical app user is going to be in big trouble. That market is bigger than the PC market, and I doubt they will be able to get by on just Apple systems alone.

I'm a bit concerned about the percentages. Watch.

start with 100 units

70 units left after 30% to Apple

52.5 units left after 25% to Avatar Reality

~ * ~

Let's consider a market case, 'backward' (everyone will see why in a moment).

Say you sell 100 clothing items per day on average, of 10 designs. Your 'top ten' items. For a dollar each.

That makes you 52.50 a day. Multiply this by 365 days, you got 19162.50 USD worth of BLU at the end of a year. Cashing out, Paypal takes their 3%, giving 18587.60 USD.


Sooo... how many hours of work does it take to earn that 18587.60 USD? (Let's ignore the state and Fed who are going to take maybe another 30% bite out of you).

To get to 10 items selling like that, you've got to design maybe 100 items (or several hunded with color variants). Plus all the marketing work that goes with it. Let's divide our time like this:

20,000 USD income (roughly, from above) - cost of hours for marketing/showcasing/packaging 100 items - cost of hours to design 100 products.

Estimate:

Let's be slick and forget the maybe 10 hours of marketing time. What this boils down to is:

20k USD / 100 items = 200 USD worth of hours, each.

How long does it take to design an item? Call it 1 hour, you are cruising at 200 USD per hour.

But if it's 10 hours... that's 20 USD/hour. Still not bad, but another problem arises. 100 items x 10 hours = 1000 hours, or, 25 standard work weeks. Ouch! Anyone willing to gamble 6 months of their working life on this? At that point... unless you are fast, fast, fast as a designer, you become more of a de facto investor.



The Chilling Effect

In every small town, usually it's still worth it for someone to be mayor. Same thing with past platforms like there.com and so forth. The percentages at there.com were SO BAD, that only a few went into the market. But of those, some did alright... it made almost no sense whatsoever to compete with them! Small fish... smaller pond.

I see this with land barony today, on SL's grid. It doesn't make a lot of sense for people to go into the land market these days. As someone who 'won' both as a content creator (West Trade Imports LTD) and as a land baron (Caledon) ~ I'm well aware that the odds can be beat. My hat isn't out of the ring yet, either... I'm hopeful.

But I'm a bit wary of those 25 weeks in the example above. Sure, you can still win. If the platform gets by for 5 years, that 20k a year becomes 100k. Just don't be wrong about its viability early on. And if the market takes off... you'll have professional competitors eating your lunch. The sweet spot for the typical merchant (who happens to be merely very good at mesh, textures, marketing, and business) is somewhere in the middle.

Cristalle

The "taxes" are usurious. That's a nonstarter to me.

Zipper

I downloaded the app - and when I found out how limited it is I didn't even open it - I deleted. What's the point? Maybe I'll try later when some is sorted out.

DanielRavenNest

Since I actually have 125 Blue Mars clothing items done, ( https://picasaweb.google.com/daniell...ingCollection# ) and 662 other items (buildings, furniture, trees, etc), I can tell you that those number are off. I made those items in 18 months, while learning 3ds Max and Photoshop at the same time.

It takes me 4-10 hours to get the *first* clothing item of a given geometry done, but after that, color/texture variations are more like an hour or two each. So to make 17 geometries x 6 colors each would be more like 250 hours total labor. I'm a lot faster now than when I started, but that's a reasonable average.

The double tax only happens if a user buys their game money via Apple. Otherwise it's just the 25% that Blue Mars gets. So both us content creators and users have an incentive to get away from the "Apple Tax". We get a bigger share of their available money to spend, and they pay less for their stuff.

One more thing to consider - the 3D models I make for Blue Mars will also import to Second Life once the Mesh project goes on the main grid. I have been testing items for months on Aditi (beta grid). There are other places you can sell your work besides those two. If you are a serious content creator in this new world of portable models, you should think in terms of "make once - sell everywhere".

Having said that, I still don't know what sales will be like on the iOS. I don't think the App is finished enough yet to tell. Right now it's equivalent to "Edit Appearance/Outfit" in SL, but that by itself is not enough to keep people interested (most people, anyway).