Danish game company Art of Crime ApS joins forces with former Senior Vice President of the virtual world giant Habbo Hotel!
Harleem, Holland – 17th January 2012: Danish born Art of Crime is taking its flagship product Crimeville on its first global jump by expanding into the Benelux market with its new partner and industry guru Christian Batist, Sticky Factory (former Senior Vice President of Habbo Hotel, Sulake Corporation). With a browser based Massively Multiplayer Online game Crimeville for kids 6-13 years old and full portfolio of additional product lines in a black box business configuration, Art of Crime is ready to take Crimeville global in 2012
“I’m completely blown away by Crimeville as a theme, from the play perspective and now also as a business opportunity. I believe that Crimeville can become a global brand, bigger than most of the successful online games today and I haven’t seen a single online game company that has developed a total cross media strategy from scratch AND designed the whole platform for a cross media expansion BEFORE launch. In being so young in the market with good results, I believe, Crimeville can be a global phenomenon” says Christian Batist.
Ida Brinck-Lund, CEO of Art of Crime adds: “This partnership means a lot to us. Christian experienced first-hand the challenges Habbo’s online world had from its birth to managing well over 300 Million registered users. We’ll be able to benefit from his experiences and present what next generation companies like us must develop to become really successful internationally. We’ve got a super in-house team and now amazing partners so we’re ready to deliver. We believe the key to delivering this success is an immersive experience and by immersive we mean that our consumers can be dive into play whenever, wherever and on whatever. Christian gets this multi-platform vision which is vital as we’ve only launched a fraction of our trans-media portfolio and future vision”.
Art of Crime is going for a reconstruction in the tween market by combining the world’s most popular selling genre crime fiction with open-ended gameplay (like you find in Habbo) and case solving (depending on product line). The Crimevillains engage in crime-of-the-not-so-serious-kind-of-crime, meaning that no-one will lose their head (except as a matter of speaking) and no blood will be spilt (except perhaps from a leaking vampire). Their secret motives challenge conventional thinking and support the underlying message that: “Nobody is perfect – but who wants to be Nobody?”
More than the Massively Multiplayer Online game
Crimeville’s first and biggest product today is a 2-d flash based virtual world where kids can meet and dress up, chat and solve (wacky) mysteries or pull (innocent) pranks themselves. It is a product aimed to reflect upon emotions and thoughts about ourselves as people – hopefully driving us all stop judging the book by its cover (or people by their jobtitles).
Crimeville is already more than an online game with a unique trading card game available today in Danish shops. An augmented reality mobile evidence hunt game in real life is ready for launch in spring. To ensure a full trans-media connection (and to prepare for an ever changing future) Crimeville is also ready with a presold TV-series to Danish National Broadcasting Cooperation, a unique board game, iPad interactive mysteries, mischievous accessories and toys (with secret messages) and more. Art of Crime is poised for growth with the right partners.
Scandinavian tweens are opening their eyes to Crimeville
Crimeville is currently being embraced by Scandinavian tweens where 80.000 registered and hundreds are joining every day in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They aim to go from ‘Clueless Collies’ to ‘Top Detective Dauwgs’ in the hunt for cracking this week’s detective cases.
“We’ve shown an ability to grow Crimeville in several countries with a very small team and a tight budget. We’re reaching a small break even in marketing costs with two products and we’re able to grow virally and retain our monthly users at a solid base while expanding the lifetime of our users month by month. We copy the German expansion methods where the monetisation metrics apply before expansion. Our next step is to create a big leverage, and when we reach this turning point we can grow really fast globally. Our current Average Revenue Per Paying User per month is high enough with just two products in the market, to make us believe our business approach can last longer than a viral flu in December. We aim for a small bump in the universe” grins Crimeville’s founder Ida Brinck-Lund.
Crimeville is built for a global reach
The global voyage begins by joining forces with the best partners possible. Christian Batist’s knowledge in expanding the virtual world Habbo globally is the best possible partner Art of Crime could hope for and Christian Batist is just as happy:
“My team is devoted to making Crimeville a success in the Benelux market, whether it’ll be marketing, localisation, community management, PR, cross media deals, distribution advertising sales, sponsorships or retail. We are the right partner to work with Art of Crime and Crimeville and we very much look forward to taking this market place”.
Art of Crime’s plan is to go global in 2012 and is looking for more great partners (and valuable sustainable long term growth).
”We see old business models dying, but there are a range of new ones surfacing. We believe the future lies in breaking existing value chains in order to create new business models, because tweens don’t differentiate between platforms and nor should we as companies. Having an expert like Christian Batist agreeing with this is huge, because he has a history of being at the right time and the right place,” says Ida Brinck-Lund, Founder and CEO at Art of Crime ApS.
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