Toyota Metapolis - Toyota’s very own virtual continent
April 17, 2008 5:00 pm
Toyota is one of the car brands not scared of experimenting with virtual worlds. Where they first hired Million of Us to bring their ‘Scion’ in Second Life, and later on launched that same Scion in the virtual world There with some help from Metaversatility. August 2007, Toyota’s marketing manager Adrian Si stated their total investment in virtual worlds to be a “strong six-figure one”. By now, this must be a whole lot more, as Toyota presents - in cooperation with Co-core’s MeetMe - their own virtual world.
With the cute avatar in the wheel chair, it almost seems like Motorability has found it’s spot in Toyota Metapolis too! ;)
Their own virtual world? Well, not completely. More of a continent. Toyota Metapolis is based on the MeetMe server technology and software. But Toyota got it’s own - what you could compare with a - continent: to get there, you need to either log into it directly, signing up at the Toyate Metapolis website, or start in MeetMe and take the shuttle to the Toyota area. So although you can move back and forth between MeetMe and Toyota Metapolis, the Toyota grounds are a complete living area, with car shops, a museum, residential areas and even a garage to park your car collection.
For now, Toyota Metapolis exists of:
Of course, a Mall where you can buy Toyota cars. Not only can you buy them, but you can also take them for a test drive. The cars even have Toyota’s Japanese car based information network ‘G-book’ implemented. Over time, they will sell 255 different colours of the car - wtf?! -, hoping to make it a collector’s item. Clicking the cars will get you more information on them. If you wish, you can get the Toyota catalogue mailed to your - real world - home.
Next up, is an Event Hall. Toyota will use this one for presentation of their latest cars and live music events. Streaming video of those and live sound is available there. They boast about being able to accommodate 1000 avatars at once, Miss Forager said the press release translated as ‘1,000 avies at 1000m2′. The first event will take place on the 12th of May. You will need a ticket to get in, which can be acquired by entering a prize draw.
The Museum is totally dedicated to Toyota. There you will find the latest developments, prototypes and next generation concepts for Toyota vehicles, as well as a display of their older models. The museum symbolises a ‘crystal tower’ towards heaven, which stands for Toyota’s willingness to learn, envision and progress. Here is mentioned that taking the cars for a test drive in the museum, or changing their colour is not yet possible. This is scheduled for Spring 2009.
Toyota’s Community Areas are split up in four main areas: Cars, Eco-park, music and beginners. Each theme zone will have it’s own games and events. Of course, in the beginners square, you can get - virtual - help. Nock started off with posing a typically Second Life question: ‘How can I make money?‘
The Residential Areas aren’t as sophisticated as we are used to, but at least they thought of it. To you to your room, get to the right building, and enter your room number on the key pad that pops up. You can’t move there from MeetMe though, you will need to create a new user ID/avatar at the Toyota Metapolis portal.
The Garage. I think this is a virtual first: building a giant structure, just to let your residents park - and show off - their cars. A user can own one up to three parking slots. Use the garage to get some spare parts for your car - even Toyota’s break down once in a while - or give it a paint job. And surely, you can drive from the the residential area to the garage. Just, not yet. The Garage area is scheduled to open in November 2008.
Being a Second Life resident, the possibilities of this seem fairly limited. We are used to living where we want (or where we can afford rent), rezzing whatever car we want (if we own it), using whatever transportation we want (you can’t think of anything that we can’t drive!) but… if they succeed in building a community of people that are interested in Toyota and not that demanding as it comes to virtual worlds freedom - they can go and visit virtual Tokyo at MeetMe - then surely, I think, they can have a more interactive place for them to meet than they could ever at a web forum and worlds like this may have a future. But please, over time, avatar portability! ;) I’m going to stick with Fiat for now, though.
Hat Tip to the cutest avatar on the Grid: Nock Forager
9 Responses to “Toyota Metapolis - Toyota’s very own virtual continent”
Wow, quite an impressive build and investment they have going on. I think your final paragraph hit the nail on the head and it is going to be interesting to watch and see how this goes.
For all the freedom that Second Life gives us, it also can be rather limiting by scaring off new people sometimes.
I’m really quite surprised that Toyota haven’t built this in SL, a ready made platform for this sort of thing. As you mentioned, Scion have been in SL for a long time now and quite successfully too from what I can see.
I like their constructions, but… if you would ever want to create those “main buildings” in SL, I think you’ld need 4 or 5 sims for the same dimensions and detail, even with using sculpties (and besides pillars, collums or stairs I’m not a fan of using sculpties for buildings).
So, I think they were smart to not use SL for this.
As for not having all the “powers” SL offers, I doubt most people will mind. Sure, the really creative people will be sad they can’t create something themselves.
Perhaps in time it might be wise to offer some designing by the users, like “design the Toyota for the year 2030″ (like Peugeot did a couple years ago) and that they can use external designing software (like SL can with the sculpty software stuff), but, just like with SL, that’s something that’ll happen when Toyota is ready for it.
CC, I also wonder what will win. Companies like closed worlds with much control (much control means less possibilities though) to get their message over better. Then again it depends on how much people must love you just to come to your little world.
In the end though the internet is a decentralized thing and thus I don’t believe such things will work forever. At some point people really really need to love you to create yet another account and another avatar and so on. This already is annoying on social networks, it will be even more so in virtual worlds.
So I think a decentralized model such as a not-to-be-named world we all use a lot will become in the future, will win. No lock-in, more efforts needed to keep me at your place. Maybe companies would then even start listening to us ;-)
(that being said of course the flexibility we have of course needs a better user experience)
This looks really really nice, but I’m not sure how this helps Toyota at all! More and more companies are creating their own virtual world for their own brand in hopes of obtaining the same numbers that WoW or Second Life has, even a bit of it, but you know it’s not going to happen. They had it right by first trying out with Second Life, but there are other Virtual Worlds they can invest in and come very very close if they feel unhappy with SL.
Yes, this is all nice, but I can I keep Vint for a few months?
:)
Nexeus wrote: “This looks really really nice, but I’m not sure how this helps Toyota at all! More and more companies are creating their own virtual world for their own brand in hopes of obtaining the same numbers that WoW or Second Life has, even a bit of it, but you know it’s not going to happen. They had it right by first trying out with Second Life, but there are other Virtual Worlds they can invest in and come very very close if they feel unhappy with SL.”
This is exactly what happened to Pontiac. They experimented with SL and as some would say, pretty successfully, but they didn’t get what they wanted out of the experiment and last I heard they’d wandered off to Sony’s ‘Home’ platform.
… and last I heard they’d wandered off to Sony’s ‘Home’ platform.
Aha. Did that finally officially launch?
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