Six Flags is riding a rollercoaster into the fast-growing social gaming market. The theme park company is announcing today its Six Flags Mascot Park, a social game where players can create mascots and engage in performance in the hopes of becoming the star of a virtual Six Flags theme park.
It is yet another example of a major brand diving into Facebook social games, which can now command audiences of up to 50 million users per month. Users can play those games for free, but they pay for virtual goods with real money. Market analyst firm Inside Network estimates that virtual goods revenue will be $1.6 billion in 2010.
The idea is to marry a well-known brand with cool game play that encourages deep personalization, creativity, irreverent antics and social interaction. Six Flags’ app lets users create and dress up an avatar known as a Mascot. Then you can make that Mascot dance. The game includes a ragdoll physics engine so that the character movements look realistic. You can set off some dynamite and watch a Mascot splat against a wall.
Six Flags jumped aboard because it believes that a lot of first-generation social games are not very social. Mascot Park is designed to be more social, linking people via their friend networks on Facebook. It also lets you interact with your friends’ Shows and Mascots. You can throw a virtual ax at your friend’s Mascot while he or she is putting on an act. If your act is popular, you can earn virtual coins to buy set pieces, costumes or improve your dance moves.
“We wanted to offer fans a forum to entertain, amuse and interact but we also recognize the importance of integrating a unique and over-the-top experience to the online community,” said Mike Antinoro, executive vice president of marketing and entertainment.
It’s an interesting test. Brands haven’t fared so well on Facebook. While brands dominate on the iPhone, there are no major media brands in the top 10 list of games on Facebook. That’s because Facebook games spread through the recommendations of real friends, not via pure marketing.
Six Flags is a big company with more than 30,000 employees and 19 theme parks. It has millions of fans who have been going to its theme parks since it built its first, Six Flags over Texas, in 1961. To move into the Facebook market, it collaborated with Noise, a business invention agency in New York headed by Noah Kerner, a Facebook app pioneer. Six Flags also worked with Making Fun, a networked game company headed by game entrepreneur John Welch, who is the former chief executive of PlayFirst. Kerner said the game will feature antics such as hip-hop dancing rhinos, Elvis-themed hip gyrations, a kissing bandit, exploding bunny guns, fireworks, and cannon. Six Flags Mascot Park will debut this summer. Noise came up with the game concept, art direction and basic play, while Making Fun developed the game.