ecckyweblog.com

Earning credits through minigames triggers wave of gaming activity

dirk — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:47:27 +0000

Yesterday we put our new version of Eccky online, for both the Dutch and American users. There are a few things we have changed and few new features that have been implemented, some based on user requests! We now have the Basic Bunch, a set of grown up Ecckies for instant satisfaction. Normal Ecckies have to reach a certain age before they are allowed to play some games. For instance school games can only be played if your Eccky is over 3 years old. Now users don’t have to wait for their Eccky to grown up, they can just pick a Basic Bunch Eccky and have access to most locations and mini games instantly!

Another thing we have changed is the way you obtain Eccky credits (used to pay for food or clothing). In previous versions, a player would receive a daily allowance or have to purchase credits. The only way a user could obtain extra credits without purchasing them was to babysit an Eccky. Completely unintended by us, this led to the formation of a very interesting mini-economy on the dutch forum where users would offer competitive rates for babysitting other user’s Ecckies. Yesterday we removed the daily allowance and option to buy credits, and put in new minigames that users can play or ‘work’ to earn their Eccky credits. The higher the score the more credits they get. And yes, this resulted in a huge increase in games being played. The first day, we already saw 8 times more games being played.

Yme is all grown up and out of the house!

dirk — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:35:43 +0000

Dear World

Well that’s it, Yme is all grown up and out of the house!

After three years of hard and dedicated work Yme will leave Eccky and start as Manager Business Development & Partnerships at Hyves, a Dutch social networking site. A step from virtual kids to real people as he states on his own weblog.

As Strategy and Concepts Director and one of the initiators of Eccky, Yme has been one of the driving forces behind Eccky. His innovative ideas inspired the entire team to push the envelope a bit further.

The whole team would like to thank Yme and wish him the best with this new adventure!

Eccky.com into public beta phase

dirk — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:40:05 +0000

We just put our new English Eccky version online at www.eccky.com, and removed the restriction for registration. We are open for a considerable number of uses to test the US version of Eccky. Besides that we put the new forum online at forum.eccky.com, so everybody can ask their questions and give us their feedback. Please check it out!

For Ecckies you will have to pay, but you can ask our customer support guys promotional codes at team@eccky.com.

Eccky column in Volkskrant Magazine

bas — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:07:11 +0000

Sylvia Witteman, columnist for Volkskrant Magazine, writes about raising Kids and Ecckies in the issue of 23.06.2007. Fun to read. especially the part about Eccky’s attention level and her own kids attention level for their Ecckies. The column is written in Dutch.

Al met al was mijn kantoortje voortdurend bevolkt door kinderen, virtueel en reëel, waarbij de laatsten ook nog smeltende ijsjes op mijn toetsenbord lieten druipen; en mijn balorige jongste zoontje, door zijn zus verwaarloosd ten gunste van zo’n ellendige Eccky, zat bovendien op mijn bureau met bungelende beentjes onophoudelijk en snerperig op een schel mondharmonicaatje te blazen. Toen ik met zachte hand probeerde iedereen naar buiten te duwen begon mijn dochter te huilen: ‘Als ik om half vier niet op MSN ben, sterft Eccky van verdriet!’ Source: Sylvia Witteman

For our English readers the last sentence means: “I need to be online at 15:30 otherwise my Eccky will die!” Of course your Eccky will not die, it will only shout for more attention ;-).

New Eccky is live!

dirk — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:20:12 +0000

So last week we put the new version of Eccky online, including the english version. With all the preparations we did it went pretty smoothly. We already see a huge number of Ecckies being created as single player Ecckies, so it’s good we included this feature. Initial reactions are very positive.

The English version at beta.eccky.com version is still in a closed beta phase, if you want to participate in testing you can send an email to team@eccky.com.

Getting closer to release the next version of Eccky….

dirk — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:33:07 +0000

It has been a while since we put a new version of Eccky online, but pretty soon we will deploy the next Eccky on our servers. For more than half a year we have been specifying, designing, developing and of course testing, bug fixing, and retesting. The last month also we had over 300 Eccky users helping us out, testing the application. This was really fun, having our current Eccky users having a go at the new version. After looking at it for so long there are things that you don’t see anymore, and then it’s good to have end users testing. The good thing was that they found only minor bugs and more or less cosmetic issues, but still that makes a long list of things to do.

(more…)

Tamagotchi becomes Tamagotchi The Movie

dirk — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 10:44:01 +0000

Tamagotchi, the hype of 1997 (yes, already 10 years ago) will be turned into a movie! In december of this year, the film will be released. Probably first in Asia, it is not known if it will make it to the USA or europe. Over 40 million units have been sold world wide, mainly the first years. Apparently a new version was released in 2004 that sparked a new hype. How many kids will go see the movie? I think the characters can be fun, but apart from good artwork I hope they have a good script….

Henkel and Walibi sign up with Eccky

regina — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:01:28 +0000

Last month two new commercial partners signed with Eccky: Henkel and WalibiWorld. Starting the 16^th of May, in-game campaigns for both brands will be launched. Eccky’s cooperation with Henkel is aimed at promoting its Pritt products as well as generating traffic for Henkel’s “Back to School VIP” advergame. The campaign for WalibiWorld is aimed at promoting WalibiWorld as an amusement park for the whole family, as well as a great thrill park for teens. User-generated content from the “Walibi Thrills” campaign website is fed into the Eccky game generating general awareness and traffic for the campaign website.

Henkel

Henkel is a world-leading Fast Moving company headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany. Henkel operates in three strategic business areas: Home Care, Personal Care, and Adhesives, Sealants & Surface Treatment. Henkel will evaluate the Pritt campaign to investigate if the results of the in-game advertising campaign could prove beneficial to other brands within their portfolio in the Netherlands, or abroad as Eccky enters the international market, specifically outside the Netherlands, this year.

Walibi

WalibiWorld is part of the French company Compagnie des Alpes, which operates more than 20 theme parks throughout Europe, including MovieWorld in Germany and the famous Parc Astérix in

France. The Dutch WalibiWorld has seen a transformation over the past few years. Starting a number of years ago as a SixFlags-owned rollercoaster park for teens, it has now added entertainment to also serve as an all-family theme park. WalibiWorld and Eccky are investigating the possibility of adding a permanent virtual theme park to the Eccky experience.

First post on our new weblog

dirk — Mon, 07 May 2007 08:01:34 +0000

Well, it was quite a lot of fun, but we’ve made it. With the launch of our new corporate web site we moved our blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Probably there will be some minor changes & bug fixes in the next few days, but the most important part, namely moving our old content (dating back to 2004!) to the new weblog has been achieved. Yeah! And welcome to you all on our new weblog.

P.s. if you find any issues with the weblog, please post a comment and we will fix them asap.

Eccky Helps Kids to Zip Their Lip

Gina — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 17:58:00 +0000

This past Wednesday saw the official launch of the Zip Your Lip campaign by World Vision, and Eccky was there as official ambassador (For more details on the campaign, check out www.zipyourlip.nl/eccky [in Dutch]).

The campaign encourages kids to “zip their lip” (= to fast, or refrain from eating) in honor of the 12 million children in Africa who have become orphaned as the result of having lost parents to AIDS. Kids participating in the campaign zip their lip for a period of 24 hours, an effort for which they are sponsored by family and friends. More than 10,000 children have already signed up and the money they raise will be used to help AIDS orphans in the Congo, Somalia, and Uganda.

Zip Your Lip is now present in various locations in the Eccky game and Eccky has even developed a unique character - Eddy - specifically to serve as the Zip Your Lip ambassador. Eddy is featured on all Zip Your Lip campaign materials, including on t-shirts, such as that worn by Yolanthe van Kasbergen, a popular Dutch actress, at the campaign launch (see photo above). Even better, photos of Yolanthe in her ‘Eddy shirt’ are appearing in media everywhere!