nDreams: Q&A on the Party Gear
by BONZO, HSM Editor
This past week’s update brought us some very cool content from nDreams. Not just the latest volume of Street Moves dancers, but also a new addition for entertainment options, the BoxBeats: Dance active item. This new virtual device plays between twelve original tracks of music from independent artists. This is the highest number of track options we have had in an music player so far.
This stereo item was featured in the first Street Moves preview video, and every other volume’s promotional video thereafter. There was another item featured in those videos, which was released in tandem with the BeatBox: Dance item. I previously reported erroneously that the Shimmer Sphere would release with the first volume, and that it was an expansion of the Street Moves line. We have since learned that the Shimmer Sphere is a separate nDreams item on its own, but not specifically affiliated with the Street Moves line.
To get more information from these items, and to provide the most up to date and correct information, we decided to contact Joe Dale, Digital Product Manager for nDreams, who was kind enough to give his time and answer some questions for HSM.
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HSM: Dance beats come in many varieties. In what genre would you classify the dance beats in the beat box? More hip hop, or more electronic?
Joe: It’s more the electronic Dance Music style.
HSM: The Shimmer Sphere will be compared to the Chameleo furniture; are they connected, or strictly two separate brands under nDreams?
Joe: Chameleo and The Shimmer Sphere are two completely separate brands. It’s nice some items share a common trait which allows us to cross promote the products a lot easier. Case in point is the inclusion of the Shimmer Sphere and BoxBeats: Dance in the Street Moves “introducing” videos.
HSM: Are these items a line of their own and will they be the only two items we can expect to see from this collection, or are they the only active items? Will we see more furniture options from this line in non active form?
Joe: We will of course look at how well these items do before making any decisions. With BoxBeats there is the potential to look at releasing other genre specific versions, and I’m sure that will depend on demand from the community.
HSM: Currently, most stereos have a limited range; once you step beyond that range, you don’t hear it any more. Is the Beat Box structured the same way? Will the sound field encompass the entire space at full volume, fade based on proximity, or be confined to a specific radius?
Joe: Box Beats has an in built volume setting, so you can turn it up even higher and fill more of the space; there is still some fade on there the further you get away from it though. A good example, I placed my BoxBeats at one end of the Blueprint: Home building grid and turned it up to 100% volume, I walked to the other end, sixty meters away, and could still hear it very well.
HSM: When the track name and artist are displayed, with a link to the site, will the browser plug-in open the page while in Home, or will it just be a link that’s displayed for you?
Joe: The link to the artist website / information page would just appear for you in order to look at this away from Home. If you like the music you hear, it is certainly worth heading over to see what other music these great independent artists are creating.
HSM: International artists tend to, on average, encounter a comparatively niche market with North America; how do you feel about the impact the independent musicians will have on your non-European clients? Music can be very regional; do you feel the artists you have worked with are mainstream enough to be accepted by the community? Or is Home as an artificial reality the sort of environment in which such things don’t matter?
Joe: We feel we have quality Dance music from quality independent artists. If you like this genre of music, I’m sure that you will love the tracks that are included with BoxBeats: Dance. It’s also great for someone to own if they just want to invite a few people over to their personal space to chat and would like to have some music in the background. There is also the other side where people may just want to purchase BoxBeats: Dance because the system itself looks great.
HSM: Finding a piece of music that’s catchy enough for a Home consumer to be willing to listen to for months or years on end is quite a challenge. What were the selection criteria used? How did nDreams decide on specific tracks as being the “right” ones for this project?
Joe: A lot of the music was crowd sourced; we put out some tweets from the @nDreamers account as well as [nDreams’ CEO] Patrick’s @patrickol account, and we received some great tracks through. Other people in the office knew people or had heard things and we got in touch. There are a few people in the office who love this genre of music, so we let them listen to the choices and we whittled them down to the final twelve that will be included.
HSM: Let’s examine the overall product for a moment. What market demand is this offering from nDreams satisfying? What were the key observations about Home consumers and their behaviour that led nDreams to invest time and capital into this project and concept?
Joe: It’s something that hasn’t really been done to this level before. We have a quality looking product that will sit in anyone’s apartment, and we also have some fantastic dance tracks from independent, real world artists. Also as mentioned previously, it ties in nicely with other products that we had in the pipeline and those who are looking at collecting the Street Moves outfits would want to add this to that collection.
HSM: From nDreams’ point of view, what are the pros and cons to the marketing strategy behind rolling out Street Moves in various ‘volumes’ as opposed to simply launching everything at once? Does it build more long-term product consciousness in the eyes of the Home consumer, or is there a risk that someone might wait to see the entire line-up before choosing what to invest in?
Joe: It’s certainly something that we will look at when all have been released and out for a while and see what the numbers say. Releasing them week by week we knew that there would be quality products coming from nDreams every week over a four week period. People may buy an outfit one week and want to carry on the collection and buy two, three or four. There are other ways that something like this could be released in the future, spacing out the release dates for example, and that’s something I will look at when I have all the data in front of me.
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Chameleo and The Shimmer Sphere are two completely separate brands. They are under the nDreams brand and have great cross promotional elements, and work well together for the party atmosphere. The Shimmer Sphere, unlike all previous disco balls, actually projects a realistic spotted effect. These two items together with the Street Moves dancers look great to get the party going. They push the elements of what we are accustomed to, and bring a very creative approach that dares to challenge what the community needs, wants, and even what it expects.
nDreams has often pushed the limitations of the realistic world Home tries to emulate. As a developer, they have played with reality, and even for what many of us gather in Home for – social interaction – they have brought a new way of looking at our environment and how we party together. These two items, with the previous party gear and the amazing inventive avatar costumes from Street Moves really play off each other, but are different enough to work with any other Home content to enhance the party atmosphere. With continuous community support, we may just see even more of this creative approach to party gear.
I bought it right away for my EU acc! I see no point in buying it in US though since Loot and it’s radio provide an even better listening experience via their radio. I’ll wait for a portable version of that to hit US before buying any other kinda music boxes. Shame really for nDreams; they won’t get my dollar but thanks to the stupid clumping of laws in the *ahem* “EU”, they’ll get my pound and pence.
Its a good active (a bit large for my liking though) andI like that you can kinda set the listening radius on it too, always found the Boombox to be rather lacking like that. Good effort nDreams! Keep it up guys.
Oh and Joey, way to stay ambiguous mate! lol! ; )
I don’t like the music on this music machine very much. But to be fair, I don’t care for a lot of the music on HOME’s music machines. Give me big band, jazz, 50s 60s rock. Two winners for example are the Bottlegger29 radio with 20s type music and the Scariochi (sp?) skeleton band trio with (to me) Mexican type music.
However, Boxbeats is worth buying imho because I discovered it looks very nice and yes indeed the volume control does control how much of a space can hear the music.