It figures

The latest big thing in gaming for virtual world enthusiasts is bringing your avatar to life in the form of a miniature figure. I didn't realise that a company called "Fabjectory" has already been producing Second Life figures for almost a year, so when the news broke that my other favourite virtual world, World of Warcraft, now also had a company producing miniatures I thought this was completely new.

I have to say, I am surprised that Linden Labs didn't link it from their blog. A quick search on the official Linden Blog confirms that no, I didn't miss it, there never was a link about it.

I have to say, though, you can see where business backers and professionalism tell. The Figureprints site is slick, modelled on the WoW site and the quality of their models is fantastic; as you might expect from a company set up by the former VP of Microsoft Gaming. Figureprints got a whopping ONE MILLION hits in the first week to their website, and are now so popular that they actually have to have monthly draws to decide who gets the figures. The figures are manufactured by a 10,000 line script that actually grabs the exact details of the original avatar from Blizzard's studios and renders it in dull grey. It's then hand painted and finished, lacquered, placed in a glass display dome and shipped out to the lucky recipient. Signs are that the other big boys, including Sony Interactive Entertainment are very interested in Figureprints, and looking to get avatars from their world produced too.

Which begs the question, since Fabjectory have already been around for a while - why aren't they getting all the good press? Chances are it's at least partially down to their presentation. Fabjectory meet your avatar within SL and take pictures and measurements, dimensions and details required to make your avatar from scratch. They save the time in the print process, by having the miniature made from coloured materials, but the end result isn't as pretty and they also charge substantially more if you have a complex avatar. My normal wood elf avatar in Second Life would cost around $99, but my furry complex werehouse avatar would cost quite a bit more because of its complexity and detail. In comparison, Figureprints charge a flat $95.

I can speculate that Figureprints also have a much better, newer, next generation printer than Fabjectory (four of them, in fact, each costing $50,000) and this is also bound to influence the quality of the finished figure. While I'd like to see a Fabjectory model "in the flesh" so to speak, a quick youtube search doesn't turn up any hits, which again would probably decrease their marketing traffic.

By contrast, look at this guys jaw drop when he sees his WoW figure. While I'm already in the draw for a Figureprints WoW figure, I think I'll give Fabjectory a miss...