Mind Candy

We recently launched our biggest ever competition at Moshi Monsters.  Aspiring artists have the chance to draw their own Moshling and potentially see it framed and exhibited at a major new art exhibition in London.

We think it’s is a fantastic chance for young artists to see their work recognised alongside some of the world’s greatest Monster illustrators, and in front of a audience of thousands.

We’re really keen to spread the word on this and would love for teachers to pick up on the competition and get their classes involved.  Feel free to tell the world!

This is the blog post from the Daily Growl that goes into a little more detail, and here’s the official release that we put out today:

Good luck all!

GLOBAL COMPETITION FOR MONSTROUS YOUNG ARTISTS!

Moshi Monsters offers young artists the chance to draw their own Monster and have it featured at the upcoming ‘Monsters Inked’ exhibition

LONDON, UK – Mind Candy (developers of the online game for kids, www.moshimonsters.com) today announced the launch of a new global competition inviting young artists to design their very own Moshling, (a collectable pet monster) for the chance to have it brought to life within the Moshi Monsters game.

The lucky winner will also get the opportunity for their creation to feature in the upcoming exhibition “Monsters Inked” @ Idea Generation gallery from April 8th – May 4th. Winners will get to see their creations displayed alongside other great artists including new work by Monsterism Island creator Pete Fowler, and a world-first display of 20 illustrations by Flanimals artist Rob Steen from the much-
loved Ricky Gervais book.

Michael Smith, CEO of Mind Candy commented: “It’s a great competition for children of all ages to get involved in. Monsters Inked is a huge exhibition
featuring world-renowned illustrators, and one lucky winner will have the chance to showcase their monster alongside these artists. Not only that but they’ll get their creation turned into a Moshi Monsters character that millions of children around the whole world can adopt.”

One overall winner, and 24 runners-up, will have their work framed and displayed at the Idea Generation Gallery for the duration of the Monsters Inked exhibition.  The competition is open to all players of Moshi Monsters, and to sign-up for free visit www.moshimonsters.com. Entries will be judged by a panel of top illustrators and must be received by the deadline of March 23rd.  For more details on how to enter this competition visit: www.moshimonsters.com/monsterdesign

Mind Candy is delighted to announce the acquisition of Tutpup from Cominded Ltd

Tutpup is a site where kids from around the world can play maths and spelling games against each other. It might sound a bit dry and boring, but five minutes on the site will assure you that it’s not.

Despite being slightly older than the target audience, I’ve been hooked on the site since last summer and have spent countless evenings engaged in cut-throat maths battles with friends.

We’ve been very impressed with the site that Paul Birch, Richard Taylor, and the team at Cominded built, and think there is a lot of potential synergy between Tutpup and Moshi Monsters.

At Mind Candy we strongly believe that kids learn best when having fun, and Tutpup is a great example of this. We’ve heard many tales of children who’ve struggled in traditional lessons, but excelled when put in front of Tutpup. The game gives them confidence, respect from their peers, and a powerful incentive to spend hours honing their maths and spelling skills outside of school. Most importantly it’s fun. Our brains reward us by releasing little chemical jolts of pleasure whenever we grok a new system, and this is a key part of what makes a game fun. Sadly those pleasurable jolts are few and far between when learning in a traditional classroom.

Improving maths and english skills through rapid fire multi-player puzzles games is just the tip of the iceberg. A game centric approach to education could transform how we teach our kids, and better prepare them for a world that is hugely different to the one that existed when curricula and teaching methods were originally laid down.

Game designers could teach educators a great deal about how to make learning more exciting and engaging for children. There are pioneers in this field that are making great headway already: Derek Robertson’s classroom studies with the Nintendo DS (Brain Training and Nintendogs) make fascianting reading, and Graham Brown-Martin’s new conference (Game Based Learning) is a must-attend for anyone interested in this area. Even Carol Voderman and David Cameron are joining the fun with an announcement on the front page of the Guardian today: “Her taskforce is to make maths more cheerful and populist on the Countdown model…”

One of my clearest memories from school was a game I spent several days trying to crack. We had one BBC Micro in the whole of our primary school and getting access to it was a real challenge. I became fascinated by a text based game where you played the role of an ice cream tycoon running a few vans at a seaside resort. In the morning phase of the game you checked a few variables such as the weather report and hotel occupancy, and then decided how many ice creams to buy from your wholesaler. It was a pretty simplistic game but it had such a major impact on me at a critical age that i’m sure helped sow the seed that eventually led to my becoming an entrepreneur. Games are certainly not idle entertainment.

Education has always been at the heart of Moshi Monsters (the game was originally to be called Puzzle Monsters), but we have to tread a very delicate line. There’s no doubt our playground buzz would diminish if kids viewed us as a straight education site. At the same time, we want to ensure there is real educational merit to playing the game so parents are comfortable letting their children spend time and money at the site. There are many kids websites on the internet but very few that marry education with fun in the way Moshi does, so maintaining this balance is vital for us.

We think the 60 second daily puzzle games that children play with their Monster strikes the right balance. The games test a wide range of important skills such as spatial awareness, logic, vocabulary and basic maths, but at the same time are fun to play because of the game elements (friendly feedback from your monster, recording top scores, rewards of the in-game currency etc).

We believe that Tutpup’s style of multi-player puzzle games will make Moshi Monsters even more fun for our users and intend to introduce similar style games to Moshi soon. Tutpup is our first acquisition and we are very aware that there is already a large audience happily playing the game in schools around the world. We want to assure this existing audience that we have no plans to close, charge for, or dramatically modify Tutpup, and if that situation changes we will make sure we give plenty of notice.

If you’re a fan of Tutpup (teacher, parent or child) then we’d love to hear your feedback and ideas on how we can improve it.

Happy Monstering (and Tutpuping)

After an amazing effort from the whole team here at Mind Candy, we’re pleased to announce Moshi Monsters has just launched the Moshi Membership, with some amazing new features!

Getting your very own Monstro City passport will allow you to cross the bridge and visit the Port, where you can shop for exclusive new and rare items, treat your monster to a makeover and shake the Rox trees – money really does grow on trees!

It’s been a lot of hard work and we’re thrilled to be able to share it with you all, and hope to see you over there soon.

One of the joys of working on a project like Moshi Monsters is that we get sent a great deal of wonderfully creative stories and pictures from kids all over the world. It’s hugely inspiring to build a product for an audience that is so deeply immersed in our creation.

It’s a worrying fact though that children seem to lose their unbridled imaginations as they get older and are worn down by the school system. Sir Ken Robinson gave a great talk on this subject at TED a few years back.

I stumbled across the following video recently and it really struck a chord. It features a 4 year old French girl telling an incredible story about baby monkeys lost in frightening trees, lions, monsters, ghosts, witches, potomuses and a tremendously bad mammoth.

I’m not sure if she plays Moshi Monsters but I’d love to read one her stories if she did ever find herself in Monstro City.

I hope she doesn’t lose her gift for telling stories as she gets older.

Once upon a time… from Capucha on Vimeo.