Mind Candy

The videos are in, the photos have arrived and we want to share the most beautiful people in London with you. People of all ages and backgrounds. People who work at Mind Candy and people who love Moshi Monsters. Short people, tall people, young people, older people. It was a night for our Monster Owners to come and celebrate Moshi Monsters’ success. We are successful because of all the people around the world who adopted Moshi Monsters during the past 2 years. Thanks everyone! And for those of you who couldn’t attend, we hope to do more Moshi parties around the globe so keep your eye on our community blog :) .

Below is a special collage photo and a great video of the night… because a picture is worth 1000 words. Or in this case, 862 words :)

Football’s a funny old game, especially when Team Moshi Monsters took to the pitch last night for their first game in two years.

Blustery conditions didn’t dent optimism as the squad of 9 lined up for their National Anthem of ‘Hey Moshi‘.

Conway, in his trademark headband, patrolled the defense like an angry fox, swiping wildly at anyone that verged too near

Playmakers Geliher, Raithatha and Garnham gave the team its spine and battled hard in a brutal midfield. Jones’ long hours in the Underground Disco paid dividends as he danced and pirouetted past flailing limbs, confusing himself as much as the other side.

The opposition probed for weakness and early on whipped in a dangerous cross from the left. Hardman Matjaszek soared like an eagle to head the ball to safety, only to have a penalty awarded against him.

Rob the Cat kept out the spot kick with a full stretch dive, but the follow-up smashed passed his grasp.

A goalmouth scrabble early in the second half looked to put the game beyond the Monstery paws of Team Moshi when the ball bobbled home for 2-0.

In the dying moments fleet footed Smith stole up the left wing and laid on a cross for Mitchelson who, with the eagle eye of an expert animator, slotted the ball home with pixel perfect precision.

Sadly it was too little too late and the final whistle blew as Moshi surged forward searching for an equalizer that never came.

Moshi Monsters FC 1 v 2 Ledley’s Kings
(attendance 0)

Mind Candy is a great place to work (and play).  We have every imaginable toy and game scattered around the London office. We have an entire section of the office for gaming, with couches and bean bag chairs and a big TV. It’s not unusual to find a group of Mind Candies playing Guitar Hero during their lunch break. And, we have “Game Night” now and then, where we order take-out and play games after work.

Last month the Mind Candy team took a ‘Field Trip’ to the Victoria & Albert Museum to view a digital art show.  20 something Mind Candies took the Bus and Underground to South Kensington. It was a spectacle for Londoners and a great exercise in camaraderie for the Mind Candies. The exhibit was interesting but the journey and purpose of our group activity made an impression on me. I spent time talking to one of our newer employees and had time to get to know him outside the office environment. It was a great exercise, all in all.

Recently, two of the Mind Candy Community Team members took the term “work ethic” to the next level by visiting a tattoo parlour to show their dedication to moshlings, the cute little pets that belong to Monstro City monsters (because we all know that pets need and love pets of their own). Here’s how Amanda, one of our Assistant Community Managers, describes their adventure in ink:

“Because our love of Moshlings has grown to astronomic proportions, Tiffany (Community Assistant) and I were carried off by a giant Furi and Katsuma and taken to a tattoo parlour in our home state in the US. We visited a toy-tattoo collecting artist, Jesse, and had the Moshlings Shi Shi and Lady Meowford permanently added to our body art collections.”

I don’t think we’ll see a trend among the Mind Candies such as the LOTR  (Lord of the Rings) cast who (not so) secretly “branded” themselves to show solidarity.  But one never knows. When you work together AND play together, you become a family of sorts. The monsters and moshlings are an extension of our collective efforts at Mind Candy. We think of the monsters and moshlings as more than 2 dimensional characters. We think of their personalities and how they interact with Monster Owners in the game. Every team member is encouraged to provide input when we create new characters, need character names, and every team member is welcome to provide input in pretty much all of the creative  processes.  The atmosphere is quite democratic and open. Michael (our CEO) is a great communicator, open with information and inclusive. His approach makes all the difference in what you do 8 hours (or more) a day. Some of us spend more time at our jobs these days than we do with our families. So, we need to be sure we’re in an open, creative, accepting and healthy environment. Trust and respect start at the top of Mind Candy, with Michael and the Senior Management team. Creativity is always rampant. I had a conversation with our Community Manager just yesterday where she said “I just gotta give out those thousands of Mississippi Mud pies first… (I love that I get to say that -  my job rules).”  I have to agree.

At Mind Candy, creativity rules, as well. We’re thrilled to see two of our team members’ affection for their favorite moshlings (mine is Lady Cleo but I’m too chicken to get a tattoo). The Community Management team is coming to London this week for the 15 Million Monster Party at the London Aquarium. So, if you’re in London and you see an American with fun little moshlings tattooed on her arm, feel free to stop her and ask her for the moshling code ;)

Moshi Monsters passed the 15 million registered Monster Owners mark on Saturday, March 6^th. In honor of our latest milestone (or is that mill-stone?), we’ll be celebrating in LARGE style at The London Aquarium this month. We’re giving away 100 Golden Tickets to 100 lucky Monster Owners, each of whom are allowed to bring one guest and one parent or guardian to Mind Candy’s monstrous event we’re calling The 15 Million Monster Party. If you can get yourself to London March 24^th, you are encouraged to enter the contest!

The event will be action-packed with face painting, candy floss, goodie bags, Toad soda, games, Moshi staff celebrities, and the world premiere of our “Hey Moshi!” Dance with a choreographer and group dance instructions. Who knows? Maybe Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s sons will enter. The Mirror quotes Sarah Brown on February 13^th stating that the boys play Moshi Monsters. Everybody wants a Golden Ticket, even Prime Minister’s sons. We’d love to see The Brown family learning the “Hey Moshi!” dance, that’s for sure.

Speaking of news articles and celebs, our own Mr Moshi, Michael Acton Smith, the CEO of Mind Candy and creator of Moshi Monsters, was featured in Wired Magazine recently.
The Monster Mash-Up article, talks to Wired about our plans to bring Moshi offline. We can’t reveal everything but we can encourage you to read the article.

And since we’re on a news roll, we may as well talk about our very own community news written by Monsto City Editor-at-large Roary Scrawl. Roary is our resident content genius who translates all the happenings into English for us each day. He also comes up with brilliant contests. We had a record-breaking number of entries for Valentines Day this year, with well over 17,000 Secret Admirer Shout Outs. We knew even our most dedicated Monster Owners wouldn’t be able to read 17,000 shout outs so we chose the top 1,000 and posted them over a week or so.

On a different note, Moshi Monsters participated in Safer Internet Day this year, February 9^th. Monster Owners around the world learned about online safety by taking the Safer Internet Day Quiz. We take online safety seriously at Mind Candy. In fact, we’ve recently purchased Crispthinking.com’s NetModerator ™ software, which we plan to integrate in the next month or so. And we recently upgraded to Inversoft’s filtering system in our Forums. Rebecca Newton (@RebeccaNewton) is a featured speaker this month at the San Francisco GDC 2010 (Game Developer’s Conference). Michael Acton Smith (@acton) is also speaking at the GDC 2010 Summit. Many of the Mind Candy team are attending the event. We’ll report back next week on how it all went.