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Ridemakerz Builds a Virtual World For Boys Filled With Its Toy Cars

Post a Comment December 5, 2008 – 5:00 pm | Permalink |  Print This Post |

Larry Andreini thinks he can take on Pixar. The founder and CEO of Ridemakerz, a rapidly growing chain of stores where boys can custom-build their own toy cars, is building a virtual world for his 6-to-12-year-old customers and their cars. This virtual world is in closed beta right now, and will launch early next year. So will Pixar’s World of Cars and startup Webcarzz.

The Ridemakerz virtual world is being designed by the Electric Sheep Company, which has a lot of experience designing virtual experiences for corporate clients in Second Life. But this virtual world will be entirely browser-based, built on top of its Webflock technology platform (which I wrote about in July). I was given a preview of the virtual world last week.