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MMO Family: Virtual worlds for kids
MMO Family is your resource for leveling a gaming-specced family ... From tips on balancing gaming with family life to finding age-appropriate niches for every family member, MMO Family offers you advice on MMO gaming of the family, by the family and for the family. Nestling somewhere in between MMOs and social networking, virtual worlds are a virtual sandlot for millions of kids worldwide. Think avatar-based chat and mini-games alongside other kids of the same age range and interests, and you'll catch the appeal of these kid-friendly destinations. While a gaming parent might consider virtual worlds mere training wheels for games still to come, kid-friendly virtual worlds seem to fit the attention spans, chatty nature and niche-y interests of kids to a T. The sheer variety of worlds appealing to children makes it easy for kids to find a spot where they'll want to hang out. As of early 2009, kids could choose from 112 virtual worlds designed for children and teens, according to Engage Digital Media, with more than 80 new worlds under development. The numbers of kids who've found a virtual home in these worlds rivals even the fat figures of MMO big dog World of Warcraft. Research firm eMarketer estimates that in the United States alone, 8 million kids hung out in virtual worlds regularly during 2008; that number is projected to swell to more than 15 million by 2013.
Kids are the focus at VW08
Businesses have tried marketing to adults in Second Life. It's not working out for them. Instead, adults are gravitating toward casual games, while it's children who have shown themselves to be most receptive to marketing in virtual worlds. Such is the feeling at the Virtual Worlds 2008 conference in New York City, where aside from a single booth promoting Linden Lab's Second Life Grid, the place seemed like a toy fair. Barbie Girls Online, Nickelodeon, Neopets and Dino Kids are getting the big buzz at VW08. Teen-oriented sites like MTV's vLES are mature by comparison.Electric Sheep's Giff Constable says over the last three years, while he feels more people know what avatars are, he doesn't know any people over the time who have gotten one of their own. Part of that may be just what your definition of avatar is -- if it's meant to be an avatar on Second Life, that's one thing. An avatar in a social space like Facebook, perhaps something else.
Barbie Girls Online: Been there, done that, got the tiara
How will you ever tell your little girl that her friend Jane is a special VIP in Barbie Girls Online, but you won't even give her a dented copper tiara? Jane's tiara is made of diamonds, platinum and unicorn hair! Your daughter: No tiara. You: resented in real life. But you're a good mommy or daddy, and you'll buy your little girl her VIP membership and her tiara will be gold, with rubies, because you love her just that much. Welcome to the wonderful world of getting to your wallet through your children. It's not entirely new; Kid-oriented web sites such as Webkinz and Neopets have offered dolls with codes for use on their website for some years now, but they were real dolls, and the special perks on the website were theirs forever. They had something to keep when the computer was off. Now, your daughter's tenuous reign as VIP lasts only so long as you keep paying for a VIP membership. (Barbie Girls Online also requires a Barbie-shaped dongle/MP3 player to be plugged into the computer for full access but is not required for most of the site).
Barbie Girls tops ten million
Mattel's child-oriented 2.5D virtual world, BarbieGirls.com has reached ten million registered users (well more or less) according to the Washington Times. Long-time MMO/Virtual World observers and users will instantly note that a registered user does not an active user or subscriber make. However, Barbie Girls registered users require a special (customizable) Barbie MP3 player (called a Barbie Girl Device that range in price from US$40 to $US60) that has to be registered as a part of the signup process. That makes things more interesting, and puts Barbie Girls as bigger than operations like Second Life which have similar ballpark numbers of registered users, but no such financial barrier to entry. It's true that we don't normally write much about Barbie Girls - not because of any lack of merit as an MMO, no. We tend to avoid it because of the curse. They say that one of our writers once wrote a small news piece on Barbie Girls, and was inundated with messages about outfit unlocks and Barbie Bucks from millions of little girls. Forever. They say you can still hear him howling at GDC in San Francisco.
The myth of the bloody Webkinz murders
It's just a sign of the times: online worlds are increasingly a part of America's collective unconsciousness. From World of Warcraft's truck commercial to the popularity of Barbie Girls, young and old have come to accept online gaming as a part of our society. For better or worse, that means MMOs are now a part of the vicious rumormill that swirls online ... and the result is as disturbing as it is funny.It seems there's been a rumor going around since early last year concerning the perhaps-too-popular kiddie-world Webkinz. The story goes that some sort of malware can 'kill your Webkinz' inside the game. The accounts vary, but many seem to come back to an evil version of one of the in-game NPCs coming after your huggable critters with a weapon. While the image of a chainsaw-wielding duck is evocative, Snopes sets things to right: it's completely untrue. The site categorizes these rumors as expressions of anxiety over treasured friends/objects; much like a young person would fear a bully ripping the head of their stuffed animal off in real life, so they fear the virtual equivalent. And no, they note, neither Club Penguin nor NeoPets have anything to do with these rumors.[Via Cleolinda]
Barbie Girls MMO and Barbie Girl MP3 player, for little nerds in training
Alright, so it's not quite Azeroth, but girls who log onto Mattel's new Barbie Girls online community can play games, chat and "hang out" with other tween-ish participants, which sounds just as good preparation as any for the chaos that they'll soon be able to experience (as in, as soon as the parents' credit card gives the green light) in more "mature" communities such as WoW, Second Life and the upcoming PlayStation Home. Girls can naturally customize and accessorize their avatars, with up to 2.64 quadrillion combinations available, and "B Chat" with one another in a moderated and as-safe-as-reasonably-possible environment. In July, Mattel will launch a companion Barbie Girl MP3 player, which will allow girls who have met in person and synced the player with each other's computer to participate in "Secret B Chat," which allows more privacy and more open conversation. The $60 device includes 512MB of memory and a miniSD expansion slot, and unlocks additional content for the girls, alongside $10 accessory packs that we're sure will make similar methods of extortion, such as the Oblivion "horse armor" incident, seem positively generous in comparison.
