The movie and cartoon giant Disney is on a quest to bind their audience to them in a series of Virtual Worlds developed for kids in different (consecutive) age ranges, growing up inside the fantasy world as Disney creates it. Disney became a serious player in the virtual worlds industry with their acquisition of the 2D kidsworld ‘Club Penguin’ and now shows how they plan to turn this investment into profit.
Disney launched a second series of Virtual worlds, starting with Toonworld, a virtual world with all the famous Disney characters and recently launched the virtual world in the Pirates of the Caribbean setting for the teen audience. They hope to get the millions of users from their kid worlds (4-8 years) to cross over to their teen worlds (8-14) once they outgrow the platform, effectively ‘raising’ these kids on their social media. Recently Shel Israel of Fastcompany.tv interviewed the corporation behind the virtual worlds:
In a previous post I listen 10 reasons why the closed, kids based platforms will be the preferred choice for advertisers/commercial development for community based virtual worlds. I briefly touched on social context by saying play creates content, but the the true strength of these worlds is social context as provided by the Disney worlds.
Unlike open worlds, context and theme define their worlds (which might be why Rheta Shan recently asked her readers what kind of [virtual] world they want to live in). By this definition it creates an effective beacon to a specific market filtering a specific niche for the advertiser rather then the advertiser having to do the filtering themselves - the cause of marketing inefficiency of the past year.
Secondly, the context provides the tools for easier self moderation and improving the user experience.By having a clear definition, unlike Second Life which constantly has to redefine its borders with new rules, clear rules can be made. Closed worlds don’t have to be everything to everyone and can exclude activities that are unwanted from the start, and encourage user-self moderation by a community that knows these clear rules.
Posted on: May 5, 2008 | Share on:
Abhishek Saxena on 
Sophie on 
Rheta Shan
said on May 6th
Well, I was going to say I’m not quite sure this is why I asked the question originally, (I think I’d have said it was rhetorical flourish), but never one to sneeze on both a higher context for my ramblings and on a trackback, all I will say instead is : ta a lot :)
And yes, I still owe you ana nswer on that :) Stay tuned.
Rick van der Wal
said on May 6th
Well rhetorical flourish or not, I think it was the right question to ask!
I also seriously doubt you would have asked something like that in a world as clearly defined as EVE online or Coca Cola World - there would be no question because it was designed with specific goals, and the tools - both consumer and corporate minded - to realize these goals :)
The world you’d want to live in will define your (personal) goals more than anything, which is one step closer to defining the purpose of SL, because there is a goal to SL, it’s just not clear/the same for everyone. From there on, a ‘beacon’ could develop that would attract those interested in that same world, or same side of this world and this will be crucial to the adoption of open ended, UGC based virtual environments if they ever want to overcome these closed worlds.
Virtual Worlds For Kids
said on April 16th
This is true. Kids, parents and even teachers are in agreement. Virtual worlds is the safest place to be - much more so than even just a flash games portal. It’s a safe, moderated predictable environment. http://www.clubpenguingang.com