Slashdot Log In
Disney, Stuffed Animals, Draw Kids to Online Games
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Mar 26, 2007 02:20 PM
from the ahh-the-disturbing-future dept.
from the ahh-the-disturbing-future dept.
CNN Money has up a piece looking at the next defining force in online games; neither Blizzard nor Lord of the Rings Online has their attention: it's all about stuffed animals. 'Tweens', as they're called, are a hugely influential market and game-makers are finally responding with online spaces keyed to their interests. Titles like Club Penguin and WebKinz allow older kids their freedom while still providing a safe place to play. Outfits like Disney and Nickelodeon are getting into the fray, and with good reason. Tweens, the article estimates, are a $40 billion demographic. "Club Penguin and Webkinz trumpet their sites as safe, ad-free environments. Disney and Nickelodeon are more frankly commercial and--in a big shift--ad-supported. Marketing to kids is always tricky; no one wants to be seen shilling to children. And whether the kids will buy the branded content, or the products advertised, remains to be seen. But the biggest question hovering over this whole market is what the kids will want in the future--like next week. The most carefully crafted strategies can be blown up by an overnight shift in whatever adolescents deem cool. "
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Clicng to that gream me friend, cling to it with every bit of strength you have.
Cause it is giong to get blown away when you catch one that figured away around it. Like putting in their own router when you are out. Or wifi over a neighbors lines.
It's like trying to invent racoon proof trash can.
Re: (Score:1)
Furries you say? (Score:2, Funny)
Oh yeah, Furries, that's safe for the kids and leads to completely normal balanced lifestyle.
Got Yiff? [encycloped...matica.com]Re: (Score:1)
I'd be amused to see someone trying to market to that community, given how massively homebrew they are with their content... It's a pretty self-sufficient fandom, from what I've observed. Many do seem to have a softspot for traditionally nerdy stuff, though, such as videogames, SF/F, electronics and the like. In fact, it's probable that there are
My favorite quote (Score:2)
Oh, yeah, sign my kid up. Nothing I want more than to have a kid that spends her recess time doing homework so that she can play some inane game on the computer where online furry things get to play outdoors while she's stuck inside. No need for her to have any downtime, time to recharge and decomress in the middle of her schoolwork.
Oh, well, I guess that's practice for when the ozone is completely gone and nobody is allow
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Friends of mine have three boys, aged 8 to 12. They're allowed 20 minutes of screen time per weekday. They can allocate it all to TV, the computer or a combination of both. This solves many things:
- the boys don't fight over using the screens as there's only an hour of time to divide between them
- they learn to be selective of what they want to do with their time
- they learn to be very efficient at
Re: (Score:2)
We've only got one child, so she gets quite a bit more "screen" time, and though its heavily regulated she tends not to notice - of course, she's 4 so there are fewer outside pressures even with preschool peers. With TiVo, she only knows of programs we record (I love the
Yeah (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The current big drive is raunch (yes it is a bad as it sounds), and getting it started as early as possible, because it basically markets consumables, like alcohol and junk food as well as entertainment of the music and movies variety.
Be warned, subliminal advertising at an early age means the amoral and immoral marketdroids will h
Webkinz sucks (Score:3, Informative)
One notable observation so far: Webkinz sucks. When a child forgets their username ("Who could have imagined that this could happen?"), there's no way to retrieve or reset it. Attempts to re-register with the secret code draw an error. An attempt to reach tech support got me one illiterate, useless response three days later, followed by nothing.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Just look at it as training for when your kid grows up and has to cancel his/her AOL account...
Killer App. Beanie Babies + MMOPG (Score:2)
I don't even want to think about the number of Beanie Babie that my mom has. I could easily see folks like her going out and collecting all of these toys and then going to the companies MMOPG to register all her babies with the company.
So that's Microsoft's next big game after Halo 3.. (Score:2)
Finicky market (Score:5, Interesting)
I said because she's into the "penguin" site and just lost interest in Toontown. "Oh yeah, I've been hearing about the penguins quite a bit lately" was her answer. (i.e. clubpenguin mentioned in tfa)
Note that there was a lot of work put into her Toontown character. It's like WOW in that the character needs to be developed and leveled. However, my daughter and her classmates had no problem simply dumping their character and moving on en masse. The time investment is viewed differently at that age.
Before penguins, Webkinz was all the rage but it now also sits idle. It's a classic fad where there's a window of opportunity to grab the market but the finicky age demographic here makes it really brutal to keep them like WOW does. There are grownups I know that would literally cry if they lost their WOW account whereas these kids would just move on to the next thing without batting an eyelash.
On another topic, all of this was accomplished with a strict one-hour a day regimen, after homework and casual reading time, etc. Imho, the positive aspect is that they focus intently and stick to the tasks involved for an extended period of time (i.e. one sitting). The negative is that after a month of play, they don't reach an endgame where there's a complete sense of "getting the job done". But there's still a pretty good sense of accomplishment along the way (for what you could expect in this age range).
along with people who talk at the theatre (Score:1)
Castle Infinity (Score:2, Informative)
Just thought I'd throw that out there.