Did ya know: Spore’s undercover education

Players will be able to create evolutionary models, play with food webs and even investigate the effects of global warming within a few hours of game play. As Wright mentions in his talk, sim games allow us (and young learners) to develop better long-term thinking. It is difficult for us to realistically think and plan for events one hundred or two hundred years into the future. Sims shrink this time frame down, showing direct cause and effect relations that a simple textbook or series of images cannot. Spore’s colourful, Pixar-style animations wrap projection models into fun scenarios that are not only educational but enjoyable to create and watch. It’s this role of

Spore’s teaching potential at feeding change

Awesome!!!  Make sure you click the link and head to Liam’s blog to read more and to check out the video of Wright speaking more about Spore’s possibility.  Rad.

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Tags: Spore, education, entertainment, edutainment, youth, gaming

Hello Kitty World launches closed Beta

Sanrio Digital announced today the launch of a closed beta for a virtual world based on its incredibly popular Hello Kitty brand. Hello Kitty Online will feature locations based on the Flower Kingdom, London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow and more. Integrated with the community portal of Sanrio Town, the world will have ties to blogs, email, video sharing, and Sanrio merchandise sales as well as NPCs based on the characters of the Hello Kitty world. While the world seems to have a large social component, it’s being billed as an MMORPG with customizable avatars, guilds, skill systems, and a player economy. There’s combat and puzzle solving, but also crafting, houses to customize, and puzzles. Targeted at females in their pre-teens to twenties, the downloadable world is free to play, but will monetize off of the Item Mall, which “allows players to use real money to purchase special items and upgrades for characters.”

Virtual Worlds News: Sanrio Launches Hello Kitty World

I’ve been monitoring this for a while now– having linked to it in my Beta Virtual World collection… I’m on my way right now. More later.

UPDATED: Meh.

So the world isn’t LIVE yet (still closed beta). But from the intro pages, it is BEAUTIFUL. Like yummy junk food of bright deliciousness. It’s going to correspond in many ways to the pre-existing Sanrio Town. So, after getting bored of their “selling materials” on the beta-info page, I jumped over to Sanrio to get all signed up for when the site goes live.

And I encountered this Meh registration gem:

a) They take TOOOOONS of personal information (from age, FULL NAME, email, OCCUPATION, EDUCATION, to believe it or not INCOME).

b) They take all that information BEFORE clarifying whether or not they CAN/SHOULD take that information from children. After a user enters everything, the system does indeed BLOCK U13 members (they cannot join at this time).

c) I certainly hope they’re promptly deleting the info from their databanks for minors. It seems like they are– because I was able to then refresh the registration page, enter all of the same information but CHANGE my age to an appropriate age, and easily complete registration… w/o a bead of “will it let me know?” sweat.

I’m a uber-curious and trying not to be overly judgemental about their choice of blogs, video, and email with this demo. iCarly conquered it, as did (somewhat) Kidswhorip.com. It’s a TOUGH task to take– moderating & screening & getting parental sign off on UGC for U13 kids. It’s hard on scalability & cost & staffing & policy & protection & liability & responsibility, etc.

Hmmm. I’m going to ignore Sanrio Town for the moment, and go back to Hello Kitty World because it doesn’t creep me out nearly as much. Hopefully they’ll give some sort of info on how they intend to keep kids safe, and have a bridge of solidarity protecting Hello Kitty world from Sanrio Town’s less than tween-esque behaviors, and vice versa. More later.

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Tags: virtualworlds, hello kitty, sanrio, youth, brands, marketing, licensing

Well Good: Littlest Pet Shop VW gets some help

In September, Hasbro threw its hat into the toy-based virtual world ring with an online offering for the Littlest Pet Shop line–the VIPs. That was developed with Pileated Pictures, but, according to Hasbro’s 2007 Q4 earnings call, it’s not seen as a revenue source. All the money for the Littlest Pet Shop line is still in toys. That said, it looks like there’s more on the way from Hasbro’s partnership with EA than just digital ports of its classic board games.

“Certainly the idea of the VIPs is similar to sort of a Webkinz idea where the plush toy that you can buy is coded and connects to an Internet site,” said David Hargreaves, Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, Finance and Global Operations. We’ve developed that. Hasbro has sort of had a partner develop that and that will be not a revenue generating site — that will be based on — we will make our money selling the toy.

Virtual Worlds News: Hasbro and EA to Expand Littlest Pet Shop World

Once upon a time, I was happy that LPS was coming to the wild frontier of Virtual Worlds.  I thought that of ALL the pet-play virtual worlds, Littlest Pet Shop should have been #1. 

Then I bought one of the dolls with the codes. 

The overall world is glitchy (I still don’t know what my pet looks like online– it’s a silhouette of nothingness that I can only track by the movement of the screen), the games are buggy, and there isn’t a soul around to talk to or play with. 

It’s like a barren, lonely dessert of bright pinks (not desert, get it? Yeah, I’m lame) and greens with mirages of possible-fun, but no one to share it with.  I almost want to hear a giant “Wa Waaaa” in the background as I roam aimlessly.

Sure, visually, there’s a lot to be happy about for kids liking the brand– it’s neon cute. 

But, with minor flash-games that are so casual and mundane that boredom comes so easily– there isn’t too much there to keep me coming back.  It would be great to actually have the comradery of a pet shop (oh, stop… not all pet shops are bad, are they? Are they? Hmmm) where loads of baby pets are bouncing around, interacting, etc.  And maybe a little more depth to the game play (Club Penguin has spies & quests & events, Webkinz has school, jobs, and pet “health” care). 

Of course, if LPS wants to go that direction– building a safe world for their users to have a single experience and imaginative play on their own… that is great too.   Again, I think there needs to be a bit more depth to the play pattern since the play pattern choices are gone (chat vs pet care vs games vs degrees of user competition).  But over all– if you want to have a singular experience world, go for it.  Give a bored 6 year old salt & pepper shakers and they’re be content playing in their own imagination for hours.  Just remember– set another child with barbies text to her?  So long salt & pepper shakers…

I look forward to what EA might bring LPS to help remove the glitches and bugs and improve upon the tremendous possibility the brand lends a child’s imagination & play.

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Tags: littlestpet shop, EA, virtual worlds, children, girls, play patterns, fun, entertainment, online, community