Children’s online virtual worlds create dull mini-capitalists
Like Taking Candy From a Baby: How Young Children Interact with Online Environments (pdf), a study released today from Consumer Reports Webwatch and the Mediatech Foundation, found that childrens’ websites are not doing a good enough job disclosing their advertising and marketing tactics to parents.
Parents involved in the study kept video journals which documented families’ frustrations with game websites and virtual worlds that draw kids into games and require a purchase to continue playing, among other things. Watch a few of the videos. I’d be surprised if some of those scenarios haven’t already been played out in your home.

Many online games and virtual worlds violate at least two of PEM’s standards of ethical marketing:
1. They interfere with the parent-child relationship by enticing young children to hand over an email address (and other personal information) without parental permission.
2. They take advantage of a child’s inability to understand that advertisers want their money by making the ads indistinguishable from the game itself.
Aaron Delwiche identifies one of the major problems with kids’ virtual games:
For the most part, so-called “virtual worlds” aimed at youth are little more than paper-doll worlds in which players are encouraged to spend virtual money on their on-line avatars. In almost all of these spaces, the pattern is mind-numbingly familiar: Create avatar. Play games. Earn money. Shop for your avatar. Earn money. Shop for your avatar’s house. Earn money. Shop for your avatar. Earn money. Shop. Work. Shop. Work. Shop. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. The only thing that really differentiates each of these worlds from one another is the quality of the art direction and the intellectual property rights secured by the world’s creators.
The developmental benefits of childhood creative play are lost when the play becomes scripted. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to participate.
Katie L. at the New Media Research Studio at NYU hits on my biggest gripe with virtual worlds:
Although I felt that I had a firm grasp on the way things worked in the WebKinz World, I spent some more time throughout this past week exploring the site in hopes of uncovering more redeeming qualities that could potentially counteract its overwhelming focus on promoting consumer culture. Unfortunately however, all I could find was more evidence that the virtual component of Webkinz functions as a mini-capitalist economy, priming children to think first and foremost about getting more money in order to buy more things.
It feeds into ‘you can never have enough, and the more you have the better it is.’
The game creators have no incentive to make the games better — they want to encourage early consumer habits in order to maintain customers for their advertisers — unless we stop playing. And buying.
To help wean away from the virtual world and game habit, try WolfQuest, created by the Minnesota Zoo and eduweb. No ads, no cost. And no mini-capitalist economy.
photo courtesy Spigoo

August 14th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
[…] — Daniel Livingstone Via discussion on RezEd, via The Parents For Ethical Marketing blog (Children’s online virtual worlds create dull mini-capitalists), a link to a new report on virtual worlds for children, and their (ab)use by corporate […]
October 4th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Lisa, we should chat about some of the POSITIVES of NON-commercial based virtual worlds, which I’m looking into for some beta-testing soon…I totally agree with you that we need to watch the ‘corporate ad creep’ particularly with the young/tween and younger worlds, but the subscriber model has some very cool potential, and I’ve just (finally) gotten around to interviewing a few of the ‘good guys’ in this realm…e.g. Elf Island, etc. upcoming soon, so want to fill you in…(after my 10-15 deadline, where I’m pitching some VW beta-testing of ‘virtual nutrition’ cues) More soon, sorry I’ve been out of touch/awol. Lots happenin’…ttys, A.