Virtual worlds for kids

Written by Olivier Adam on Friday, 22 May 2009 08:14

After wildly successful MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) like Everquest and then later on, World of Warcraft, video game producers have been focusing on a new segment of customers, kids below 10 years old. While early teens will already be quite interested in the current offering, younger kids will usually not be as attracted by those games. Using existing licences, a few developers are hard at work to make these world a realities. BarbieGirls is one of these games, which has been attracting girls for 2 years already. For the boys, even though there are a few games available out there, they will have to wait a little longer for Lego Universe as it has been postponed for a 2010 release. Nevertheless, this is already predicted to be quite a hit with kids as soon as its released. Let's just hope that some of the addiction that we see in older gamers will not become a reality for the kids that join those worlds. Eventually, we can expect virtual worlds to become the major form of entertainment for everyone, more popular than movies, TV shows, music, reading books, etc.