Raph’s Website » NYT looks at kids’ worlds AGAIN

NYT looks at kids’ worlds AGAIN

June 6th, 2007 (Visited 5861 times) Tags:

“Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play”, says the New York Times. Among the games covered are ones I hadn’t really paid attention to before, like Stardoll and Cartoon Doll Emporium.

Over at Virtual Worlds News they give this handy table summarizing the growth rates of some of these; I added to the table with additional unique user stats elsewhere in the article:

Site                                         Users in April 2006     Users in April 2007
Club Penguin                         794,000                                 4,073,000
Webkinz                                 325,000                                 3,879,000
Cartoon Doll Emporium                                                      ~3,000,000
Stardoll                                  367,000                                  1,241,000
WeeWorld                                                                             ~900,000

The NYT mentions that the category has grown 68% in the last year alone; some of the sites report 20% growth monthly.

My list of “the biggest MMOs in the West” is evolving rapidly. With Habbo Hotel and Runescape also clocking in with multiple millions of unique users every month, it may be possible that World of Warcraft is actually sitting around #4 or #5 in the top MMOs in NA and Europe.

Of course, by and large, the gamers and gaming industry will likely blow these off as “not counting” or “shallow” or something. I get that pretty regularly, particularly from folks who are hoping that I am not making something like these games myself. (I’m not — I just find it fascinating).

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MPAA Sues Sites For Linking To Infringing Content - Brant level wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

[IMG]Probably not, as it turns out; certainly not in the Western hemisphere, anyway. Working with publicly-known figures, veteran MMO developer Raph Koster recently made this observation on his blog: [I]t may be possible that World of Warcraft is actually sitting around #4 or #5 in the top MMOs in North America and Europe. This is because while Blizzard claims 8.5 million subscribers (as of January 2007) only 3.5 million are based in the West.

Om Malik | Phil Cooke and The Change Revolution wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

Probably not, as it turns out; certainly not in the Western hemisphere, anyway. Working with publicly-known figures, veteran MMO developer Raph Koster recently made this observation on his blog: [I]t may be possible that World of Warcraft is actually sitting around #4 or #5 in the top MMOs in North America and Europe. This is because while Blizzard claims 8.5 million subscribers (as of January 2007) only 3.5 million are based in the West.

Techmeme wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

Discussion: PodTech Network, Raph’s Website, CrunchGear, Weblogg-ed and Clickety Clack

PlanetMayhem | the spectre haunting online gaming wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

(Courtesy of Raph Koster and the Virtual World News) The New York Times has a story up today on children’s virtual playgrounds, describing them as “in effect, like Facebook or MySpace with training wheels.” It reports that the sites grew 68 percent over the year ending April

Webkinz » Blog Archive » NYT looks at kidsÃ¢ÂÂ worlds AGAIN wrote on June 6th, 2007 at 2:25 pm:

[...] Original post by Raph’s Website [...]

Rise of the Children's MMOs - Mostly Played by Girls - PlayNoEvil Game Security, Game Cheating, Gold Farming and RMT News & Analysis wrote on June 7th, 2007 at 5:00 am:

[...] of the Children’s MMOs - Mostly Played by Girls (Courtesy of Raph Koster and the Virtual World News)…very impressive numbers: Site [...]

MMO Market Share - The Something Awful Forums wrote on June 7th, 2007 at 4:01 pm:

[...] sources. Yeah it doesn’t really take into account the Asian market. Or casual kiddie MMOGs. http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/06/0…s-worlds-again/ Something called Club Penguin which none of you have ever heard of has 4 million subscribers. And [...]

Asian Online Games - PlayNoEvil Game Security, Game Cheating, Gold Farming and RMT News & Analysis wrote on June 9th, 2007 at 11:57 am:

[...] in the US) which has 4.9 registered subscribers(!). (Another World of Warcraft challenger for you, Raph). By the way, the rest of the Western Game Industry should take note of EA’s success with this [...]

GigaOM Is World of Warcraft really the most popular MMO? « wrote on June 10th, 2007 at 10:43 am:

[...] with publicly-known figures, veteran MMO developer Raph Koster recently made this observation on his blog: [I]t may be possible that World of Warcraft is actually sitting around #4 or #5 in the top MMOs in [...]

Is World of Warcraft really the most popular MMO? at Digital Technology Trends wrote on June 10th, 2007 at 3:27 pm:

Game Tycoon»Blog Archive » Articles of Interest wrote on June 10th, 2007 at 10:52 pm:

[...] Some information about the size of the market for casual MMOs for children. [...]

Time for a new computer « Voyages in Eternity wrote on June 11th, 2007 at 3:50 am:

[...] has a little article up from last week that reminds us that our little swords-and-sorcery fantasy worlds are pretty [...]

Cuppytalk » SOE New Game - "Free Realms" Announced wrote on June 11th, 2007 at 10:54 am:

[...] is more logical for you to do to increase revenue? And if you want to appeal to young girls (which Raph has shown is a HUGE group of potential ‘gamers’) what better way than to make something light and [...]

Tobold's MMORPG Blog: The ethics of money wrote on June 11th, 2007 at 11:50 pm:

[...] Tobold’s MMORPG Blog Monday, June 11, 2007 The ethics of money Raph Koster recently doubted that World of Warcraft was the most successful MMO. By either restricting the geographical [...]

한RSS wrote on June 15th, 2007 at 1:42 am:

Hugo E. Martin on Media, Marketing & Internet: Kids Socialize in a Virtual World as Avatars wrote on June 21st, 2007 at 7:19 am:

[...] BeitragKids Socialize in a Virtual World as AvatarsNachtrag:Children’s MMOs in the New York TimesRalp Koester liefert zum NYT Beitrag eine Tabellemit den Zugriffszahlen (April 2007/2006)Site ——- Users April 2006 [...]

fresh wordpress installation » Is World of Warcraft really the most popular MMO? wrote on June 28th, 2007 at 12:37 am:

Casually Hardcore devlog » If you can't beat them... (a change in focus) wrote on August 14th, 2007 at 12:43 am:

[...] Kid MMO stats [...]

Patrick said on June 6th, 2007 at 1:49 pm:

Shallow and depth are both graded and relative, and sometimes depth can be a turn-off for an audience. Of course, I’m all about depth, but I’ve been playing since I was 3. I didn’t like depth so much back in ‘88. Important to keep in mind.

W. James Au said on June 6th, 2007 at 2:00 pm:

> World of Warcraft is actually sitting around #4 or #5 in the top
> MMOs in NA and Europe.

Fascinating, Raph. But do we know how many monthly WoW users there are?

Matt Mihaly said on June 6th, 2007 at 2:06 pm:

Hmm, can we really call Stardoll or Cartoon Doll Emporium worlds? I haven’t used either beyond spending a minute or two on their sites but I didn’t immediately see anything world-like about them.

–matt

Azaroth said on June 6th, 2007 at 2:12 pm:

More and more kids are getting on the internet these days. And what are they there for?

Playing games.

My girlfriend has a seven year old. What’s she get online for?

To play games.

While adults supposedly do different things when they get online, and supposedly have other responsibilities and a finite amount of time to “play games” - these things don’t really apply to kids.

In the end, selling games to kids is like selling porn to perverts. It’s a pretty targeted audience, especially once they get on the internet.

Also - Does this trend and WoW’s success intersect in some manner? Are “less serious” and somewhat cartoonish graphics the wave of the future?

Matt Penfield said on June 6th, 2007 at 3:18 pm:

Along same lines as the other Matt’s post, I struggle with the “game” dimension for some of these sites. I get the ubiquity of community between them all, but it seems to me that comparing WoW to Cartoon Doll Emporium is not a strict 1:1. Is it just me, or should I just give up and drink the Kool-Aid?

–Matt #2

Adrian Crook said on June 6th, 2007 at 3:27 pm:

Where are the adult virtual worlds? Does it begin and end with Second Life? There.com? Whatever metaverse Shanda is building?

Michael Chui said on June 6th, 2007 at 4:01 pm:

Adult as in adult entertainment, as in violent entertainment, or as in difficult to think about?

Morgan Ramsay said on June 6th, 2007 at 4:09 pm:

If you want to learn more about Generation Y, read Ypulse: Media for the Next Generation.

“Kids” are doing a lot more with the Web than just playing games. Older generations seem to be mostly in the dark about what GenY is actually doing. GenY is the group of people who were born connected to the rest of the world. They don’t need to adapt their approaches and practices and philosophy to what older generations see as new technology. They live it.

What will generations after GenY do? How will they behave? It’s difficult to imagine when you consider that humanity is evolving in conjunction with advances in technology. Perhaps the Singularity will come after all?

Raph said on June 6th, 2007 at 4:29 pm:

They aren’t one to one… that’s why i said #4 or #5. Habbo, Runescape, Webkinz, and Club Penguin seem unquestionably virtual worlds to me. That’s 4.

I am looking at WoW and basically saying “NA & Europe subs, minus a small % who didn’t log in”

Matt Mihaly said on June 6th, 2007 at 10:29 pm:

Yep, fair enough Raph. I’m not arguing with WoW’s #4 or #5 status. Just wondered why you were including Stardoll and Cartoon Doll Emporium in the ‘world’ category.

Raph said on June 6th, 2007 at 10:35 pm:

Actually, I said “Among the games covered are…” and “a table covering some of these.” I guess the post title kinda implies that I am calling them all worlds. I don’t think those meet the technical definition of worlds, certainly.

W. James Au said on June 7th, 2007 at 12:09 am:

Very interesting, Raph. It actually seems more logical not to count WoW’s Asian players, because they don’t have the same payment scheme and if we count them, then by that logic we should count CyWorld, too. (In which case WoW is *2nd* place.)

Gene Endrody said on June 7th, 2007 at 7:21 am:

“Are less serious and somewhat cartoonish graphics the wave of the future?”
I don’t think that’s necessarily the trend here, however browser based MMO experiences are promising. I created Sherwood Dungeon in my spare time (a Shockwave 3D based MMO with NetHack influences) just for fun initially and it’s now attracting 1.2 million visitors monthly. Because web based MMOs are click and play without the barriers created by boxed or traditional downloadable, they lend themselves to the viral marketing and distribution enjoyed by all web games. That makes it an attractive space for very small independents who are bootstrapping. The assumption is that you have to make compromises to get browser play to work - and that’s true. However I do feel we will come to a time when browser based games can meet the visual standards of boxed products.

Nabeel Hyatt said on June 7th, 2007 at 7:40 am:

I know this will inevitably devolve into a petty discussion about what a world is — but W. James Au, I’m personally certain the criteria shouldn’t be payment criteria.

I fall in about Raph’s territory as well — Runescape, Club Penguin, Webkinz are all worlds. Although ranking them would serve to be more difficult without having generally accepted guidelines for rank (which has already been discussed here and elsewhere).

Raph said on June 7th, 2007 at 7:47 am:

Well, I tend to break it down by territory because otherwise, there’s a whole massive host of games in the Pacific Rim that would make for a less clear picture overall, because there’s so little overlap in the most popular games.

JoeW said on June 7th, 2007 at 10:48 am:

Go around, talk to some kids. Chances are a majority of them play one game or another.

Shortly after I started here at Nexon, I found out my nephew and his friends had been playing MapleStory for over a year. Where as I had never even heard of it.

JoeW said on June 7th, 2007 at 11:03 am:

Oh, and the discussion about this being ranked with WoW and such. I am not sure it’s really apples to apples here. The motivations of these games are entirely different. They are more socially driven, and many don’t even have combat systems or even a ‘game’ element to them.

While those factors exist, it is much more about a virtual existance with friends than raids and armor sets. It’s really the whole opposite side of the spectrum than other games we have been calling MMOs up to this point.

However, when you get down to it, they really are the same beast, the focus is just in different places.

One thing I do know. The MMO genre as we knew it to exist 12 months ago, no longer exists. This is part of the whole legitimacy we have been looking for as MMOs become more of a staple of modern entertainment.

Maybe we can just look at them more as a Saturday Morning MMO.

Fabled said on June 7th, 2007 at 12:54 pm:

I think the key to their immense popularity is due to their accessability. Any kid with internet access and a web browser can access them. I think it’s time that the MMO industry rethinks on how their games are distributed. Digital distribution is the future.

JesDer said on June 8th, 2007 at 7:08 am:

While those factors exist, it is much more about a virtual existance with friends than raids and armor sets.

This is what I loved about UO .. it really wasnt about the game itself for most people. It was about the other players and interactions with them. UO was much more of a sandbox than the current MMOGs that focus mainly on levels and items.

I want that feeling back again, I just cant seem to find a MMOG community that fits.