At VW08, kids are the focus

By Eric Reuters

SECOND LIFE, April 4 (Reuters) - A casual observer might mistake the Virtual Worlds Conference in New York City for a toy fair.

A pink banner advertises Barbie’s entrance into the MMO arena. Sites like Neopets, Nickelodeon, and Dinokids adverstise their services with friendly colors and cartoon fonts. Teen-oriented sites like MTV’s vLES seem mature by comparison.

What’s missing — other than one large booth advertising the Second Life Grid — are sites targeted towards an older audience. At one of the largest gatherings of the virtual worlds industry, the energy of platform developers, consultants, and marketers was focused on the under-18 crowd.

“Our audience right now is kids and young adults,” said Millions of Us’ CEO Reuben Steiger in a keynote address to about 1000 virtual worlds professionals.

Second Life is only open to adults over the age of 18. In an environment where any avatar can create anything, the easiest solution to the problem of child protection was simply to keep the kids out. Teen Second Life represents less than one-half of one percent of the main service.

In speaking to companies with virtual worlds in the works, no one is looking to replicate the Second Life model.

“A year ago, when a lot of big companies came into Second Life, it didn’t work out for them,” said Jerry Paffendorf, the former “resident futurist” of the Electric Sheep Company, now of Wello Horld. “The reaction is to try to get away from that to these tightly controlled, kid-friendly environments.”

The trend has been building over the past year, said Paffendorf’s former Electric Sheep colleague Giff Constable. “Adults are gravitating to casual games,” Constable said.

“When I think of people today versus three years ago, you don’t see any more people with avatars,” Constable said. “More people have heard of avatars, sure. But they don’t have them. Businesses are scared of that cultural lag.”

Kids have shown themselves more adaptable and open to new technological experiences. “Where you’ll see virtual worlds concepts like visual chat being used by adults is in websites,” Constable said.

With a more youth-oriented focus, the virtual worlds industry is developing into an industry more like toy or computer gaming. “No one wants to do another social network,” said Icarus Studios’ AJ Peralta.

Icarus has a MMO of its own due out early next year, and it licenses its platform for other companies to build virtual worlds on. “Where I see opportunities in virtual worlds is in the 18 and under crowd, and then the over-30s,” Peralta said. Almost 49 percent of Second Life users are over 35 according to Linden’s statistics, and Peralta said Blizzard’s World of Warcraft also appeals to an older demographic.

“If I’m 25, I’m not spending hours upon hours building my character,” Peralta said. “I’m out doing sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”