It's a big week for virtual worlds next week, with the Game Developers Conference and its related events, but also the Manhattan Toy Fair. The latter is expected to see several toy companies launching new products with spin-off virtual worlds, continuing the trend seen last year. The most high-profile will be Disney's Clickables range, which have been developed with Techno Source.
Based on Disney Fairies, they’ll be available this Autumn, and when bought will give children access to a tie-in virtual world. It seems Disney plans to extend this to more of its brands in the future too.
This story in the Washington post mentions other toy lines showing off or talking about new connected toys at Toy Fair, including Mattel, Hasbro, DreamWorks Animation and Jakks Pacific. There’s no doubt that the ‘toy + virtual world’ combination is an appealing one for both children and parents, particularly when it’s backed by a major brand like Disney.
However, one concern bubbling at the back of my mind is this: children don’t stick to one kind of toy. So it’s likely that many of them will end up with access to multiple virtual worlds through their toy collection. Are there enough kids with enough time to keep dozens of toyworlds in business? I’m guessing not.
It’s also interesting to wonder whether these worlds will focus on individual toy ranges, or widen out a bit. For example, could Disney run one single virtual world, and whenever you buy any Disney-related toy, you get the right to use that character as an avatar - but in the same world. It would solve that problem of fragmentation, but only a few brands (Hasbro and Mattel included) would have the scale to pull it off.
(via Washington Post)
0 comments