Smart indeed is innovation by the folks at Smartycard. They offer an educational games platform that ties in to a virtual currency with rewards ranging from subscriptions to virtual worlds and virtual goods (such as Club Penguin, Stardoll and Webkinz) to physical toys.SmartyCard can be played for free, but kids won't have access to all the games or be able to cash out for rewards until parents top off an account with points. The points are sold for about 500 for $1.As Chris Shipley, co-founder of Guidewire Group and Executive Producer of the DEMO Conference, said in a statement;"For more than a decade, entrepreneurs have struggled to develop the market for Internet-based educational content for tweens, when all the while we've witnessed phenomenal growth in the online entertainment market for this same age group. SmartyCard is taking advantage of that adoption of casual gaming, virtual worlds and MMOGs and injecting an incentive-based rewards system into children's entertainment screen-time, reinforcing the universal value of learning and earning through a kids-safe, parent-approved educational experience….”In some ways through initiatives such as Smatycard, online educational platforms are joining the convergence of all other forms of internet games, social networks and communities.While Smatycard is proposing it’s own platform, one could bet that educational games could multiply in social networks, or web games in the form of social games with rewards, becoming hybrid virtual goods.
The economic downturn is definitely shaking the gaming industry, and a new convergence is taking place, trying to take the best of all « worlds » in terms of gaming, trafic, and well, business models.But while « history is on the move », is there really an editorial logic in this convergence ?A few month ago Bob Moore on his blog Terra Nova made some interesting points both on the trend going on and on the deep difference between Virtual Worlds and MMO’s on one hand and Social Networks on the other.“While Virtual worlds and MMO's already are social networking sites of a sort. and enable you to interact and play with friends online, add new people to your buddy list, monitor their online status and in some cases view their custom profiles.”…. “Social networking sites provide profiles and buddy lists for your WHOLE life, not just your virtual one.”Check the whole story….
Years after the rise of World of Warcraft, the birth of Second Life and IMVU, new trends are emerging in online gaming.Kids, twins & teens, have dramatically shifted the demographics of virtual worlds to a younger audience keen for immersion as well as more casual involvement as they carry expectations mixing games, communities and socializing.While scenarios driven MMO’s imply large development investments, subscription based models and target core gamers, recent virtual worlds tap into larger audience and expand along the same trend as casual gaming on all other platforms.Both their development and operational costs are significantly lower, as they are partly powered by user generated content and marketing. But to the contrary of generalist universe like SecondLife where people have nothing really in common with each other when they first join, new worlds are based on themes or categories. They are in a sense vertical and affinity driven.Hence they may keep closer relations with the real world and allow all forms of cross marketing and business with real world counterparts and partners.The models and the revenue streams have also changed. Free to play models combined with item selling, premium pass and advergaming are becoming mainstream, because they dramatically reduce marketing costs, are more adapted to communities and allow gathering of players with various spending capacities.As the whole offline gaming industry will be shaken by the economic downturn, players will move on all platforms to « free to try » or « free to play » games and change from being just gamers to dwellers of gaming communities.
