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Last year, the big question hanging over the Engage Expo was how the increasingly crowded virtual world space would fare after suffering an inevitable shakeout. I couldn’t tell you how many worlds didn’t survive for a repeat visit or how many newcomers were in attendance (though I’d love to hear those numbers), but I did note the lack of visibility of brands targeted at older teens (Seventeen, MTV, etc.) and an even more dominant focus on kids and tweens (and even Mommy Bloggers) over the older market. Then again, this year the conference was colocated with the Toy Fair, which could also have done a lot to skew worlds, brands and attendees towards the younger end of the age spectrum.

In any case, from what I saw the program was all about catering to the likes of Gen Z (aka iGeneration) and the best practices for fostering a sense of community and prolonged engagement. During a panel on “Engaging Through Narration, Character Development and Story,” I even momentarily flashed back to Kidscreen discussions around meaningful narratives, participatory experiences and customization. That is, until panelists firmly reiterated the M.O. of the gaming community vs. the storytelling community: rich content and character development are all well and good… just don’t let it get in the way of the game play. Sam Lewis, one of the creative forces behind Cartoon Network’s MMOG FusionFall, illustrated this lesson with a cautionary tale of his previous work on the follow up game Everquest 2 where months spent story boarding, developing a highly emotive protagonist and recruiting a wide cast of voice talent including actress Heather Graham was thoroughly lost on players who clicked through the quest as quickly as they could to start playing. Whoops.

The takeaway for me was that even in a platform-agnostic world, the medium obviously still matters. Not only for the translation of content, but also for the visitor’s expectations. The attention span reserved for a story-driven experience with an interactive component and that of an interactive experience with a story component? Not created equal.

This focus on play and instant gratification above all else (read: brand recognition) has also played a key role in the rapid growth of independent companies in the space and the incredible word-of-mouth success of worlds like Whyville (whom I learned had never done any marketing up until a partnership with Walmart this year). Recently, however, with both media companies (Cartoon Network, Disney, etc.) and toy companies (Mattel, Lego, etc.) moving into the market in a major way this has all started to change.

If not made abundantly clear by the physically shared space at the conference this year and the keynote speakers (Lane Merrified of Disney Online Studios for Club Penguin and Tor Siset of Bandai who spoke on the brand’s reboot of Tamagotchis — remember those? ), this VentureBeat piece does a nice job of explaining the shift we’re bound to see from toy companies moving from interactive toys into fully formed immersive worlds and the challenges independent companies will face in the year ahead.

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Categorized under: Tweens, Web

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