The commercial side of virtual play worlds 

 

Worldwide, at least a few hundred million young children (ages 5-10) are registered participants in virtual play worlds such as Club Penguin, Webkinz World, and Moshi Monsters, sites where they can inhabit online characters, explore their surroundings, play games, design virtual homes, and interact with each other (Jones & Park, 2015; KZero, 2012). However, because these online spaces are still fairly new, researchers are only just beginning to understand how children use them, how much time they spend on them, and what they learn in the process. 

Along with a research team based at Indiana University, I recently completed a four-year ethnographic study of 50 young children (ages 5-8) who, while attending an after-school program, played regularly in the Club Penguin virtual world. We asked, what kinds of social interactions did these children have while playing? What kinds of digital literacy did they develop? And, most important, how were they influenced by the commercial nature of the site? For example, how different were the experiences of children who played the basic (nonpaid) and paid versions of Club Penguin?  

Below, I offer a brief summary of the study, describe what we learned about the commercial design of Club Penguin, and share some ideas about the ways in which parents, teachers, and researchers might want to think about and supervise children’s play in virtual worlds and other online platforms. 

(As an aside, I should note that in March 2017, a few months after this study was completed, the Walt Disney Company announced that it was closing Club Penguin. Disney hasn’t given a reason for the closure, but it certainly wasn’t due to any decline in the club’s popularity. At the time, Club Penguin had millions of active users, and its subscription fees were earning Disney millions of dollars per month. The most plausible reason for the move, some have argued, is that the site was designed in 2005 and was not fully compatible with mobile devices, which have come to dominate the market since then [Marsh, 2017]. In any case, while the original Club Penguin has closed and been replaced by a set of smartphone applications, our findings speak to the commercial side of such virtual play spaces in general, not just Club Penguin in particular.)  

Young children’s interactions in Club Penguin 

In mid-2016, after nearly four years of studying children’s online experiences in the Club Penguin world, we had arrived at the research project’s final 12 weeks, which we divided into three four-week phases: During the first four weeks, a new group of study participants could access Club Penguin using basic (nonpaid) accounts, which blocked them from most activities but allowed them to play a collection of free mini-games; while on the site, participants in the study spent 99% of their time playing the games.  

From week 5 through week 8, some of the children continued to use basic accounts, and others were given access to paid accounts, which offered several additional options: Paid users could purchase fancy outfits and accessories for their penguin avatars, decorate their homes (igloos) with furniture, adopt up to 45 Puffles (penguin pets), play the upper levels of some games (which basic account users couldn’t access), and join various members-only events.  

This gave us an opportunity to observe the ways in which basic and paid members interacted with each other and made sense of their differences. Very quickly, the basic members came to see that Club Penguin wasn’t just a place to play games; actually, it was a social environment, in which they belonged to the lower class. When they tried to join certain games and activities, a message would pop up, saying they were “reserved for paid members only.” In the meantime, the paid members — seeing that some of their classmates were basic account holders — were fully aware of their privileged status. Moreover, they enjoyed it, spending more and more time dressing up their avatars and taking care of their Puffles. 

Finally, from week 9 through week 12, we gave all the children access to paid accounts. During this phase, we observed that many of the children who had been privileged in weeks 5-8 started working even harder to hold on to their upper-class status. Since all the players were now paid members, they had to take extra steps to continue differentiating themselves: They spent more time playing games that allowed them to win and collect rare items in the virtual world (such as unique decorations for their igloos), and they tried to build impressively large networks of “friends” on the site.  

 Almost every single action in the Club Penguin world exposed children to commercial content that encouraged them to become a paid subscriber to enhance their experience.  

While we had planned to conclude the study after week 12, we realized that the end of the project gave us an additional chance to examine what the children thought about the commercial design of Club Penguin. Once they lost their paid accounts — and access to almost all of the virtual goods they had gathered — how would they reflect on the experience?  

Over the summer, most of the children continued playing the free games on Club Penguin with their basic accounts, either at home or in the after-school program. When fall began, I conducted one-on-one interviews with the six study participants who were still enrolled in the after-school program. All of them reacted with some version of “It’s not fair!” One child went so far as to observe that asking children to pay a subscription fee “is wrong because kids don’t make money, and that is a kid’s game.”  

Finally, I encouraged the children to take action to respond to what they saw as problematic. With my help, they composed letters to the editor-in-chief of the Club Penguin Times newspaper, wrote comments on Club Penguin’s official blog, or chose to record and share YouTube videos, in which they explained the commercial design of the virtual world and why they found it unfair (for details, see Kargin, 2016).  

A commercial design  

Almost every single action in the Club Penguin world — from playing games to dressing up, decorating igloos, and adopting pets — exposed children to commercial content that encouraged them to become a paid subscriber to enhance their experience.  

Whether intentionally or unwittingly, paid members acted as recruiters by displaying the benefits of their status. Basic members could see, envy, and admire these items and opportunities but not access them. Further, when children lost their paid memberships, they were given constant reminders that by becoming paying members again they would regain access to the items they had collected and the various activities and opportunities they had enjoyed. On their screens, for instance, they could still see the clothing and accessories they had previously gathered, but they could no longer use them to dress up their penguin avatars. They could see that their igloos were still decorated with the furniture they had chosen, but they couldn’t enter and use those igloos. Nor could they join the games they used to play, or interact with or take care of the pet Puffles that they could still see waiting for them in their igloos or backyards.  

Additionally, Club Penguin’s commercial design incorporated what, on the surface, seemed to be an appeal to children’s philanthropic motives. On its “global citizenship” page, the site invited children to donate their virtual coins — Club Penguin’s currency, which only paid members can use — to Coins for Change, a fund that contributed $1,000,000 per year to real-world causes. Once they donated, kids could vote on how the money should be divided among three philanthropic goals: Build Safe Places, Provide Medical Help, and Protect the Earth.  

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Club Penguin players chose to donate millions of the virtual coins they had earned through hours of game play. One has to wonder, though, why they were required to contribute (which only paid members could do) before they could participate in deciding which real-world projects would receive the most support. Nothing prevented Club Penguin from asking all children — paid and unpaid — to give their input on its philanthropic strategy. By requiring a virtual donation, however, Disney capitalized on children’s goodwill. To recoup the coins they gave away (coins that allowed them to participate fully in the virtual play space), those children would have to continue playing games in the Club Penguin world for weeks or even months to come. 

On the surface, then, Club Penguin’s membership policy and commercial design would seem to be problematic if not downright unethical. The legal implications, however, are unclear. As Grimes (2010) notes, “[A]ny online content that is targeted to or primarily used by children under the age of 13 years must comply with a number of special laws and ethical requirements designed to protect children from online harm and commercial exploitation” (p. 102). In the U.S., the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) spells out various privacy protections and guidelines to ensure young children’s safety and parental consent for their online activities, and over the last two decades, the Federal Trade Commission has fined websites for violating the law. In fact, Disney is currently the target of a federal class action lawsuit alleging that 42 of its children’s gaming apps — including the Club Penguin Island apps that replaced the original Club Penguin — violate COPPA’s privacy guidelines (Fung & Shaban, 2017). No such lawsuit was ever filed against Club Penguin itself. Still, though, one might argue that Disney and other companies that produce virtual play worlds ought to be held to a higher ethical standard than mere compliance with COPPA.  

Are all virtual play worlds guilty of the same kinds of ethically dubious practices as Club Penguin? No, not really. For one thing, many online platforms and apps have been designed by not-for-profit producers to help kids build basic reading skills, expand their vocabulary, learn math and science concepts, and so on. These include, for example, PBS Kids programs like Nature Cat and Splash and Bubbles, the Fred Rogers Company’s Peg + Cat and Odd Squad, WGBH’s Ruff Ruffman and Martha Speaks, and many others. By and large, however, the virtual worlds that young children visit most frequently, and the apps they play most often (including titles such as Angry Birds, Peppa’s Paintbox, Talking Tom, Temple Run, Candy Crush, and Toca Boca) have been designed by for-profit producers (Marsh et al., 2015) interested primarily in attracting and keeping them on the site for commercial reasons.  

The commercial motivation behind the development of these sites and apps doesn’t necessarily mean that we should (or, realistically, could) forbid young children from using them. Playing video games, participating in virtual worlds, and spending time in online affinity groups can provide powerful opportunities for learning and self-determination (Gee, 2003, 2004; Marsh, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013). But as parents, teachers, and researchers, we must take care to guide young children and teach them how to use these digital platforms. 

Parents: Raising children as conscious consumers 

A recent survey of more than 10,000 North American parents revealed that among those with kids in preschool, 14% were digital “enablers,” who do little to restrict their kids’ access to digital devices; among parents with kids in elementary school, 24% fit this profile. Another 47% of parents of preschool kids and 36% of parents of elementary kids were found to be digital “limiters,” who minimize their kids’ technology use as much as possible. Finally, 39% of parents of preschool kids and 40% of parents of elementary kids were found to be digital “mentors,” who actively guide their kids while they spend time with digital devices (Samuel, 2015).  

Teachers may be tempted to ignore popular culture and ban all mention of online play spaces from their classrooms. But that just leaves kids to make sense of those experiences on their own. 

According to the survey, the children of digital limiters most frequently get into trouble online: They “are twice as likely as the children of mentors to access porn or to post rude or hostile comments online; they’re also three times as likely to go online and impersonate a classmate, peer, or adult” (Samuel, 2015). By focusing on limiting their children’s access to technology, rather than seeking ways to mentor them as they go online, these parents tend to miss the opportunity to teach their children some critical skills associated with the digital age, such as “recognizing and adapting to the specific norms of different social platforms and subcommunities; adopting hashtags, emojis, and other cues to supplement text-based communications; and learning to balance accountability with security in constructing an online identity” (Samuel, 2015).  

By taking on mentorship roles, parents can also help their children recognize the underlying purposes of game designers and see the subtle ways in ways apps and websites position them as consumers (Marsh, 2010). Further, by providing active guidance — rather than simply restricting access to the internet — parents can help their kids find positive value in even the most commercialized play spaces. For-profit virtual worlds don’t just seek to turn children into consumers; they also provide them with opportunities to develop core literacy skills and practice communication skills with known and unknown peers. On Club Penguin, for example, children could chat online with other players, send and receive postcards, read in-game newspapers and instructions (Wohlwend & Kargin, 2013; Marsh, 2011), and participate in out-of-game blogs and fan sites (Black & Steinkuehler, 2009). 

Teachers: Discussing online consumerism 

For young children, the experience of playing in virtual worlds has become commonplace (KZero, 2012). Today, most children are familiar with sites like Club Penguin, have a deep interest in them, and participate in them regularly. Teachers may be tempted to ignore popular culture and ban all mention of online play spaces from their classrooms. But that just leaves kids to make sense of those experiences on their own. Just as it is important for parents to play an active role as online mentors, teachers should make it a priority to help their students recognize and reflect on the commercial pressures that exist in their virtual worlds.  

In the after-school program I studied, I was able to engage students in one-on-one conversations about these issues, but time constraints made it impossible to host a larger group discussion. Ideally, though, teachers can weave such discussions into the curriculum, creating opportunities for students to talk about their experiences with virtual play spaces, share some personal stories, and think critically about the pros and cons of participating in online commercial spaces. And when working with older students, teachers should be able to raise more complicated questions about the social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions of those virtual play worlds (Lewison, Leland, & Harste, 2014).   

Researchers: Understanding critical literacy among young children 

Past research has shown that the commercial design of virtual worlds can have powerful influences on children’s social relationships and identity formation (Marsh, 2013). Researchers have hypothesized, also, that when given paid memberships to such sites, children have greater opportunities to engage in literacy practices and to participate actively in online peer culture (Burke & Marsh, 2013).  

My own study, grounded in a critical literacy perspective, was meant to test this hypothesis and expand the research base by examining the effects of consumerism on children’s online participation and literacy practices. However, there remains much to be learned about the ways kids’ experiences in virtual worlds are shaped by their ability to pay membership fees or, for that matter, to access their accounts from home rather than school.  

Virtual play spaces like Club Penguin offer very different sorts of virtual goods and privileges to paid and nonpaid members, prompting some children to try to compete for higher and higher status, while causing others to feel that the difference is deeply unfair. In the end, though, I found that when children had a chance to reflect on these experiences, talking with me about the differences between paid and unpaid membership, they were able to recognize and turn a critical eye on the commercial dimension of their virtual play space, and they were motivated to come up with ways to make it better place for themselves and their peers.  

 

 

References 

Black, R.W., & Steinkuehler, C. (2009). Literacy in virtual worlds. In L. Christenbury, R. Bomer, & P. Smagorinsky (Eds.), The handbook of adolescent literacy research (pp. 271-286). New York, NY: Guilford Press. 

Burke, A. & Marsh, J. (2013). Children’s virtual play worlds: Culture, learning, and participation. New York, NY: Peter Lang. 

Fung, B. & Shaban, H. (2017, August 7). Disney is using apps to spy on your children, lawsuit alleges. Washington Post. 

Gee, J.P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Gee, J.P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New York, NY: Routledge. 

Grimes, S.M. (2010). The digital child at play: How technological, political and commercial rule systems shape children’s play in virtual worlds. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Burnaby, Canada: Simon Fraser University. 

Jones, I. & Park, Y. (2015). Virtual worlds: Young children using the internet. In K. Heider & M. Renck Jalongo (Eds.), Young children and families in the information age: Educating the young child (pp. 3-13). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. 

Kargın, T. (2016.) Literacy in a new playground: Young children’s literacy practices in commercially designed virtual play worlds. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. 

KZero. (2012). Virtual worlds: Industry and user data. Universe Chart for Q1 2012. Cambridge, England: Author. 

Lewison, M., Leland, C., & Harste, J.C. (2014). Creating critical classrooms: Reading and writing with an edge. New York: Routledge. 

Marsh, J. (2010). Young children’s play in online virtual worlds. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 8 (1), 23-39. 

Marsh, J. (2011). Young children’s literacy practices in a virtual world: Establishing an online ‘interaction order.’ Reading Research Quarterly, 46 (2), 101-118. 

Marsh, J. (2012). Purposes for literacy in children’s use of the online virtual world Club Penguin. Journal of Research in Reading. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2012.01530.x/full 

Marsh, J. (2013). Breaking the ice: Play, friendships and online identities in young children’s use of virtual worlds. In A. Burke & J. Marsh (Eds.), Children’s virtual play worlds: Culture, learning, and participation (pp. 59-78). New York, NY: Peter Lang. 

Marsh, J. (2017, May 1). RIP, Club Penguin [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://digilitey.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/rip-club-penguin/  

Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J.C., Lahmar, J., Scott, F., & . . .  Winter, P. (2015). Exploring play and creativity in pre-schoolers’ use of apps: Report for the Children’s Media Industry. Retrieved from http://techandplay.org/tap-media-pack.pdf 

Samuel, A. (2015, Nov. 4). Parents: Reject technology shame. The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-parents-shouldnt-feel-technology-shame/414163 

Wohlwend, K. E., & Kargin, T. (2013). “Cause I know how to get friends — Plus they like my dancing”: (L)earning the nexus of practice in Club Penguin. In A. Burke & J. Marsh (Eds.), Children’s virtual play worlds: Culture, learning, and participation (pp. 79-98). New York, NY: Peter Lang. 

 

Originally published in March 2018 Phi Delta Kappan 99 (6), 14-19. © 2018 Phi Delta Kappa International. All rights reserved.