Do you still remember what do you enjoy doing when you were a kid? As in my memory, I loved to put on my mum’s high heel shoes, dress up a piece of white cloth on my head to pretend it is a wedding veil, and take care of my imaginary baby made out of plastic lying in a fruit basket. Apart from that it proves that women are crazy about marriage and babies in a fairly early age, it also discovers the truth about where the interests of kids lie, simulating the real world.
In the beginning of developing Eccky, we invested quite some time on how to make our virtual world more magical and special by creating lots of superpowers. However, after a while, we hear from our young players that all they want is to throw a party at home, have a pet to take care of, hold a model show and let it snow in the world!
While club penguin and some other famous virtual worlds use animals as avatar, the setting of our world is very similar to the real world. I personally believe that a VW with a human like avatar has a larger space for content than penguin or bear avatars, because a human avatar is easier for them to position themselves into the world rather than an animal avatar to take care of. Kids have very broad imagination, strong curiosity, but quite limited access to the real social world. Therefore, they love to use the virtual environment to simulate and fantasize life with their peers, and to express themselves without fear or ridicule.
As developer, we are sometimes extremely amused by the reaction of our players to the new settings and features. They take things very seriously, personal and are definitely not to be fooled with. Last Christmas we introduced the winter into the world and cover the whole world with snow. Kids are so excited about it just like it really snows in the real world and shouting out “Wow, it is so cold here, I will put on some jacket”. We have interviewed some of our loyal players and asked them why do they like Eccky more than other virtual worlds such as Habbo Hotel, their answers are “You can actually go to a clothes shop and try them on, while Habbo only offer stupid catalogue to order from.” It is a hilarious answer, but contains some truth inside.
However, I am not claiming that fantasy and magical elements are not important for a fun virtual world. They can definitely give the world an extra touch. There is no puppy or kitty in Eccky, but only a little water-drop-shaped Wobble with 2 eyes but no mouth or nose. Wobble is a creature which lived in the wild long before Eccky discovered the world and led a tough life to survive on themselves. They can be adopted but need the intimate care and love from the owners to be happy. Although there is no Wobble in the real world, we still surprisingly discover that most of our players are very emotionally attached to their pets. The funny animations of Wobble and interaction between pets and owners are the most importation reasons of that.
Observe what kind of elements there are in the real life and introduce them into the virtual world with nice animation and design, if kids are relating them to the real world, then this world is already one step ahead towards a fun virtual world.
