MMOG Nation: How Stuffed Animals and Penguins Clobber World of Warcraft

[’MMOG Nation’ is a weekly column by Michael Zenke about current events in the world of Massively Multiplayer Games. This week’s column examines the growing influence of youth-oriented virtual worlds.]
Imagine the fun of a Massively Multiplayer world inhabited by adorable penguins, cute fuzzy animals, or some of those incomprehensibly popular Disney television characters. A disturbing, post-apocalyptic vision of future gaming? To hear veteran Massive designer Raph Koster talk at GDC earlier this month, that’s not the future: it’s the present. At the Massive Games: Past, Present, and Future panel held on Wednesday of GDC week, Koster spent much of his available talking time discussing the successes of quirky online games aimed at kids, like Club Penguin and WebKinz. You think World of Warcraft is America’s most popular online world, right? Club Penguin averages 1.6 million unique users a month. WoW may have 3 million subscribers in the states, but how […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (mzenke) and software by Elliott Back