I’ve mentioned the Barbie virtual world a few times in the past. On the often scatalogical, always irreverant, sometimes offensive, Second Life Herald, Sigmund Leominster takes a look. The extent to which features are paraded just out of reach of children without the subscription based ‘VIP’ accounts was a bit of a surprise – more blatant that I’d actually expected:
But wait… there’s more. The “Add to basket” button was grayed out. On screen was a large button exhorting me to click to become a VIP member? It turns out that although I can actually earn Barbie Bucks, I can’t spend any until I become a VIP! So here I am with money to burn and no way to use it. Damn. So for $5.99 US, I can be a VIP for one month, for $17.97 I can have a 3-month membership, and $35.94 gets me a 6-month ride. All these exclude taxes.
Disagree with Sigmund on the chances of success – after all children are looking for something quite different. Barbie Girls seems to be doing very just now, and probably will continue to do so for a while. Interestingly, it seems that all Barbie chat is limited to options from a list – Club Penguin gives the option of logging into worlds with text chat or those with chat options from a pre-determined list – so parents can choose whether or not to go with the freedom, flexibility and risks that come with free-chat.