SecretBuilders is a virtual world game going after the kids market currently dominated by Disney properties like Club Penguin and ToonTown, on the one hand, and commercial tie-in sites like Webkinz on the other. My boys (6 and 9) like to play games online. Unfortunately, the games they like to play aren’t always the games that I’d prefer they play. For this reason, I was intrigued by the noble intentions of SecretBuilders’ creators, namely, to create a game site that BOTH parents and kids would like. As they put it:

SecretBuilders is a world where children will be entertained by the geniuses and intellects that gave rise to the best in human civilization rather than mass marketers. At SecretBuilders, children will not be tracked for revenue purposes or as potential consumers but rather as creative, ingenious beings that will help build a vibrant virtual world that will also impact their real world. In all, a tall order but then most of us behind SecretBuilders are parents ourselves so we are catering to two very demanding audiences – our children and ourselves!

A “tall order” indeed, and one that is not quite filled by SecretBuilders in its current incarnation. It’s a hard row to hoe if you want to get into the online gaming game, and I think there are several obstacles that stand in their way:

1. Reading

I first asked my six year-old to try it out. Unfortunately, you need to be able to read to understand how anything works in this game and he cannot (yet). While I could see this “forcing” a father-son interaction, what I actually saw was how it frustrated him. As he put it, “I don’t like it one bit.”

2. Competition

Frankly, there are a lot of games out there, and not just inappropriate and sketchy ones, that are already more established. SecretBuilders reminded me most of Club Penguin and that game already has legs (or fins, as the case may be). The question is: Why would a child choose this game over any of the options they already know? The answer is: I’m not sure. Nothing immediately differentiated this game in a “this is new and better” way.

3. Performance

I went on the game myself to try it out. It was easy enough to get started, but I was a little frustrated that you can’t really explore in the sense of just start walking and see what you stumble across. There are browser based games, such as Runescape, where this is possible and I think this capability makes a world automatically more engaging. Waiting around for the next place to load, is a buzz-kill.
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Like I said, the intentions behind this game are noble and if the idea is for it to serve as a platform for teachers, for example, then I could see it working. On the room-for-improvement front, my three recommendations for the creators are:

1. Add Explorability

The more explorable, the better. This is what makes WoW, Second Life, and Runescape interesting even to the novice. You can just jump in and start looking around without encountering immediate loading road-blocks (though, of course, you might get killed, but how else are kids going to learn?).

2. Add Constructability

The designers want kids to participate in adding features to SecretBuilders, but the way you do this is my emailing in ideas. Why not allow people to build basic structures or objects like in Second Life? There may be technical hurdles to implementing this, but they are not insurmountable. I think it would be cool if kids were able to make things that other kids could use or play with.

3. Colonize or Borrow Another Game/Platform

If you think it’s a good idea for kids to learn about history and culture through encounters with famous figures from fact or fiction, why not recreate these characters in a world that already exists (like Runescape, for example) and invite people to meet you there? If Runescape is too PG-13 for you, I’m sure there are PG or G-rated virtual worlds out there where you could basically take kids on field trips. Or, push coming to shove, ask one of the virtual world vendors to sponsor you or lend you server space so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I could actually see one of these vendors being attracted to the idea first as a PR opportunity and secondly as a way of cultivating future users.
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Anyway, that was my take. Anyone else checked out this game? Did I miss something?