The Rise of Womby: Online Social Games for Children

Abstract

[University] Womby: A Rising Leader of Online Social Games for Children Womby is a relatively new player in the online, network-based social gaming industry. As the use of social media and mobile devices have both grown exponentially in recent years, the social gaming industry has also rapidly expanded. Social games on digital cloud platforms (browser-based and not requiring software download) allow players to enjoy a robust gaming experience almost anywhere, anytime. Gamers can also choose games and play styles that involve independent/solo play or that involve thousands of players, often scattered around the globe, interacting and co-creating game environments in real-time. With this highly interactive nature, many games exploit social networks of users as player commonly invite friends and family into their virtual gaming worlds thus creating a virtuous cycle of user population growth and user resilience to stay within the social game group. As a game development and hosting company, Womby designs and launches online social games, hosts the games on an extensive cloud computing infrastructure under contract with AWS (Amazon Web Services), and continuously upgrades and enhances game play designs and experiences. The capacity from using AWS is important as it secure the processing bandwidth the allow for rapid increases in simultaneous users. To simplify operations, Womby develops only English-language games and they therefore only markets and distributes their games in English-speaking countries. Womby’s legal department secures all the game titles and designs with necessary global trademarks and copyright protections. In fact, some aspects of Womby game designs are so unique they have been granted U.S. patents for specific in-game function coding. The primary customers of the broad social gaming industry are older (40-50 years old) and mostly women who have above average disposable income. Womby, however, focuses on younger users aged 8-16. The broad industry has few regulations, except that there are increasing regulations related to online games and Internet content specifically targeting children. Even with these regulatory burdens, the founders of Womby understood that the use of digital devices and Internet media was rapidly increasing among toddlers and young children. In addition, new parents were increasingly fluent and comfortable with digital technologies, online games, and social media and were thus more apt to allow their young children to use online games and entertainment. To appeal to these target users (and their parents), Womby strives to offer games that: are free to download; easy to learn; involve many variations or levels to keep play ‘fresh’; involve colorful and action-packed play environments; and often allow single or multi-player modes. Their games cover a wide variety of themes including building and operating farms, exploring mythical underwater civilizations, colonizing far-off planets, and completing word puzzles that enable towns or buildings to be developed. Womby is also developing a new series of exploration and adventure games designed to integrate challenges that develop math skills in pre-teens. To address parents’ potential concerns, Womby’s quality control team ensures the content avoids any biases or controversial content, aims for some level of educational quality, and offers a variety of parental control settings, too (for example, the setting of game-play time limits and denied access to certain games or game categories). Keeping their IT capacity and processing abilities up to the industry standards is a major emphasis for Womby. If game play is slow or disrupted in any way at any time, use satisfaction falls dramatically. The AWS relationship is thus critical. More important, however, is the effective design, both graphics and functionality, of the games. Understanding children’s mental capabilities and engagement with tasks, colors, characters, and environments is an important aspect of Womby’s game development approach. Distinguishing the fun and quality of the firm’s games, ensuring parents feel comfortable allowing game plan, and building enthusiasm about the unique games worlds and characters also requires a high level of marketing. To support the effectiveness of that marketing, Womby has a dedicated team that analyzes data on game play and users’ experience to both target new users more effectively as well as to give input for game improvements and the development...