Smarty Cards
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| 5/13/2009 |
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| Virtual worlds and online gaming have reached the elementary school set, and there seem to be some benefits. The Leapfrog generation is growing up, but they`re not going straight to a brave new World of Warcraft. There is a gateway. Take Gazillion Entertainment, tapped by Lego and Marvel to create massive multi-player online games for kids of all ages. Gazillion has just as many reasons to reward young gamers for thinking outside their virtual worlds: everywhere `Smartycard` is accepted. "Tweens don`t have a way to get into and really explore these things without nagging their parents all the time, `hey can I do this, can I do that?` so we thought, what if we put a learning component in that?" said Chris Carvalho of Smartycard. Kids enter a website with an interface like a game show. They`re hit with a variety of questions based on school subjects and if they answer at least seven out of ten correctly, they get points redeemable for books, DVDs, iTunes downloads and subscriptions to their favorite virtual worlds like Club Penguin and Webkinz. "A child is fickle. They`ll dodge to different things. This gives them a chance to pick what they want but actually earn it. That`s kind of the genesis of the idea," said Carvalho. It`s something of a new approach to encourage kids to eat their veggies before they get their virtual dessert. |
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