David Dwyer is the Chief Operating Officer at ZooKazoo, a virtual playground for kids developed almost two years ago. At Edge Online, Dwyer writes his concise take on what the last 18 months have taught him about how kids act in online worlds, and what can be done to enhance their experience and keep their attention.

Perhaps his main takeaway is that children in the 6-12 age group have as much to offer in terms of creating virtual worlds as the ‘creators’ themselves. He notes how this differs from more traditional interactive games: “in virtual worlds,” he writes, “players more or less shape their own fictions.”

Virtual worlds – and their tangential social networks – are defined by “participation and presence.” Sometimes, the content spills out of the virtual world and into the real one, as in the case of real money being exchanged for online items. But most importantly to Dwyer, “the notion of participation casts the frequent visitor in the role of information or content producer.” The sheer volume of content that kids create (ample examples of which Dwyer provides in the article) becomes “evidence of a different level of participation, an identification with the people, situations, and places in the world as real, evolving, and deeply personal.”

So: kids like to participate and be present. This is a perfect fit with virtual worlds because, as Dwyer writes,

they provide the means, the necessary functionality, and the opportunity to enhance participation and presence. They recognize and cater to a few simple facts: kids… like to create; to share; to learn (with and from peers); to hang out and interact; to express themselves with varied means; and to obtain status.

Dwyer then outlines the lessons for traditional interactive games are – in short, borrow heavily from virtual games – but the meat of his article, describes how kids and virtual worlds are an organic, natural fit for one another. Why kids are different from adults is another topic, and maybe in the case of some virtual worlds, there is no difference.