The Death of the Virtual World Era: A Retrospective Glance
Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, IMVU, Gaia Online. All of these once beloved web apps have slowly faded into obscurity, either by shutting down or by a loss of player base. Growing up, I always adored online virtual world games. For all who played them, they offered, friendship, enjoyment, and escapism. You could be anything you wanted to be so long as there was a community for it. Want to roleplay as a mafia boss and run a high-end casino? Or maybe family roleplay is more your speed and you'd like to adopt or get adopted. Or maybe you just wanted to hangout and meet other people being your genuine self. These games offered that and are so treasured and yet still, they've vanished. But why?
Anyone whose even looked a little into the death of the virtual world empire that took the internet by storm in the mid 2000's-2010's knows that there's a fairly easily traced to one big factor: A lack of new players. As these games got older, so did their player bases. In turn, the virtual worlds would take one of two approaches on average to combat this: a. Lean towards a maturing audience in order to appease their existing player base.
b. Go for a hyper kid-friendly approach to attempt to draw in new, younger players.
The primary flaw with the first method mainly laid in the fact that older players are more prone to leaving the virtual worlds; either by getting bored and quitting intentionally, or by simply being an adult and having life cause the time investment into the world to sink in exchange for other demands on their time.
The second approach's flaw is a bit more complicated. A big reason many corporate execs thought that option B was the best route to take is that it by all means appears to be on the surface. New blood means new money and traffic and means that even if a player loses interest in the game, a new one will take their place. However many countries have strict laws governing businesses that are directed for children; and this ramped up in the mid-late 2010's. Companies could no longer shove advertisements at kids in the same way that they could in years prior. Children's online safety acts swept across the US, Canada, and the UK in response to parental concern over a multitude of websites and web activities.
As a result, it became increasingly more expensive to run these types of worlds while targeting kids. Heavy moderation teams were required, and advertising became a much more expensive process. This caused many great titans to fall. While some, like club penguin and webkinz, have tried their hands at re-launching their games for a mobile-centric audience, they just haven't had the pull that they used to have.
Ironically, those games who leaned into an older audience- such as IMVU, Habbo, and Gaia, all still remain in (relatively) their original state with an active- but smaller- player base. I feel as though a big player in their success lies in both the nostalgia they bring as well as the niche communities they've formed. Are any of these good by today's standards? Well... That's a rant for another day.
/End Rant
**Note: I deliberately excluded Second Life from the discussion, as it is an anomaly of it's own.












