While Leandra Lederman was here blogging about Second Life, I meant to chime in about a new craze that might be under the radar for those readers without elementary school-age children:  Webkinz.  The phenomenon begins by buying what seems like a benign stuffed animal that is almost indistinguishable from a beanie baby to the uninformed.  In Champaign, the going price is $9.99, although due to shortages, the eBay price seems to be about $20.  But the stuffed animal is no ordinary stuffed animal; the tag on the animal is encased in plastic and when opened, reveals a secret code.  With this secret code you can log on to www.webkinz.com and register your new pet.  (The first year of play is free, then you pay a fee to continue.  As my husband pointed out, if the fee is more than $10, we'll just buy another pet.)  Then, you can begin creating a virtual home for your pet, buying furniture, even adding on to the one room that each pet starts life with.  You must also feed your pet, take him to the doctor, bathe him, and do other things to keep his "health" monitors 100%.

When you run out of your original allotment of Kinzcash, you can earn more.   

You can do a "job" every 8 hours.  My kids' favorite job to do is a matching game where the context is you work in a shoe store and must match all the shoes within a given amount of time.  You can also play games in the "arcade" to win Kinzcash.  Some of the games are just knock-offs of other video games:  there is a game very similar to Nintendo's Bust-a-Move, for example.  However, the games that give the most points have some educational value.  The quiz games, which might ask math problems or science questions, can earn players a lot of Kinzcash.  Another game, which is cross between Scrabble and Boggle, is also good for racking up the Kinzcash.  With the cash, you can keep your pet fed, decorate his pad, and buy him toys.

So, what's the big deal?  Well, of course there's the group that says that computer use at early ages is bad because kids don't use their imaginations or play outside and run around.  See this article.  But that's a parenting issue.  Most forms of entertainment are addictive, and this is one is too.  (I've been known to play a little Quizzy's Word Search by myself just to "get Luke some Kinzcash.")  So, you set limits.  Big deal.  However, there's another criticism that I have heard and that is that kids are being formed into little consumers by pretending to earn money and spend money.  My colleague Bob Lawless (after we introduced his kids to the Webkinz craze) asked me if there were payday lenders in Webkinz.  Actually, there's sort of a pawn shop!  Kids can sell their unused purchases back to the W Store for 1/2 the purchase price.  I think it teaches good lessons, though.  My seven-year-old daughter learned pretty quickly that being able to sell things back for 1/2 price wasn't a good enough deal and so she chooses her purchases more carefully.  My five-year-old son, on the other hand, spends every dollar he has.  His pet's room looks like Tom Hank's apartment in Big, only with more kids' stuff.  But he's learning that he has to save for things he really wants and that he can't let his monkey starve.  These seem like better lessons to learn in a virtual world than in a real one to me.

The only aspect of Webkinz that concerns me at all is that there is the potential for interaction with other users.  There is "tournament" play where kids can play against each other.  We've banned that just because you never know who is a kid and who isn't.  Also, if you have a friend with a Webkinz account and you know that kid's login name, then you can send each other virtual gifts or let your pets go visit each other.  We do let our kids visit with other friends we know in the real world (like the Lawless children).  We were glad to know that the letters they send to each other are pre-written and un-editable, so someone couldn't send your child an inappropriate letter.  (I'm sure there are people who know how to override that, but hopefully we are strict enough about our "friends list" that this poses no problem.)

As far as I can tell, there is no secondary market in Kinzcash and I can't see why one would be created.  All Kinzcash can do for you is to allow you to buy virtual decorations and consumables.  Kinzcash cannot alter the level of play or take you to new levels.  Your Webkinz experience is unaltered by how much Kinzcash you have saved.

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