US firm Handipoints has launched a new virtual community that will offer kids "positive reinforcement and teaches the value of savings and work". Hopefully there's some fun involved, too, otherwise it'll be far too worthy for the tastes of today's tweens. The service includes a dedicated virtual world component, HandiLand, which the company admits is "similar to Club Penguin and Webkinz", albeit with a cartoon cat as your avatar.
There’s already 140,000 users from the site’s beta program, which kicked off last November. These include 92,000 children aged 4-12, and 48,000 parents. This is an interesting angle, as parents are being encouraged to use the site too, with a Parent Portal allowing them to print out ‘chore charts’ and reward certificates. If their children then do their real-world chores, they earn points to spend on cartoons and games in HandiLand.
Handipoints CEO Viva Chu certainly isn’t mincing his/her words when it comes to the competition: “Club Penguin and Webkinz are great games and very fun to play, but these games provide no value to the parents and teach kids the wrong lessons about consumerism. Kids end up spending hours in these worlds playing mindless games in order to earn enough coins to buy clothing. Handipoints is completely different. In our game kids earn points by staying healthy and active in the real world.”
Handipoints is free for now, but will eventually move to a subscription model if people want to buy certain clothing and play premium games on the site.
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