I was fascinated by the many issues and implications around the shuttering on May 21 of Disney’s MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) the Virtual Magic Kingdom. Most companies would kill to build a high-profile interactive social community with in excess of a million faithful users, but here was Walt Disney Parks and Resorts abruptly closing the three year old game site, apparently thumbing its nose at loyal fans and taking a lot of heat online and off for their trouble. What were they thinking?
I first heard about the outcry on CBC Radio’s excellent weekly program on all things digital, spark (you can get the podcast of the show that originally aired May 7 here and on itunes). The Wall Street also ran a good summary story about it last week.
Disney isn’t saying much officially, but naturally a lot of others are. In fact, Disney’s only statement, really, when it announced the closing on April 7 was that the free site was originally created as only a temporary promotion to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of its first theme park, Disneyland in May 1955. The life of VMK, as it quickly became known to aficionados, had been extended several times since owing to its immense popularity, but the time had finally come this spring to move on to other promotional activities.
Critics piled on accusing the company of among other things crushing the dreams of the 8-to-14 year old primary VMK user base (although many adults were also apparently playing) and disrespecting the feelings of the community it had invited and encouraged to build the experience.
There is something to both those argument. An academic speaking on the spark program made the point that if a real theme park shuts down the regular visitors would, of course, be disappointed, but probably not too emotionally invested in it. In a virtual theme park like VMK, where big parts of the experience are the social interaction and consumer generated content that are created by the visitors themselves, the users have a more intimate stake in the place. As such you could argue they deserve more of a say in its fate. Morally, at least. Legally, of course, every user signed away any ownership rights to anything they did or co-created in the VMK in the fine print of the user agreement they had to accept to get in the first place.
Just as interesting, I think, is the fact that Disney’s success at making VMK a safe community for kids online has severely hindered the company’s flexibility in graciously closing the site. Because exchanging e-mails or phone numbers or really anything that would fellow VMK users to identify each other off line was strictly verboten, there’s no way for kids to ever find or reconnect with their VMK friends once the online park is shut. (Now we can ponder whether virtual friends whom we don’t know basic information about –like their names, where they live etc. - are really friends, but the answer from those who spend a lot of time immersed in MMOGs is unequivocally yes.)
So why would Disney provoke it loyal VMK users and violate just about all the conventional wisdom about building and maintaining vibrant social communities online? And, the abruptness of it all doesn’t quite add up either.
Certainly, VMK had to be a very costly proposition to maintain, especially with all the human supervision needs that a place for kids requires. And, it is true, promotions are generally aimed at achieving short term goals.
But, thinking about online communities in terms of tactical promotional tools is extremely short sighted. And when something takes on a life of its own like VMK did, that’s gold. Why would you abandon it? And assuming even if VMK wasn’t building overt sales and traffic for the real theme parks, aren’t the data and consumer insights from something like this more than worth the effort?
Speaking after his keynote presentation at the mesh 08 conference last week keynote. Club Penquin co-founder Lane Merrifield dropped some hints that there was more at play in the end of VMK. Club Penguin, of course, is the Canadian built site targeting a similar demographic that Disney purchased for $700 million last year.
I asked Merrifield if Disney executives had consulted him on the closing and what he thought of it all. He was very careful in his response, but did say that Disney, in effect, had wanted to keep the VMK property going, but its partners in the project had engaged in some heavy-handed gamesmanship about its direction and fate. Disney was stoically taking the bulk of the PR hit for a decision that it wasn’t completely in control of, he suggested.
Disney’s partner in VMK, by the way, was the Finish Sulake Corporation, best known for creating the Habbo online multiplayer community/game sites aimed at teens.
So maybe a big lesson, aside from be thinking about your exit strategy for social communities when you start them: be sure about your partners.
Originally written for and posted on In:fluencia Digital, a beta site created with Editions Infopresse to serve the Canadian online and interactive marketing, communications and media communities. The site’s development is in hiatus.
