The one question I ask most often about the internet is the following: why do people make such great stuff and then give it away for free?
The website Poptropica is a perfect example. Poptropica is a virtual online world in which children take part in adventures that require creativity, persistence, logic, and coordination to solve. If you have kids aged 6 to 12, it is definitely worth taking a look.
Not only is it fun for kids, but it is fun for adults too (at least this adult), and it is a great learning tool.
The unfortunate downside of the website is that addiction is a probable outcome. The last time I saw my son Nicholas so lost to the world was right before the intervention that culminated in us sending him to Club Penguin Anonymous.
I have been contributing to his downward spiral this time. Yesterday I was lying in bed half-awake, when I suddenly came up with a hypothesis as to how to beat Sir Rebral, who had confounded Nick for days on Poptropica. I woke Nick up to tell him. Happily, my conjecture proved correct.
The thing that I simply cannot understand about Poptropica is why it exists. Webkinz and Club Penguin both have revenue-generating business models. Poptropica is simply free — no subscription fees, no ads, no nothing that generates any money. On the Poptrica F.A.Q., it says that it was created by Family Education Network, a division of Pearson. That seems like a group of folks who might like to get paid for their hard work. So can anyone explain to me why Poptropica exists?
Just today, my daughter Amanda became the first kid in the family to finish all the available adventures. Her sense of triumph was powerful, but short-lived. Just seconds after putting the final jewel into the statue of Nabooti, she turned to me forlorn and asked, “Now that I finished Poptropica, what am I going to do?”
I didn’t have a good answer for her.
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How soon we forget the DotCom boom? The boilerplate internet business plan:
Create a site. Offer something for free. Gain market share, or create a market. Sell your company to Google for a huge amount.
“I woke Nick up to tell him. Happily, my conjecture proved correct.”
So he is an addict and you are an enabler – that’s nice.
Turn off his computer and kick him outdoors.
My mistake, FableVision is not a non-profit. So they probably are going to want to get moneys.
I would assume the site builds up a familiarity among users that would channel them into the revenue-generating ventures–at least in theory.
In practice, who knows… maybe they received a grant from some organization to build an education video game.
Is this really such a difficult question? They give it away because they can and they want to.
Perhaps the entire motivation was never to make money, but to educate? Perhaps they thought of it as art? Both of these are things that are best shared, and all too often money does nothing but get in the way of that. How many people would go to that site if they had to pay for it?
I’ve seen ads for both Wall-E and Trix on Poptropica.
Could you ask Amanda how she got inside the pyramid at Giza on Nabooti Island? Thanks.
“why do people make such great stuff and then give it away for free?” – because people act not only on monetary incentives.
A good example is the music. Prior to the introduction of the copyright (which is something very new in human history) people still created great music and most of them were not paid for that and some were paid peanuts.
If you ask such a question then you should ask how much Isaak Newton was paid for discovering the theory of gravity. Or how much money did Charles Darwin get for his evolution theory. And the list goes on…