Digital Playspace launched Digital Dollhouse today as a new entrant into the kids space. While sites like Stardoll, and the newly acquired Roiworld, focus on dress-up for virtual dolls, Digital Dollhouse seems to be focusing on the environment. Users create their dollhouses and populate them with items from the Boutique using Digital Dollhouse Dollars, which can themselves be purchased via credit card, accumulated via subscription at $4.99/month, or earned through activies on the site.
K Zero, which
was tapped by Digital Playspace for strategic marketing, explains that
the two actually shied away from the "virtual world" label as more and
more companies are claiming it.
"In terms of the positioning and focussing on the initial play pattern, we’re not strictly speaking categorising Digital Dollhouse as a virtual world, but instead using the term ‘Playspace,'" blogged K Zero CEO Nic Mitham. "We’ve done this to differentiate the offering away from the growing number of casual gaming companies in the virtual worlds space."
Digital Dollhouse is lighter on interaction as well. The site is free of both advertising and chat systems, though it still promotes a social aspect through friends lists that let users view each other's houses and swap items. Users can also show off their works in progress through Dollhouse Cams that show spaces as they're being built.
It's also promoting an educational element as cultural historians have selected every bit of furniture, wall coloring, and house design to be part of historical periods and attached facts to various items.
“Digital Dollhouse was created as ‘wish fulfilment’ for girls," CEO and Founder Jesyca Durchin said in a statement. "I wanted girls of all ages to have a realistic interactive environment that they could design and control, rather than a cartoon-like technological world that was controlled for them. I truly believe that beauty and technology can co-exist in amazing and wonderful new ways."
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