Recent research by the BBC identified 7 types of virtual world activities and the types of players who enjoy them. This framework provides a great rule of thumb for virtual world design. Four of the activities are common to boy girls and boys; our Dubit Platform supports these out of the box. We then identify which, of the remaining three, fits with the target audience and lastly, how to turn that activity into the worlds defining characteristic. For example, a product targeting boys might choose to major on the 'Fighters' player profile.

The first four profiles are broadly agnostic across all players - we like to thing of these four activities together as what makes a virtual world different from a regular game. 

• Explorer-Investigators: These are confident and curious children driven by quests and challenges. These types were found equally in both boys and girls across all age groups.

  Our GAML engine allows us to quickly create rooms, quests, non-player characters, keys, and conversations so that we can build expansive worlds with places to explore, rooms to unlock, and quests to complete. As part of our toolkit package we train customers to develop their own GAML content.

• Collector-Consumers: This group is interested in acquiring and accumulating virtual items and rewards with a perceived value. Likely to be older children and slightly more girls than boys.

  When we designed GAML we were heavily inspired by Animal Crossing on the Nintendo DS. We think collecting games are great fun within the world, so we made it super easy to hide hundreds of items around the world using only GAML.

• Power Users: These types are interested in helping others by sharing their knowledge of the virtual world. The research showed a slight bias towards girls but not towards specific ages.

  Its a good idea to reward those players who want to help others; these users become ambassadors of your site, make it more fun for 'newbies', and can help keep your moderation and support costs down. To make the power users feel loved give them something special, maybe their own club, private rooms, new clothes, badges, or extra points to spend.

• Social Climbers: These are competitive outward children focused on their social position in the virtual worlds they inhabit. The research highlighted a slight bias towards boys.

  The player ranking engine agregates huge amounts of player data, including time on the site, number of friends, types of activities, favorite rooms, game scores, and turns it all into a rank. The players activities takes them down one of many ranks, their time on the site and proficiency determines what grade they reach.

Its not possible to cater for all 7 player profiles, instead we like to choose one of the last three profiles to be the focus of a feature that defines the world. For example, a world with a monster theme would encourage girls to look after and care for their monster, while a world for boys might look to train their monster to fight or compete.

• Self-Stampers: Identity-driven show-offs wanting to make their mark in-world. These types are likely to be older children with a slight bias towards boys.
• Fighters: Interested in death, violence and destruction. These are likely to be older boys.
• Nurturers: Interested in looking after their avatar and pet (if applicable). Likely to be younger boys and girls, plus older girls.