Digital Media Buzz > Digital Toys: Mainstream in the Playstream

Digital Toys: Mainstream in the Playstream

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There’s also a payoff for parents. “It’s a teaching environment,” Rice says. “It’s encouraging them to be creative. It’s encouraging them to collaborate and be a team player with their friends. It’s encouraging community. These are all 21st century skills that they need as they grow up.

“When we were growing up, we needed reading, writing, arithmetic, history — those kinds of things. Kids today need all those skills plus teamwork, collaboration, creativity and innovation. Creativity and innovation is one of the most important pieces of a kid’s growth these days because they have to work globally, they have to be multi-cultural citizens and understand different cultures and different communities.”

Many of these digital toys also stimulate inter-generational play — a very big theme in the toy industry today. “There’s a robotics division at Lego,” Rice says. “You can use these intelligent bricks to build robots and program them with your computer to work with your Bluetooth phone. You’re having the Dad play with his 10-year-old son or daughter and make this robot and play with it together. And it’s part of his overall experience with his kid. The play experience can morph.”

Ergonomics are an important consideration in developing digital toys. “They have to be smaller, the features have to be simple, the buttons have to be big and chunky,” Rice says. “They have to be more durable, more kid-friendly.”

But the most important consideration for developing digital toys is play value. The content of the play experience is more important than the underlying technology. Manufacturers need to start with the play context and then fill in the technology that enables it.

Disney’s Heatherly concurs. “We don’t try to add technology just to enhance experience; it needs to add value. It needs to be there for a reason. What parents are really looking for is play value.”

For kids, the calculus is simple: It’s got to be fun. The key to digital success, Rice advises, is to make sure what you develop is “toyetic.” “If a company develops a toy and it’s not fun,” she says, “kids are going to drop it and go for one that is fun.”

Shakespeare recognized that truism centuries ago when he wrote: “The play’s the thing.”

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