Seems like a serious concern would be protecting the kids in this virtual world, lord knows the other "Kid" playing the game may be a 30-year old creep in his mom's basement. (Of course I worry about this when I play WoW as an adult, lol!)
I'm sure you've thought about this in depth, but my first thought was, that if you could make it a game that a child could play WITH a parent, and both coud enjoy, then that would be something I would buy for my family!
Consider movies... everyone knows the highest grossing movies are the kids movies that ALSO appeal to parents, (Shrek, Bee Movie, Shrek II, Everything Pixar, anything with the word Shrek it in...)
I know it's not exactly a Hacker Startup, but my wife and I have been building www.realphotography.com steadily over the past year
We've tried to leverage the internet and digital media as much as possible: the business has a blog, the vast majority of our promotion is on the internet, we sell the digital files, all proofing is done online. But I'd happily solicit any feedback from the resident hackers as to how we could do this even better.
And I'd like to head off the comments about Flash, yes we're aware of the disadvantages, and you'll see we do off a non-flash site for weddings. ;)
Agreed! The first thing I thought when I saw that phone is, "that's EXACTLY the phone I need!"
I work in a secure facility, where cameras are not allowed. Do you know how hard it is to find a phone w/o a camera in it these days? It's actually a PITA! And that's just silly... :)
In the 5th grade my teacher had all the students play a "game" where he drew a massive map one wall and we all picked starting locations for our "countries". Our countries grew in population with a random roll of a dice each day. Our civilization's developed by having to write little reports on various inventions. If we could figure out a good way to build an axe or how to make a boat, we worte it up and submitted it for approval. In essence it was a pen & paper style (ala D&D) game of civlization. Us kids benifited because we had to go out and research simple things like, how people actually smelt ore, and how thread is actually made.
So my idea (albeit a poor one) is a civilization-style web-based massively multiplayer video game. Map is randomly generated and number of players per map is limited. There are no pre-existing technologies or units, technologies and units are created by players and must be approved by other players (possibly players from other maps) before entering the game. The idea is the game could be open ended and vastly repeatable. The open ended nature of the game would allow for a lot of exploitation, so conquest would be minimized as a practical course of action. I imagine the focus being on economics and diplomacy.
That's pretty vague and not well thought out, but for some reason I found myself pondering it recently. Since the involvement by the developer could be minimized, by placing game management on players, the game could be free and monetized by ad revenue.
The page doesn't factor in Splits.
Entry Price: 52.00 (Mar. 8, 2000), Exit Price: 48.88 (Apr. 5, 2000)
Comes out to a 6% loss, but there was a SPLIT on the 21st! I should be up nearly 100%.
I think I agree with you on most counts. Although I'm a little confused by your proposal about the importance of reaching a consensus with the child. Are you refering to older children? As I'm sure you're aware, a child under 2-3 (depending on the child) doesn't have the vocabulary to reach a complex agreement with anyone.
I'm not one to tell anyone how to raise their children (see arguements below about spanking, yikes). This is just my experience... take it or leave it YMMV. My son is only two, and we find that if we let him watch too much TV his behavior takes a dive... more tantrums, less respect/listening to me and mom. As an experiment, we unplugged the TV for several days and the results were immediate and dramatic. Since then, we try to limit his TV time even more so than before. The danger is that he enjoys it, and us parents enjoy the opportunity to take care of other projects around the house without interruption. So if we find the family slipping into TV reliance, we pull the plug for a couple days. Sometimes he's upset at first when he realizes it doesn't work, but he's over it in SECONDS and moves on to something else. I'm not going to bother guessing why this is the case, but our experience is very clear to us.
My personal philosophy is all things in moderation. So if it makes him happy to watch the Wiggles or some old-school Fraggle Rock on DVD, he gets to. But it's the responsiblity of me and mom to keep it reasonable and keep the house a happy place for everyone.
In our case, we asked friends and associates who were familiar with our product to provide descriptive keywords. We ran through those until we had a short list of names we liked. Of course most addresses were taken, but we didn't stop there, we made the effort to contact the current owners. Which required a /whois + some creative googling.
We actually found one owner who said he might be willing to sell it, but he didn't have a clue how to transfer it or even price it. We walked him through the process and he even offered it to us at a fraction of the assessed value because he said, "that price was just too much!"
The craftsman style in archtitecture has seen a tremendous resurgance in popularity since the late 90s. People seem to more and more value the attention to detail and appreciation for natural materials.
Small home arts & crafts are increasingly more popular (did you know scrapbooking is a >$3 billion industry in the US?). Look at the popularity of Etsy.com: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=124684
I feel like society is going in 2 directions. One the hand, people are willing to accept low/lower quality in items/services, in particular if they're being made free. But also the availablity of information in the form of online instruction and tutorials is reducing the barriers of entry for many individuals, sparking their interest in hand-made high-quality items.
Other than saying I agree with this article, I don't really have a point here, just voicing some thoughts I've been pondering quite a bit in the last couple months.
I'v been amazed by the way that Etsy and other sites like Hyenacart have queitly been growing in the background, with not much significant media coverage, but well known and adored within their own circles.
From personal, anecdotal evidence (meaning not good evidence) I'd not expect many people to walk away from corporate jobs for new small businesses facilitated by these websites. However I know of many people turning hobbies into small businesses as a supplemental income. I've seen this trend led by stay-at-home moms.
I'm sure you've thought about this in depth, but my first thought was, that if you could make it a game that a child could play WITH a parent, and both coud enjoy, then that would be something I would buy for my family!
Consider movies... everyone knows the highest grossing movies are the kids movies that ALSO appeal to parents, (Shrek, Bee Movie, Shrek II, Everything Pixar, anything with the word Shrek it in...)