The "Disney difference" lies in the company's ability to weave its deep and familiar library of content into virtual worlds that give kids the opportunity to participate in their own storytelling, Steve Parkis, SVP of Disney Online, said at his closing keynote here at the Virtual Worlds conference and expo in Los Angeles today. Over the past eight years, Disney's online portal has transitioned into a place where people come to participate in a community. "It creates a place where you never have to leave Disney." The underlying mantra at Disney Online is: "If it doesn't matter to the kids, it just doesn't matter."
Neo-storytelling: A sense of place is important for Disney's online audience. "Giving you no reason or specific subject to talk about makes it difficult to do our job," Parkis said. "If you take that casual game player, you mix in our ability to take you to places you've never been ? add to that your friends ? and you end up with amazing results? We think this is the next version of storytelling." Parents are getting involved too. At 8 p.m. Disney typically sees usage flip over from kid to parent after children go to bed. The former Atari-fanboy and now proud parent of two added: "I don't have the time to train for these games anymore? I stink, I just can't train enough to get good at these games so that's turned me onto casual games."
Technology:"We took technology and applied it to storytelling," Parkis said. "This is very exciting. This is a new way to introduce characters." Disney began its online pursuits with a heavy bend on technology that outpaced its competitors and the industry norm. "Our R&D was so far ahead of the curve that PCs are just catching up to where we were six years ago."
Security: For the past seven years, Disney has utilized a technology that looks at every conversation taking place on its online properties, but also has live human moderation 24/7/365. "We've operated very, very big worlds. We've also moderated billions of lines of text."
