The journey towards the metaverse has taken a strange new turn. As young adults increasingly turn away from the metaverse and its various scams, the metaverse has now taken aim at a much younger audience. MiMo Studios, headed by former Nickelodeon president Cyma Zarghami, has announced plans to make a YouTube series that will use Web3 extensions to prepare kids for a world full of NFTs.
Variety reports that the show titled "@HippoPark" is "aimed at preparing young children for consuming content and games in the Metaverse." The web series will feature episodes that range from 15 seconds to 1.5 minutes, with each episode posted to "where [kids] are currently consuming content," which is apparently YouTube.
@HippoPark is described as "a place where you can splash, climb, run, slide and play with your friends all of the time. You might see a hippo, you might pilot a plane, you might grow your own garden, you might dance in the rain. It’s your neighborhood park, just steps from your door, it’s filled with your favorites, your friends, and much more."
The show is entirely created in Unreal Engine and will be built from the ground up to use Web3 extensions, although it will first launch in Web2 form (where we are now). It will be the first show of its kind to “allow the community to contribute to the IP” through "first-of-its-kind NFT and content for kids’ projects." How children will create or own NFTs wasn’t made clear.
MiMo offered a framework to make kids and families "feel comfortable navigating within the space." That framework includes:
- Respect the community, especially kids
- Assume the audience is younger than they are
- Encourage kindness and empathy
- Inspire creativity
- Celebrate diversity, visible and invisible
- Make safety a priority (and teach it where we can)
Ah yes, "inspire creativity" through algorithmically-generated content in a completely unregulated industry where "safety" has seemingly taken a back seat to get-rich-quick schemes. Throw some preschoolers into the mix and what could possibly go wrong?