Virtual kickball and cyber skinned knees?

One of the biggest projects I'm working on these days is a MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) designed for kids 5-9. It runs 24/7 and there are thousands of kids playing at any one time. The site is an amazing technical achievement and a real leap forward vs the competition. Plus, kids seem to love it.

And why not? It boosts their creativity, gives them interesting nature facts along the way, fosters independence, and builds self-esteem and social skills within the game. But it occurs to me that kids today probably can't do yo-yo tricks or get their pants muddy catching tadpoles like I used to.

Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. My kids are thinking critically and exploring and building in new ways. I was in the emergency room more times than I care to count by Age 10... Yet there's something visceral and sadly lost when interaction happen over a DSL line.

We never called them "play dates". It was just "summer" or "Tuesday" or "hanging out".