Real Man Traded for Cartoon Rabbit

Getting people to change their opinion of you is tough - especially if you are a rodent who has generated billions of dollars and has become a global icon like Mickey Mouse.

Mickey wasn't Walt Disney's first star creation, that was another big eared little mammal, Oswald the Rabbit. Oswald was taken from Walt by his employer, Universal Studios. Disney soon left Universal to start his own company. Since he didn't have the rights to Oswald, Disney shortened and rounded Oswald's ears and created Mickey Mouse, one of the world's most enduring fantasy characters.

Over 70 years later, Mickey is going through a "re-imagining", animators, marketers and executives from different Disney divisions will re-imagine a cartoon character who was imaginary in the first place. They are considering all aspects of the sacred Mickey: how he walks, talks, interacts with kids and even what his house is like.

If you aren't an imaginary, but an actual person who would like to re-imagine yourself but don't have a staff of corporate marketing experts or animators to help you, there is still hope. Virtual worlds such as Secondlife.com, IMVU.com and There.com allow participants, or "residents", as Second Life calls them, to create avatars of themselves as the main characters in a virtual fantasy world of their own design. You can look however you want, wear whatever you want and change as often as you want. Virtual worlds have become a multi-billion dollar business involving millions of people worldwide. The fantasy of having complete control over one's life must be very appealing to individuals who find the real world so complex and confusing.

"Make dreams come true. Let your imagination run free in a magic kingdom where life is a fairy tale and dreams really do come true." This is the pitch from the Disneyland website.
Second Life's website describes itself as "Socialize like never before. A place to connect. A place to shop. A place to work. A place to love. A place to explore. A place to be different. Be yourself. Free yourself. Free your mind. Change your mind. Change your look. Love your life." Love your life as long as you become an animated character in a fantasy world rather than who you really are. Virtual world sites walk the thin line between fantasy and delusion.

The real distinction between Disneyland and these virtual worlds is, Disneyland is for kids. The main audience for Second Life is adults. According to Quantcast, an internet data base that tracks website demographics, 70% of the audience for Second Life is from 18 to 49. The audience of 13-17 year olds is the same as the audience of those over 50, 13%.

That's a lot of adults who may have given up on the American Dream in reality and instead, invest time and money in a fantasy world. The good news, at least for the developers of these virtual worlds, is that the recession has been very good for them. Each of these worlds has their own currency. Second Life has Lindens, There.com has Therebucks which you buy with real U.S. dollars. Between $1 and $2 billion in the U.S. and $5 billion worldwide was spent last year buying virtual goods.
"Everything fits; things don't wear out. The virtual world represents a different value proposition," according to Mike Wilson, CEO of There.com. Virtual goods are great for the sellers because the cost of manufacture is almost zero and the goods have no value at all except within the confines of that particular online world - certainly a "different value proposition".

Disney represents a fantasy land in the real world. Second Life, There.com and the others represent a virtual fantasy world, unique for its member's ability to constantly re-imagine and change who they are. Members retreat from the real world as they sit alone in front of a computer screen acting out artificial social experiences in a world that only exists online.

Mickey Mouse is being re-imagined and rebranded to show Mickey's darker side. That makes him more modern, he doesn't hide his nastiness anymore. Unlike the original Mickey, who took the imagination of one man, Walt Disney, to create and bring him to market, the new Mickey will undoubtedly be the result of hundreds of people, focus groups and probably millions of dollars before Mickey is fully realized.

The real and imagined worlds collided as this was all coming together. Disney, who owns ABC wanted to have Oswald the Rabbit back from Universal, NBC, as a key element of the upcoming "Epic Mickey" game. ABC traded sportscaster Al Michaels, an actual person, for the rights to Oswald, a cartoon rabbit. The gap between reality and fantasy is disappearing.

 

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

With the usual caveat that depending on one's sensibility what may be tedious for one person may be a little slice of heaven for another, There.com and the other non-Second Life virtual social worlds suck.

Most problematic for the entire MMORPG industry is that Second Life is riddled with defects that make it the AOL of its field. Quirky and seemingly unresolvable technical problems, grossly inefficient use of bandwidth and equipment requirements for users that will stunt any hopes of real growth, unfocused marketing and unresponsive customer service that drives off the creative community SL depends on (well, sponges off of) to keep it viable, lag increasing as time passes, it is a huge mess.

It's traffic numbers lack transparency and are little more than fraud against the media and corporate community (which would better use its money funding another quixotic Steve Forbes presidential candidacy). SL has shed at least 15% of its peak users in the last year alone and it gets worse when you daypart the numbers, no matter what song and dance CEO Mark Kingdon is doing.

It has been around long enough to where its peak daypart numbers should be in the millions, not 30,000-70,000. This should set off sirens for any company being wooed by Linden Labs. SL, when it is good, rocks. When it is bad, it is like a World War one biplane assembled with bailing wire and firewood. It falls apart when any stress is put on it.

[RooneyTunes]

All people who 'survive' get old.....not all people ever really grow up! ;-)

Maybe the world HAS simply gotten that complex and difficult.....and that's too bad. Don't worry, I'm sure TECHNOLOGY will 'solve' that problem....it better....because here, in America, we have ample evidence to see how complacent, apathetic, fat, lazy and unimaginative people have become. To paraphrase Simon & Garfunkel..."where have you gone Walt Disney? Our nation turns its lowly eyes to you....."

Perhaps this is one time when the right "fantasy" character can do more good than one mediocre sportscaster! ;-)

[leanandsuperfit]

I hadn't even heard of these "real-world" virtual sites until you mentioned them. I've heard that comedic shows (audio and video and live performances) have increased in popularity with the depressing-recession. I think for a high percentage of people there's a lot of "on the edge" living right now and I don't mean X Games kind of thrill ride, live life to its fullest on the edge. I mean the "it's all a bit much and maybe there was a reason we only used to live to be in our 40s a few centuries ago and before" kind of on the edge living. The kind of living where you either find something that can help you escape or you are going to checkout kind of on the edge living. Many are turning to drugs (Rx and otherwise). It now seems many are opting for the fake world over the real world. I may not agree with it but I kind of get it.