During the past few years, many industry observers have described online worlds as representing the future of computer gaming. The extent to which this prediction will actually come to pass still remains to be seen, but if it's to happen to a truly substantial degree, the category will have to expand considerably. In one manner, this is taking place already. New titles launch each year, and although we can't know yet how many will ultimately succeed, there are even more commercial-grade projects currently in development at studios around the world. On the other hand, the extension of variety is taking place rather less rapidly, with very few offerings stepping outside the fantasy or science fiction genres. It is undeniable that these themes offer broad scope, but also indisputable that many other possibilities remain either under-utilized or not exploited at all.

is a persistent state world that differs some very notable ways. One is its setting. Created by the VR Studio of the Walt Disney Internet Group, it takes place in a colorful cartoon-style environment including some familiar Disney characters as NPCs, while the player avatars are two-legged versions of animals ranging from mice to ducks, rabbits, dogs, cats and donkeys, all of which can be customized by selecting different combinations of heads, body types, leg lengths, clothes colors and patterns, as well as head, arm and leg colors. Another important point of differentiation is the title's target market. It's not aimed at the usual audience of hardcore gamers, but rather at children as young as seven. Recently, Vice President Mike Goslin and Principal Technical Staff - Director Joe Shochet agreed to provide this in-depth look at their project.

We targeted mini-games, cooperative turn-based combat with easy grouping, and open-ended socializing as our main types of gameplay.

Toontown Online is the first 3D massively multiplayer online game for kids. Players get to create their own Toons and join together with other Toons to defend Toontown from the Cogs, a mob of unscrupulous business robots who are trying to take over.The project was started in 1999 while we were working on high-end virtual reality attractions for the Disney theme parks. It occurred to us that some of the things we were doing for the theme parks would soon be possible on inexpensive 3D graphics hardware in people's homes. Also, the emergence of massively multiplayer online gaming seemed like an opportunity for Disney, because Disney really knows how to build compelling virtual worlds, and everyone else in this space was focusing on an older demographic. We pitched Toontown Online as the first attraction of Disney's "online theme park" and started pre-production in 2000.The core team was 12 or 13 people for most of the development cycle. The only significant out-sourcing was for sound and music production, which was done by SoundDelux. The team size has stayed relatively constant, although the mix has shifted more towards operations people as we have scaled back on building new technology in favor of adding more game features.Our primary goal was to build a fun game for kids of all ages. This meant that the game had to be safer, friendlier, and easier to learn than other MMOs. We targeted mini-games, cooperative turn-based combat with easy grouping, and open-ended socializing as our main types of gameplay. We realized prior to launch that we would need a well-designed tutorial and that our game would have to be completely downloadable, even over narrowband. Our goals haven't really changed much since launch.Our primary technology goals were for the game to be completely downloadable, to have safe communication between players, and to have a unique look and feel. For the game to be downloadable, we had to keep the footprint small, minimize initial and ongoing bandwidth, and basically compress everything as much as possible. For safe communication, we developed "Speedchat", which is a menu-based chat system, and "Secret Friends", which uses a password exchanged outside of the game to enable two players to talk to each other in game.Finally, we built our own graphics engine internally so that we could have a unique look and feel while still keeping within a limited polygon and texture budget. We licensed the Miles sound library from RAD, and made significant use of open-source software, including the Python scripting language and CVS, a version control system, to help compensate for the small number of software developers on the project.The project was conceived in 1999, and the initial plan was to release late summer 2001. We ended up releasing over a year later than we originally planned because we decided to extend beta testing and to launch in stages to give us a chance to build up awareness in the market and to refine the business model. This also gave us the opportunity to add new features to the game that we had not included in our original scope.