Here's an overview of Barbie Girls, from Mattel, an online world attached to the Barbie brand. According to Mattel this browser-based MMO has a huge userbase (over 13 million registered users) and recently launched a subscription V.I.P. service.

Name: Barbie Girls

Company: Mattel

Established: April 2007

How it Works: Barbie Girls is experienced on the web through html and Flash. It requires no installation and navigation and gameplay are accomplished via mouse and keyboard input.

Overview: In Barbie Girls, players create an avatar, design their room and can then explore a virtual world where they can earn "B Bucks" play games, watch videos and chat with other girls in a safe environment.

Payment Method: Barbie Girls is free to play, but offers a V.I.P. subscription package starting at $5.99 a month, which allows users access to a larger world, the ability to own pets, and more. Access is also expanded for players who own Barbie Girl MP3 players.

Key Features:
- Girl-orientated virtual world attached to a popular established brand
- Customizable avatar and home, with clothes and items to buy
- Safe environment with several levels of moderated chat (B Chat, Secret B Chat, and Super B Chat)
- World is extended for users who purchase Barbie Girl MP3 players or subscription packages.

Barbie Girls: In-Depth Tour

I never thought in my life I'd have a reason to sign up for a Barbie MMO -- or indeed, have any reason to have anything to do with the Barbie brand in general. It's obvious that Mattel don't expect any male journalists in their mid-twenties to be signing up for Barbie Girls, as their site is exclusively designed for girls: there are no male characters, it drips with pink, and also sent me an e-mail to let me know that "my daughter" had signed up.

Like many child-orientated worlds the site has several pages of information for parents, and it also quite cleverly includes a "Parent's Place" login, allowing parents to update their daughter’s account settings, including chat level, at any point. Chat levels are important, as like Build-a-Bearville, chat is possible on several levels of freedom. B Chat allows users to select from a list of phrases, Secret B Chat is free chat specifically for girls who own the MP3 devices who are "best friends", and Super B Chat is free chat for players with their parent's permission.

All "free" chat checks words against an internal dictionary and will block any "rude" words.

This is a fairly stringent system, too, as when I began to set up my character, I became confused when it seemed to think that my chosen screen name (GermaineGreer; I was being ironic) was "rude". I guess picking the name of a feminist icon in a Barbie game is kind of rude, but then I discovered it was actually taking issue with the answer to my secret password recovery question -- "Kilmarnock". I'm not sure what is rude about Kilmarnock though. The production of Jonnie Walker?

Anyway, GermaineGreer materialized in Barbie Girls' world as a cute redhead on a blue and yellow dress, thanks to the avatar creator, which has an okay level of customization. It's the first place you notice that V.I.P. members have a much better deal (more hair, clothes and facial options) but I'm sure most players would expect their starting character to be a bit basic.

After that you can set up your room from a few options. The room can serve as a space for private chats between friends, and you can also purchase and place furniture here.

Something interesting comes up quite quickly after you've started playing Barbie Girls however -- and that is that only players who have a V.I.P. membership can purchase anything with their "B Bucks". So while people playing for free can earn currency, they can't spend it (!) so from this point I was stuck with what I began the game with.

That's no reason not to play the games which earn B Bucks, of course. The games include a very cute version of Pipe Dreams featuring hamsters and the usual word searches and match-3 games.

The world itself is very much the usual sort of thing. I don't want to make too many opinion calls in this look (I prefer to wait for the conclusion) so I'll just try and state ambivalently that movement is on a "block-by-block" basis, there isn't a huge deal of animation, and there are a limited amount of locations that are not especially interactive (especially if you can't buy anything.)

There is a cinema, which is kind of interesting (it plays trailers for Barbie movies and short Barbie "webisodes") and the world is actually very busy, with most locations full of players. I didn't find an especially talkative world, however -- perhaps because I managed to make it crash every time I tried to use B Chat. But I'll broach that subject in the conclusion.

Barbie Girls: Conclusion

I've said it about other MMOs, and I'll say it about this one too -- I'm not the intended market! Obvious, really, but I state it again as don't want hide my status (as very definitely not a preteen girl) and otherwise color your feelings on my opinions.

Especially as I feel that Barbie Girls just isn't very good. First of all, technically, it's flaky. I'm not sure if it's specifically to do with using B Chat, as I mentioned last entry, but after I use Barbie Girls' chat method, Firefox (my preferred browser) tends to lock up as a result of a script that causes the flash player to slow down. I've experienced an unacceptable number of these crashes playing Barbie Girls, for reasons I can't quite work out.

Of course, perhaps it's my PC (it could be -- the crashes are hard to replicate!) but a further problem with Barbie Girls is the content. Now, I'm not particularly bothered by the heaps of pink, or the emphasis on shopping and looking pretty (few MMOs emphasize anything else) just that there really isn't very much to it. Barbie Girls world is small (certainly smaller than something like Build-A-Bearville) and quite boring. Navigation is stilted thanks to very clunky movement and poor animation, and the interface is nothing to write home about.

Probably Barbie Girls most egregious crime however is its decision to be essentially pointless in its free-to-play incarnation. All play featured in Barbie Girls centers around raising B Bucks to purchase clothes and furniture, and in the free-to-play mode you can't spend B Bucks! It's a transparent way to force players to subscribe to the V.I.P. service, and while there's obviously no problem with being a subscription title, Barbie Girls offers very poor value at even $5.99 a month.

I tried to talk to the other users of Barbie Girls to see if they enjoyed the world, but thanks to crashes and the general silence of the community it was, frankly, impossible to gage. But to be honest, I have to compare Barbie Girls with Build-A-Bearville. If Build-A-Bearville is an example of how to make a browser MMO based around a brand aimed at children, Barbie Girls is an example of how not to do it. People often criticize Barbie's world as pink, plastic and empty, and it's a shame to find her virtual world is exactly that.