Name: Millsberry

Company: General Mills

Established: August 2004

Overview: While Millsberry is, as you might expect, plentiful in product placement, it's also a place where kids can play minigames for currency (Millsbucks), explore various areas and learn about nutrition and exercise. Each character has five statistical attributes -- Fitness, Civics, Health, Intelligence and Hunger -- that can be affected and improved by in-game choices and participation levels.

How it Works: Runs in the browser on Flash. While users create an avatar and click to explore different areas, the avatar itself doesn't walk in a 3D virtual environment (like Habbo or Nicktropolis). Most rooms have some interactive content, but it's strictly point and click the fixed areas.

Payment Method: Millsberry is completely free, without even a microtransactions element; users buy in-game items with the Millsbucks they earn from playing minigames.

Key Features:
-Customizable navigation, where users can add their own shortcuts
-Good citizens are chosen weekly to be the "Citizen of the Week"
-Millsberry bank pays interest on users' Millsbucks deposits

Millsberry: In-Depth Tour

Once signing up at Millsberry, which consists of choosing a username, character name and password (address and other personal info is optional) and verifying via email, you can login and choose your avatar's appearance. There's a good degree of customizability, though initial clothing choices are limited (you'll be able to buy one with the Millsbucks you can earn in-world).

One cute attribute is that you can choose quite a few personality traits, interests and preferences for yourself via some pull down menus beneath the avatar customization window -- though it's unclear what impact these will have on your Millsberry experiences. You retain all of the different shirt colors in your closet after choosing one, so if you don't like the color shirt you picked, or feel a hankering for change, you can always switch it up later.

Millsberry is not a navigable 3D world per se; you see your avatar and its stats displayed in a left-hand panel, with links to your Millsberry house, your address book, and a "My Links" button under which you can bookmark and name your favorite Millsberry places.

Once I joined up at Millsberry and created my avatar, giving her flowing red hair and a button nose, I was presented with a view of the Millsberry world, which is displayed in static in the largest panel to the right of my character and her stats. Mousing over any area in that window will provide more information, or let you visit it -- though you only "visit" it in the form of static images. There's no way to socialize in Millsberry except to send letters and gifts to those users whose usernames (different than avatar names) you already know. Though some of these have a little bit of interactivity, most of the things to do in each Millsberry area are listed in the form of links below the window.

Millsberry has several different neighborhoods you can visit; the amount of detail given about the town areas -- the historical information provided on the old school house, for example -- makes me think that Millsberry is modeled on Golden Valley, the real-life Minnesota home of the General Mills headquarters. Golden Valley is the name of one of Millsberry's neighborhoods, so it only makes sense that the locales might be created with real places in mind.

Visiting the "My Place" button on the left hand panel brings you to your own home in Millsberry; since I didn't have one yet, I decided I ought to buy one. Fortunately Millsberry starts you off with enough Millsbucks to get established, so I bought a house, customized the exterior and moved in. If you know another Millsberry citizen's username, you can search for them in the address book and visit their house, too. Homes can be decorated with furniture and goods purchased at the furniture store.

It's not immediately clear what there is to do in Millsberry; the best tack is simply to explore. Clicking around and visiting the links, I learned that I could deposit my Millsbucks in the bank to earn interest, just one of the sensible life examples Millsberry seems to concentrate sincerely on offering. For example, you can check books out at the school library to raise your intelligence stat (though it isn't clear, again, what benefit this offers aside from a fuller stat bar), but if you don't return them by their due date, you're charged a daily late fee of 5 Millsbucks. A lesson in responsibility!

Not all books are available at a given time; I chose a book on asteroids, which I paged through for some succinct facts and then returned. While I was in the school building, I figured I'd swing by the cafeteria and see what was served; your character will become hungry if you don't eat. Below a picture of cheerful students and a sour-puss lunch lady, possibly the only person not constantly grinning in Millsberry, I saw a list of menu items. Some curious probing led me to discover that the colorful triangles alongside each lunch selection indicated what food groups are represented there; I chose a broccoli and cheese potato for the food group variety, since in Millsberry one must be mindful of one's health.

This aspect is reflected in the mini-games that can be played at the arcade, too -- launching in a separate browser window, they range from cereal advertisements -- Reese's Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and such -- to lessons in civic-mindedness, like cleaning up the park. One particularly interesting game was a newspaper management sim; on a five-day publishing schedule, you've got to manage the quality, quantity and breadth of your articles by hiring a good balance of writers and editors, choosing the beats to cover, and balancing the workload. You can speed it up to see how your choices will affect the paper's success more quickly. It's the kind of game that's designed to be done in a classroom setting for maximum benefit; it'd make an interesting interactive lesson on news and resource management for a group.

Some of them are pure fun, if simple, action and puzzle-type titles. Submitting your score once the game's over results in a Millsbucks payout and a boost in a certain stat -- the martial arts game increases your fitness, for example, while a Sudoku-type symbol game increases your intelligence.

Apparently, long-term regular Millsberry citizens who keep their stats high and involve themselves in a variety of activities can be chosen as "Citizen of the Week," with their avatar, interests and a brief bio profiled on the front page of Millsberry. Striving for recognition is a good incentive, but there aren't any immediately apparent gains for engaging with the world.

I took the Millsbucks I earned from playing games and hit the clothing store; some of the outfits, at 1,000 Millsbucks, will take some saving up for, but a hip space-age dress, at a much more reasonable $150, was right up my alley. I used the left panel icon to check out my closet -- which is really just a picture of a sort of messy closet, with lists of the clothing items I owned in the form of links underneath. While I could put on my dress in the avatar customization screen, clicking it in the list was the only way to make sure I wasn't still wearing jeans with it. All I had to pair with my new bit of couture were the same sneakers I got as a Millsberry newbie; looks like I'll have to save up some more Millsbucks before I don't look quite so silly.

Millsberry: Conclusion

Millsberry lacks that 3D element that would give it the feel of a real virtual world; the navigation, as such, is more like clicking through interconnected web pages than traveling somewhere, and while you can customize your avatar and his or her home, you rarely get the opportunity to see your creations engaged with the rest of the world.

Because of this, navigating can be sometimes difficult; sometimes you go from one room to the next by clicking a door in the image, other times by using navigation buttons at the top of the screen or links from a list. Sometimes you even need to use the browser's back and forward buttons; because of this, it's hard to ever get a clear picture of Millsberry's geography and the experience always feels a little jointed.

The ways it attempts to make up for this are charming, though -- each area is described in detail with text, with interesting facts and story elements that are not absolutely necessary to the functionality of games, stats or Millsbucks, and it feels like a lot of thought was brushstroked rather tenderly into each area.

The over-arching messages of civic responsibility, proper nutrition and fitness are all very well-intentioned, but not too well-integrated into the game environment. Their relevance is not very strong in the game -- just a set of stats to keep track of -- and you sort of have to search to be educated on why they'd be important to a real-world person. More importantly, the extension into how kids could translate the ways of Millsberry into useful life skills isn't very strong, either.

The games are fun, though the instructions are not always explained clearly. Nothing wrong with an environment that lets kids figure out for themselves by experimentation, but clear goals help.

Millsberry doesn't talk down to its audience, in the educational "books" that can be borrowed from the library or in its explanations of historical places, and while General Mills products are advertised in the games, it's not intrusive; it's a wholesome place for kids to play.

Useful Links:
Millsberry FAQ
Millsberry Members' Club