How early do kids start playing online? It’s been well documented in studies going back almost twenty years that children as young as five play PC and console games, but more recently trends have started showing that kids are migrating their gaming habits online. According to Pew Research around 75% of kids and tweens aged 5-12 in the United States play casual games online and the numbers are only slightly less in Western Europe. In retrospection it seems obvious that casual Web gaming with its simple, fast gameplay geared towards instant gratification would be a perfect fit for the ever shortening attention spans of today’s kids.

One start-up looking to position itself as a leader in this field is the Rehovot, Israel based Shidonni , The company’s site can animate the drawings of children. If your child draws a dog, for instance, Shidonni’s software can make that dog move, dance and beg for food. At Seedcamp Tel-Aviv a few weeks ago I caught up with Guy Bendov, head of marketing and business development at Shidonni to talk about the company and their virtual pet product for kids. See the full interview below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 9:49 am and is filed under Events, Startups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.