User:Sirius0106/Mole Manor

Mole Manor is an online game created by Shanghai Taomee Network & Technology Co. Ltd. It is a massive multiplayer game targeted at children. The game is specifically designed for children aged 6 to 14. That being said, there is no strict age restriction. The agent Taiwan Taomee claims that the game is designed for all genders. The game is inspired by Club Penguine. Players can choose cartoon mole-avatars, decorate their virtual homes, adopt pets, and socialize with other players. They can wander through the virtual streets, chat with others, go shopping, work, play mini-games and sometimes games that of limited edition. The official version was tested on March, 2008,and was made available to the public on 28th April, 2008. It was regularly maintained every Friday, except holidays. The mainland version was terminated on March 2015. The official Weibo account announced that the game would be re-opened on 18th January 2019. Mole Manor is driven by Adobe Flash Player, and offers paid services.

Plot
In the game, moles and Ramus live in the Black Forest. These friendly and diligent moles live underground and are born to be excellent architectures. Ramus, the goblins of banyan trees, are good friends of the moles, and they happily live together in the forest. The king of the moles led his followers to create the Mole Manor in the middle of the black forest, The manor is similar to the manor from the Middle Ages of Europe. At that time, Black forest was incredibly beautiful and maintained as the center of cultural communications. But during the reign of King Mole the III, a sudden big fire ruined the black forest. Not only the underground homes of moles are destroyed, but the banyan trees that Ramus live in were burnt into ashes. Then the manor was reconstructed at the southern region of Black Forest. The ruler of the kingdom is Princess Meme, who is the last heir of the royal family, lives in Mole Castle, protecting the Manor along with her knights. Gradually, shopping mall, schools, news agencies, banks and entertainment park are developed by the hard-working moles.

Gameplay and features
Mole Manor has multiple functions in terms of operating, including virtual community, dressing and fashion, interaction games, pet raising and virtual home decoration. Players will be in Role-playing as moles. The color of mole can be tailored. Every player has a patch of garden where they can farm and a house that is ready to be decorated. Players can socialize with other players, and this can take place on the virtual streets or their virtual homes. They can either chat, pay a visit, provide help or send gifts to friends. Moles can also attend school. There are also mini-games like water fight, hide-and-seek, theatre playing, idiom guessing and so on. They can also have Ramus, a kind of plant goblin, as their pets. Just like what one needs to do in real life, players must feed, clean, take care of the Ramus, and sometimes even send them to school. Otherwise, Ramus may die from neglection. Players can pay a small amount of money to upgrade their Ramus into Super Ramus, so they will be entitled to a wide range of privileges in the game. Moles can have different career options, such as tour guide, policeman, journalist. Player can accomplish daily assignment. After finish an assignment, player will receive rewards, including experience points, and the virtual currency "MoDo" Mole Dollar. MoDo can be used for purchasing clothes, home decorations and Ramu's food. The resources you own shows the amount of effort you have put in this game. Deal between players are forbidden. Special holidays, theme party and featured adventure are available from time to time.

The Background music is typically those composed by Beethoven, but holiday songs also appear during holiday. Unlike most of the online games, Mole Manor does not require users to complete their profile during registration, which prevents potential privacy issues from happening. All the information players need to provide is their birthday and email address. The game uses information filter to forbid players input numbers in case of information leak. However, a paper from Shih Hsin University points out that players can divide a sentence into segments and get away with censorship. Players can report at any time if they found someone use vulgar language, probe for personal information or use third-party software. As soon as the report is received, the reported account will be banned from using again. There are measures to prevent children being obsessive with playing online games, such as the website is automatically closed at midnight, and reopen at 6 in the next morning.

Creation
Taomee believed that there is a huge market for children online games. Wang Haibing, former executive of QQ pet project at Tencent, started Taomee and gained investment from Zeng Liqing, the former co-founder of Tencent and Wang Bing, deputy president of Sina. Before Mole Manor was developed, Taomee aimed to create a children education online community that named as "fruit kids", whose target audience were children between 3 to 8. But back then, pre-school children were not yet extensively exposed to Internet. Besides, the company was more familiar with Internet rather than educational products. So the business plan of fruit kids was abandoned. . Wang Haibing noticed the success of American online game Club Penguin, decided to go after a similar pattern, and adjusted the target audience to children aged over 8. Zheng Zhouli, one of the earliest designer of Mole Manor claimed that the games was targeted at Primary school students, who had heavy academic burdens and in need of a relaxing game. They could also easily learn how to play the game. When the game initially came out, the target players were considered as children aged between 8 to 14. During its trial stage, the target player age range was adjusted to 7 to 12, and finally it became 7 to 14.

Taomee often improved their product based on users' feedback. For example, there is no bank in the game before some players mentioned that they had earned too much MoDo and had no idea how to spend them. After bank was introduced to the game, many young players asked their parents, "why I saved money in the bank and the amount begin to increase? Aren't the banks going to be become bankrupt for giving back too much money?" The developer also taught young players about basic financial knowledge.

Mainland China
Mole Manor is the first children online game in mainland China, and occupied the biggest market share. There had been rumors that the game was about to be terminated, bur Taomee later clarified the guessing. In 2009, Taomee claimed that Mole Manor had 30,000,000 players, including 10,000,000 active accounts. In June, 2009, Qiming Invested another 5,000,000 US dollars to the game. In August, 2009, Mole Manor's monthly income was nearly ten million RMB. By the end of March 2010, registered user were over 50,000,000 and active accounts were more than 30,000,000. The Mainland China version of Mole Manor stopped operations on November 28, 2014.

Taiwan
Taiwanese version of Mole Manor was operated initially by Yixiang Digital Entertainment Inc. The launch of the game was promoted via a major game website "Gamedom", and gained great popularity. Many other websites took the same pattern and Mole Manor became even more popular in Taiwan. Taiwaness version of Mole Manor has a larger target audience. All age groups are playing this game, but the majority of players are under 20 years old. According to the statistics provided by Taomee, most of the players are between three and fourteen years old and the ratio of male and female is 4:6. According to ARO, Mole Manor surpassed more than 500 websites and ranked fourth in terms of 'single visit time' and eighth in terms of 'average visit time' in 2009. In January 29, 2010, Taiwan Taomee replaced Yixiang digital entertainment Inc and became the operator.

From users
Mole Manor is very popular among children. According to a paper from Shih Hsin University, as long as these young players have free time and a computer at hand, they will definitely log into their account and play the game. They also like sharing experiences with peers. The shared game experience forms communities in real life. Sometimes, young players are under the influence of their peers, and they might spend a large amount of time and energy in the game in order to surpass their friends in terms of rank and money displayed in the game. Some players are attracted by the exotic setting and delicate images of the game. They think the game is dreamy and unique, helping them to relax, while others think playing the game is simply fun and interesting. To be more specific, some think the background music are enchanting and the clothes of avatars are beautiful. Some players describe it as a game where is safe, harmonious and healthy, which could derived from the slogan and idea that the developer is promoting or the trust to the regulation and censor of the developer.

Players also draw pleasure from earning rewards in the game. Experience point, MoDo and other possession can bring sense of satisfaction to players. Some kids register several account in order to get higher experience points and share the resources between accounts. The rewarding system makes players want to achieve higher goal. Players repetitively play the game to get more rewards.

The process of solving problems is also enjoyable for players. Some believe that passing a challenging game is more rewarding and they like the moment when their efforts have been justified. So, players not only prove their ability but also have the sense of fulfillment. Some players insist that hard games won't be fun enough if it is played by others. Thus, they prefer to solve the difficulties on their own rather than seeking help from other players or game strategies. Some even think it is wrong to seek help from others.

Except the excitement of winning games, the whole playing experience is new and fun for young players. Through living the life of mole character, players can experience a new life style different from their own in reality. Some young players like to experience the activities that they cannot enjoy in real life otherwise or even extreme activities. For example, you can sit in a large bubble and cruise the sea world. Another example would be driving, which is exclusively possible for adults in reality.

The life simulation element also brings joy to players. According to a survey conducted by Shih Hsin University, although players live the life of moles, most surveyed players show greater interest in Ramus. With time goes on, they tend to become more attached with the Ramus that they have been taking care of, instead of the mole that they are manipulating. Except moles and Ramus, there is another point that attracts players, which is 'super Ramu'. Many players are drawing to its privileges in the game. Their affection come from game developers' strategies of promotions and publicity, and recommendation from peer players as well. So whoever pays for such membership, they become the spotlight. But unfortunately, there are also kids who cannot pay it because their parents do not approve. Hence, they become extremely happy when the game treats them equally occasionally.

From society
Teenager and Children Research from Young Pioneers of China argues that the reason why Mole Manor receives so many positive feedbacks is that it meets children's need of socializing, learning and relaxing. The idea of green Internet also meets the personal need of children. Duowan, a game media website believes that this game is like "a wonderland not only for children but also for those adults who still looking for simplicity and carefreeness". Airui net believes that Mole Manor fills in the gap of Chinese children virtual social community and wins recognition from society and parents for its anti-indulgence measures. Qiming innovation and investment organization claims that they are very satisfied with their investment, and sees it as the most successful case their have been invested in.

But China Central Television criticized Mole Manor for encouraging children to spend their money on buying virtual commodities. Shanghai Taomee charges the membership of 'super Ramu' for 10 RMB per month, but on some shopping website, the fee is only 2-3 RMB. Beijing Evening News believes that the fact that they are earning money from children that makes operator being crited. Some young players' parents said that their children had spent too much time playing this game and put their academic performance at risk.