Two Filipinos create a safe virtual world for children

MANILA, Philippines - It should no longer come as a surprise that children are becoming more and more tech savvy by the day, and they're doing it faster than a snail's pace. They have turned to computer games for entertainment and parents may not always be present to monitor their online activities.

As parents themselves, ex-Zynga engineer Redentor Quiambao and Harold Khan, founders of the California-based Hey Snails, Inc. (www.heysnails.com), are well aware of this. An international market research firm, NewZoo released an Online Casual and Social Games Trend Report showing that online casual and social gaming takes 39% of the 215 million hours spent by 87% of the 145 million US gamers between 10 and 65. The statistic lumps together casual gaming under one category without differentiating between “parent-approved” social networks and a typical social network that is practically free-for-all.

Hey Snails, Inc. founders Redentor Quiambao and Harold Khan at the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California

With their game Hey Snails, Quiambao and Khan hope to carve their niche in the “parent-approved” category by offering a fun and safe virtual world for kids where they can chat, play games, and socialize with one another.

“It started out as an idea that we should build more family oriented games as we are parents ourselves,” Khan says. “The first thing in our minds was a virtual game in which parents and kids could just hang out online because right now, we're all connected through the internet but at the same time, parents and their kids are so disconnected wherein kids would often be left alone with a mobile device. The parents would be like ‘Ok, here's my phone, go sit and play’. We don't want that. We want to give parents a chance to engage more with their kids using technology and what better way to do that than through social media.”

Designing Hey Snails was a challenge, admits Khan.

“Red wanted to have the visual design to appeal to both kids and parents alike so we tested our ideas with our kids first to see if they approve,” says Khan. “It's actually a bit difficult on my part because I've always been a hardcore console gamer and my brain is wired to design mature visuals. I really had to dig deep to find the child in me to come up with just the right colors and fun elements for kids.”

Another game under Hey Snails, Inc. is Letter UP!, which is a multiplayer crossword game played in real time. But unlike other word games that would have you waiting for the other player to make a turn depending on their availability, Letter UP! engages up to four players at the same time. This, Khan adds, is their way of bringing back old school gameplay that we have grown to love.

Quiambao and Khan were present during the Game Developers Conference (GDC)—known as “the world’s largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event”— last March in San Francisco introduce the games to the public. Hey Snails, Inc. was among the exhibitors that included Sony Computer, Intel, Nintendo, and Paypal.

Both Hey Snails and Letter UP! are available on Facebook but Khan says they are launching apps for the iOS and Android platforms soon.