>E.g. have zombies or godzilla skins (targeting boys), and similar for girls. Why go out of your way to perpetuate stereotypes? Just make skins, period. Don't contribute to kids growing up with artificial limitations by making everything target boys or girls specifically.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I will think about it.

Most of the games I see nowadays sell what's basically shortcuts to success. This creates a very crooked sense of value especially in children that play these games. But selling environment and character skins and other non-functional stuff might be a good idea.

If you look around, it obviously works. E.g. Triple-A games these days all have premium editions that add new character skins. What was less certain for me was if it would work for kids educational content. I was skeptical because kids games have shorter play lengths, e.g. kids spent a few minutes at a time on our games. But, observing both the market and my own children's later experience they were keen to have the shiny new thing in the app, even if it didn't change the gameplay. People are inherently tuned into wanting novelty, simply swapping out graphics plays to that human desire.

So, yeh, don't sell shortcuts to success, but do sell theme packs. It works.