Lord of the Flies, the William Golding novel, provides one template for what children stranded on an island might do. So when the BBC decided to set up its own world for children - Adventure Rock - the broadcaster was mindful of the need to create a different environment.

Adventure Rock is neither a television programme nor a radio show, but is a game aimed at 6-to-12-year-olds. Challenges are set each month and the virtual island incorporates “creative studios” where kids can create drawings, animations, music and so on.

Quietly launched a month ago - the BBC was keen to avoid a fanfare and risk bad publicity - Adventure Rock has been downloaded 55,000 times and is already notching up 2 million page views a month.

The BBC recognises that at least some of the future of children's entertainment lies outside television. Not everybody will think that it has a role to play here, but it has a justification for spending, in this case, £250,000 of licence fee payers money. Richard Deverell, the controller of children's television, says: “Our remit at the BBC is to engage and delight every child in the country.” He notes that this an era in which children's opportunities to play outside are being curtailed.

This area of the games business needs public intervention, Mr Deverell argues. “The market does lots of things, but it does not provide UK- originated interactive content for the 6 to 12s,” he said. With the BBC arriving, private companies, except maybe Disney, won't be able to compete either.

Reflecting the new ambition, the BBC children's budget is changing. The public broadcaster has £120 million to play with and it now spends £7 million on various web properties, ranging from the Newsround news site to games developed to link with BBC programmes, from the Teletubbies to Tracy Beaker. That may sound small, but it is big money in games terms. New programmes cost hundreds of thousands an hour, but with games, Mr Deverell says, “you get better value for money because children play them again and again”.

Parents will not like the sound of that - there are enough World of Warcraft addicts out there - but the BBC, mindful of the need to protect its brand, has spent time thinking about the security and ethics of the service. Adventure Rock is not a multi-player environment and it is not possible to communicate with other players, except by showing them things they have made in the various creative studios. That avoids any risk of predatory interest from paedophiles. The last level in the game, Cinema Island, is not yet released but it will offer previews of shows on the CBBC channel.

Marc Goodchild, head of interactive in BBC children's services, asks: “Shouldn't children be able to see each other's avatars there and communicate using a few emoticons?”

Yet the evidence is that children are interesting in spending time in virtual worlds and, like all kids, want to push the boundaries in ways parents may not feel comfortable with, according to research conducted on behalf of the BBC by the University of Westminster. David Gauntlett, a professor of media and communcation, conducted a qualitative study of 90 children who had played Adventure Rock.

“They wanted more communication and say they would like to meet their friends in the world, and opportunities for shopping; there's no economic system in the game,” Professor Gauntlett said. But there were clear positives, too. “They would also like to have the chance to nurture; quite a lot wanted pets, or gifts to give each other,” Professor Gauntlett said.

Unlike in Lord of the Flies, not every experiment in social anthropology need end in cruelty.

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