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Sunday, February 1, 2009
Kids offered more multiplayer games online, but are they safe?
‘FusionFall’ is the latest Massively Multiplayer Online game, but what should you know before your kids play online games with others?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The next time your child logs on to Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel to play a few games, he may not be playing alone.
There is a new push to create “online playgrounds” where kids play together online - just like adults have done for years. The games are called Massively Multiplayer Online games or MMO’s for short, and whether parents like it or not that is the direction many commercial online sites for kids are heading.
Adults have played community computer games like “World of Warcraft” and console multiplayer games like “Halo” for years. But children are not as well prepared to communicate online, and they might not know how to protect themselves as adults do. So the challenge for these sites is to create community game that is fun, but also keeps kids safe.
Disney offers several MMOs. You may have seen your children decorating Penguin igloos on “Club Penguin” or creating Pixies in “Pixie Hollow.” Nickelodeon offers “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” Launched officially Jan. 14 by Cartoon Network, “FusionFall” is the latest MMO added by a major Web site for kids. It is aimed at children 8 to 12, although my 5-year-old wants to play.
I knew my husband had set my son up to play this “FusionFall” a few weeks ago but I didn’t realize he was playing with other people. I walked by one afternoon and saw Id’s from other players with chat windows popping up on his screen. I freaked out and told him he couldn’t play the game anymore until I investigated it more. (Michael says he knew it was an MMO but wasn’t worried about it.)
Earlier this week, I talked with Chris Waldron, the executive producer of FusionFall, about online gaming and what Cartoon Network is doing to protect kids in this virtual world.
A longtime gamer but also a dad to a 4-year-old son, Waldron understood my concerns and did a good job allaying many of my fears.
Waldron explained they have built in layers of protection to the play. Parents will set up a master account where they control the settings for their kids. Kids who are playing for free (there are about eight hours of game play on the free level at this point) can ONLY use pre-scripted chat from a menu forming basic questions or giving praise. That means the children can only choose from a small selection of conversation starters, such as “This mission is hard.” or “Let’s get another buddy.”
Parents can choose to pay a monthly fee of $5.95, which will allow their child to access more parts of the game and also access to chat live without using scripts.
An account marked to chat live cannot chat with a non-live chat person.
Waldron says all of the game play and interaction is being constantly monitored by filtering computers and live people. Cartoon Network has hired a company in England whose only job is to monitor and look for potential threats to the kids.
The computer filters for curse words and searches for phrases that could be an adult trying to “groom” a child. If anything is questionable it alerts live employees to intervene. Live employees are also monitoring independently of the computer.
Waldron says so far they’ve only had false alarms with the phrase “What are you wearing?” The online characters can wear different crazy masks, shoes and costumes, and the players are asking their friends about their uniforms, but the computer thinks it could be an adult coming on to them.
I asked Waldron why game makers feel kids should even be playing together online.
Waldron explains it’s like going to Six Flags or a movie theater. You can have fun by yourself, but it’s more fun as a shared experience with everyone else.
“It’s to make the game world feel like more than just a game. It’s a virtual world for you as a kids to show off your accomplishments,” says Waldron. The kids collect clothes and characters, and the best players show up (just their online name) on a leaderboard.
Waldron also pointed out that the game is designed to be played in 30-minute sessions. The game begins to reduce targets and make it less fun for the kids if they stay on longer.
Waldron says they built the game hoping families would play together. Mom or Dad can log on from work or business trips and play a quick session with their kids.
I guess MMOs are not inherently bad, but I think they require a lot more investigating before allowing a child under 16 or 17 to play. Picking a MMO for your child to play is like picking a restaurant for sushi, you have to choose very carefully!
Since my son has started playing this game, I have been holding him in my lap reading him what pre-scripted things people are saying (He can read but it pops up fast and in small print.), and helping him figure out what he’s doing. It’s something he’s really excited to share with me, and he’s working on reading faster. I’ll let him play in short bursts, but I don’t think we’ll be paying the extra monthly fee.
What do you think: With these types of protective measures in place is it safe for kids to play online with other people? Would you let your child play this game or the Disney games like it?
Here are Web sites to help you evaluate and understand Massively Multiplayer Online video games.
You can email Theresa at ajcmomania@gmail.com. Ideas and comments are welcome.
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Resources to help you evaluate MMO video games
Some sites and stats that can help you as a parent evaluate Massively Multiplayer Online video games.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here are some sites to help you explore the content and safety of these new Massively Multiplayer online video games:
“Avatar: The Last Airbender” safety rules.
Also some online gaming stats to think about as reported for the AJC by Bill Hendrick recently:
34 percent of American children and teens who use the Internet visited a virtual world at least once a month in 2008. That’s expected to rise to 42 percent in 2009.
71 percent of digital kids feel their virtual worlds are very important to them.
13 percent of adults say their children are spending less time with real friends and more with virtual ones
75 percent of youngsters said in a survey that they use the Internet to participate in communities tied to social causes.
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