Lets talk about... Adolescent SotA players.

@RichardGarriott

My son, who is eleven, recently told me he was interested in joining me on SotA, which I had previously anticipated with a secondary account.

As I'm sure is every parents hope, I want him to have a good experience with kind and friendly people within the game. While I know portalarium can't guarantee that young players wont be exposed to the actions or adult content of conversations between mature players, I did have an idea that I felt is a great way to help identify adolescent players within the game so adult players have the opportunity of practicing patience and respect when dealing with the younger player base.

The idea is simply to add a checkbox within the shroudoftheavatar.com account profile which identifies the player as an adolescent. This trigger would restrict the account to the creation of a "young adult" avatar during the character creation process. The young adult avatar would be shorter than adult avatars with leaner builds and a more youthful face.

Not only would this allow easy identification of younger players without any kind of unnecessary immersion breaking titles, but it would also provide some age appropriate character customization options for the classic rpg fans of tomorrow.

I'm not 100% sure about this but I believe the inclusion of this feature would be an online RPG genre first. I say that because while I know this would cost a bit more in development dollars, it would be praised by the gaming community as responsible game design and help get Shroud and Portalarium some additional praise from the public which they absolutely deserve.

Thanks for your time and I would encourage everyone to please leave your comments and ideas below as well.

Thank you,
Grave

 

Might also add some features to these accounts like a parental password for gifting items and toggling off the profanity filter.

 

I think that is an awesome idea, an even easier way would be to just add a new title Son Of and then the parents name or Daughter Of etc.. and maybe make the title a different color. Would save time having to develop something new, I would not think adding a title would be to tough

 

"Shroud of the Avatar, a family friendly classic online RPG."
https://www.globalratings.com/for-developers.aspx

 

Hey Grave,

I have four younger children, all of which are interested in SOTA. I've let them play online before, they have their own accounts. During this time there have been some interesting interactions that they've learned from, and that have tested my patience.

Long ago Starr hosted a web Q/A on a gaming site and I asked him a question about Portalarium's recommendation for younger players. Basically should they play the game or not? Starr's reply, as I remember it was a good one. He recommend single player online or friends online, but stressed I'd be taking my chances with multiplayer online. I think that's the right answer here.

Your idea is good in spirit, but it's not so hot in execution. It's got some fatal flaws that as a parent you probably will understand very quickly. There's no way to tell who's really using the account. Is it a real child? If so, this is a great idea. Is it someone that want's to pretend to be a real child? Is it someone that wants to get near real children? This is a very bad idea for these and other unstated reasons. We're going to have to protect our children online the same way that we do offline...by making tough decisions about how much access they have to strangers.

 

You have excellent points here, but I would counter that the risk of exposure is there regardless of having a child-like avatar or not, as you are after all interfacing with a cartoon avatar rather than a real person.

The risks are even higher for some console games where young players have direct voice communication capability with other players and are exposed to a plethora of risks that is the absolute responsibility of the parent to police. (We don't allow Xbox Live in my home).

This is in no way intended to be a deterrent for predatory risks. It is simply a means to identify younger players so their chances for respectful and patient interaction with responsible adult players is increased.

I think that coupled with passive parental options in the profile, like what Selene mentioned would greatly increase the playability of multiplayer mode for young players.

 

I hear you. But I actually think that this would increase predatory risks. We would effectively be making it easier for predators to reduce the population into a more identifiable group of likely targets.

In addition, I'm personally uncomfortable with some of the situational use cases that I can think of that would have the potential to remove the relaxed "game" environment that I want from roleplaying. It's one thing for Richard to create NPC based moral conundrums using children to test someone's virtue. It's another thing entirely to play the game with other adults using the guise of being a child to gain social advantages or create situations that I doubt would be socially acceptable in common walks of life. It might really be a strain on the community to not see children engaged in pvp, or common MMO type behavior without being offended (if it's an adult) or overly concerned for the child's welfare (if it's actually a child).

 

This is a tough topic to address. I see your concern related to easier identification of potential predatory targets and I agree that anonymity seems to be the best medicine in that regard. My principal intent for this idea was to try and provide some possible features which would enhance the experience for younger players because I think it is safe to assume there will be kids playing it regardless of an 18+ EULA. With that being said though, the other ideas I had may not be feesable with a 30 member staff so I will digress and think more on possible static profile options that don't identify age or present the opportunity for misrepresentation.

Thanks for the feedback Drocis, as always its a pleasure.

 

Grave, I recently played minecraft with the daughters of a friend on his server, and I hadn't actually talked to them before despite knowing of them since they were born. They're about your kid's age.

Let me tell you, your kid likely doesn't need any sort of protection or identification as a young person. They might come across bad experiences like anyone else, but kids can be surprisingly resilient, especially online, especially in a game. You shouldn't need to worry that he won't have the best possible experience, because if he comes across those situations, he's likely to deal with it in a very similar way that you do, and maybe even better than you do.

From that minecraft game, my friend's kids could have been adults and, except for the fact that I already knew who they were, I wouldn't have known any better.

 

Thanks for your reply, Quenton. My son certainly fits that criteria, he's a smart kid and I know he could hold his own when it comes to social interaction online. Regardless of that I'm still a dad and he is still just a kid, so for now my plan is to allow him to play multiplayer online in tandem with me when I am online and only single player online when I'm not available. He's a good kid and I know I can trust him to follow those guidelines. Kids with good parenting really aren't my concern though...


The reality of our American society today is that kids are less and less prepared to handle negative social interactions, like online griefing for example. (Grieving?) That is not a fault of and "should not" be a burden to be taken on by gaming companies, but it is an ever worsening reality and while every piece of me wants the ability to hold those absent parents accountable, I cant help but feel a little more can be done in the way of game features to mitigate those occurrences other than just a legal liability disclaimer and a /ignore command.

 

A grand idea.

 

I'm imagining a Hunger Games type scenario.

 

Grave I understand your wanting your son to be able to play the game by your side or single player online at other times. My concern about this has always remained the same, having a younger player base restricts, constricts the very essence of freedom this game could offer for so many adults seeking an outlet from whatever they are dealing with in life. This is not a chidrens game, it is a very adult social game. I adore children, don't get me wrong but many of us have been waiting for a long time to create our playground. For me this did not include a child's game and is no way intended for it to be a children's playground. The very idea of taking what is being developed and limiting it as total kid friendly does not work imo and saddens me a bit to even consider doing that. So while this may not be what you or many others would like to hear, it is me being bluntly honest. I'm not sure what I say makes sense. This is a special type of a lot of game for many playstyles but they mix together at times, which is as I believe it should be, adult to adult. So while there may be dungeons, quests, crafting etc the younger ones can experience, consider what I say not to deter you exactly but to show another side. Look at what gets limited if we have to continuously say but what about the children playing the game, many of my requests for the game no way take the children into consideration because it is my game, not theirs lol. Sorry not trying offend ok. *cheers* You're just being a good parent.

 

In my gaming experience, it's the adults who should be afraid of the adolescents, not the reverse.

 

It's too bad that all new players did not start out as youger characters on screen and age as they played. This would not identify a players age but rather it would identify whether a person was new to the game or not and it would add a sense of realism that our characters would age as the game progressed. The age appearance could be based off of time played and not character level and so the appearance would never truly allow you guage the strength of a player. Also, this way, older players would be able to recognize new players and would be more patient and willing to help them out, providing a better game experience for new players both young and old.

 

This was where my thoughts went, as well. It's a neat idea, but it opens the door to a lot of very real issues...issues that have cropped up in other online games in the past, including Minecraft.

If you want to step your kids into MMOs, there are a few other options that are much more tightly controlled than SotA. My eldest has been playing Prodigy lately; it's actually a math learning tool that has been built up as a JRPG-style MMO. It's tied to her school; the only people she can see online are her classmates. But it has basically everything you'd expect in an MMO: exploration, combat, character customization, inventory, gear (with stat bonuses), PVP duels (the main game is PVE; she can challenge her classmates though), vendors...and maybe crafting? I'm not sure about crafting, but pretty much everything else you could think of is in there.

Anyhow, she's lately discovered the joy of grinding dungeons for gold, then hitting up the vendors to get that even-better-looking armour set.

At some point, she'll be ready to jump into games like SotA. But why not progress her through games that are more tailored to a younger crowd first?

Edit: I guess I kind of didn't end by bringing this back to topic, so here goes: the point is, I think @majoria70 is quite correct to note that SotA really is more adult in its focus, just in general. And really, while Portalarium are crafting some very excellent systems, and will no doubt have a significant battery of mechanisms in place to prevent cheating, trolling, and the like, I don't think it's reasonable at this late stage to expect that they'll be able to contrive additional layers of protection specific to children and adolescents.

Further thought: Of course, there's nothing to stop you from letting your kids explore the single player side of the game, including SPOnline. They won't get the full MMO experience out of it, but they will still get the persistent world, and will thus be able to drink in the creativity of other players. Which, granted, still leaves room for problems, but also eliminates other concerns.

 

By no means do I take offense, but what gameplay freedoms are restricted or produce the perception of being restricted by having a diverse age demographic in a video game? If anything, these suggestions are to provide more freedom for adult players by limiting the exposure of the younger players (who are an inevitability in any game) through static features.

It may be different for other people, but im not doing anything in game that I wouldn't want my child seeing me do.

 

I just released a podcast episode featuring with Starr and Richard. We talk about SotA, for the most part.

There's a second part to it, which hasn't gone to air yet. It'll be online...not next week, but the week after. In that part, I chat with Starr and Richard about Ultima Online. And Starr talks about one of the first businesses - maybe the first player-run business - that he saw operating in UO.

Let's just say it was an old profession brought to life in this new virtual world.

All of which is to say: it is most certainly different for other people.

 

My son has been stepped up with child appropriate games, certainly.

I think it's important to say at this point that, to my knowledge, SotA was never advertised as a game that would 'not' be appropriate for younger players, from a game content perspective. The online social interaction is and always has been a proceed at your own risk situation, for all past and current online games... a social consensus if you will.

I don't think it's unrealistic for me to expect SotA to be appropriate from a gameplay/content perspective or that a few extra parental options on the social interaction front don't fit the SotA model.

 

So we are saying we don't want younger kids playing the game so Leisure Suit Larry gets to keep his RP brothel? Lol