Wii Animal Crossing to be an MMO

[qedetc]

and also for those of us who purposely choose to raise them poorly.

[Numtini]

Nintendo lost their lead in the video game market when they protected the children against Mortal Combat. The gaming world has only gotten more adult since then. Put in a switch to use kid codes or easy contact. But they need to stop crippling games.

[Xanthippe]

I wish they'd just do what Toontown does.  No restrictions on interacting with anyone but you have to use the game's scripts, which make it entirely possible to play the game with other people.  Secret friend codes enable you to chat freely.

It's genius!

[Xanthippe]

Meh. It's not Nintendo's job to protect shit. That's up to the parents.

Really though, it's not the kids that need protecting. It's the people playing with those kids. Fuck, I hate playing games with kids online.

Common sense does not apply to kids online. Parents demand that companies protect their kids for them and then scream bloody murder when they don't.

Common sense SHOULD apply to kids online, but it doesn't because the lazy douchebag parents fuck it up for the rest of us who actually raise our kids.

I don't think it's that parents demand that companies protect their kids for them.  It's that if a company doesn't put in some form of restricted communication, parents won't buy the game.

Club Penguin has two modes - restricted chat servers and non-restricted chat servers.  Parents choose which type of server to play.

Unless I'm sitting next to my 9 year old, she can't play on the unrestricted chat server.

Nintendo's problem isn't that they have restrictions, it's the model of restrictions they've gone with.  It totally sucks.  There are other, reasonable models to choose from.  (Club Penguin, Toontown, just for two examples).

[Mrbloodworth]

Meh. It's not Nintendo's job to protect shit. That's up to the parents.

Really though, it's not the kids that need protecting. It's the people playing with those kids. Fuck, I hate playing games with kids online.

Common sense does not apply to kids online. Parents demand that companies protect their kids for them and then scream bloody murder when they don't.

Common sense SHOULD apply to kids online, but it doesn't because the lazy douchebag parents fuck it up for the rest of us who actually raise our kids.

I don't think it's that parents demand that companies protect their kids for them. It's that if a company doesn't put in some form of restricted communication, parents won't buy the game.

Club Penguin has two modes - restricted chat servers and non-restricted chat servers.  Parents choose which type of server to play.

Unless I'm sitting next to my 9 year old, she can't play on the unrestricted chat server.

Nintendo's problem isn't that they have restrictions, it's the model of restrictions they've gone with.  It totally sucks.  There are other, reasonable models to choose from.  (Club Penguin, Toontown, just for two examples).

Yeah they do.

[Venkman]

It's both.

Parents are all properly feared-up now by CNN et al on the dangers of opening a web browser. So hot-button issues include a safe overly-contrived experience in which their kid is protected from everything, often including the fun.

Meanwhile, for fear of lawsuits alone, companies have been diligent in pushing those contrivances, because there's features there that can be advertised. You see this more from the consumer-good companies than you do from the dot.commers.

[HaemishM]

The funny part about protecting kids with friends' codes on the Wii is that there is no voice communication, and any type of in-game communication is barren if there at all. About the only way you can communicate is through messages outside the game. Predators have much easier time of it on AIM than on a fucking Wii.

[UnSub]

Meh. It's not Nintendo's job to protect shit. That's up to the parents.

Really though, it's not the kids that need protecting. It's the people playing with those kids. Fuck, I hate playing games with kids online.

Common sense does not apply to kids online. Parents demand that companies protect their kids for them and then scream bloody murder when they don't.

Common sense SHOULD apply to kids online, but it doesn't because the lazy douchebag parents fuck it up for the rest of us who actually raise our kids.

I don't think it's that parents demand that companies protect their kids for them. It's that if a company doesn't put in some form of restricted communication, parents won't buy the game.

Club Penguin has two modes - restricted chat servers and non-restricted chat servers.  Parents choose which type of server to play.

Unless I'm sitting next to my 9 year old, she can't play on the unrestricted chat server.

Nintendo's problem isn't that they have restrictions, it's the model of restrictions they've gone with.  It totally sucks.  There are other, reasonable models to choose from.  (Club Penguin, Toontown, just for two examples).

Yeah they do.

Some do, not all. In a lot of cases, kids are just faster and more knowledgable about technology than their parents while still being more naive about the world in general. It isn't unfair for such parents to turn around and ask for some help.

Of course, some of the resulting measures are ridiculously draconian, but that's because the people / company who put a solution in place overdo it.

[Xanthippe]

Look, parents are not any different from any other segment of the population in terms of how tech savvy they are or in terms of how intelligent they are or in any other terms. 

Parents require tools in order to protect their kids.  If a game doesn't provide those tools, parents won't buy the game.  That's called exercising their purchase power, not "demanding companies to protect their kids for them."

If you think that parents are bogeymen preventing you from having fun in your games, you're wrong. 

Game makers can provide decent mechanisms in games that allow parents to more easily monitor what their kids do.  Game makers don't have to cripple games, and if they do, then parents are not to blame, it's unimaginative, untalented game makers.

Honestly, I don't know why you're blaming parents for a poor design decision by Nintendo.  It's not the only design decision they could have made; they could have done a far better job.  Blame Nintendo, not the parents.

[UnSub]

Honestly, I don't know why you're blaming parents for a poor design decision by Nintendo. 

Because it's fun to blame your parents when you don't get want you want.

[geldonyetich2]

Is it wrong to suggest that I'd pay for a mature version of animal crossing where the neighbors get into terrible scandals that may (for example) result in my dig for fossils resulting in stumbling across the corpse of a long-lost neighbor? 

(I wonder how much Tom Nook would buy that for...)

[Raging Turtle]

Is it wrong to suggest that I'd pay for a mature version of animal crossing where the neighbors get into terrible scandals that may (for example) result in my dig for fossils resulting in stumbling across the corpse of a long-lost neighbor? 

(I wonder how much Tom Nook would buy that for...)

I think this is the game you're looking for, Geldon. 

[schild]

Heh, trick arrow.

Ok, that was funny.