Topic
Family Glitch
As I was playing Glitch for the first time yesterday, my 6 year old was standing behind me, giggling at the street names and all the silly things in the game and he's been asking me about playing ever since. I have a suggestion in that regard.
How about having a children's account (not during the alpha testing phase, later on once the game is live) that would have limited access to the Glitch world? I realize there are several problems with having children in a multiplayer world, mainly:
1. It can be annoying to the adults playing the game (I've been on that side when I played Ultima Online years ago and had to share the game with annoying teenagers)
2. Parents wouldn't want children exposed to questionable content or interactions with others.
I think that both of those problems could be eliminated by having a children's account that would be more limited than a regular account. It would not have access to any kind of chat features and it would not be able to receive or act out action on other players. So, basically they could interact with the world and with any NPC characters, but could not interact with others.
If you want to make it a bit more complex, then each child account would be tied to a parent account and the parent could add "friends" for the child and the child account could do actions and chat with those accounts only. That way a family could play online together, or a child could play with his friends or siblings.
What do you think?
Replies
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I think this is a great idea, but imagine the "family" version being a different virtual world... maybe a copy, but so that players would login to one world or the other.
I have really enjoyed playing online games with my son (mostly Puzzle Pirates), and can imagine that Glitch would be this way, too. But I agree with the complexities of the chat issues in particular.
And yes, a "single-player" version might work, too. - Giving chat a parental lock would solve most probs.
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it'd be cool if kids could play as 'munchkins'. munchkins could have their own language, puckish. they wouldn't understand anything said by other characters, which would be auto-translated into some form of funny gibberish.
munchkins wouldn't have energy, and couldn't die, but would also have a very limited pack size [one or two slots?] and couldn't complete complex tasks like making. they would be half the height of normal players and be able to fit through certain passages that other characters could not. kids like having their secret places after all. they might also have other special abilities.
they could also have the ability to teleport to their parent or guardian at will. - I love those suggestions striatic! Especially the secret places. Also, perhaps they could earn skills and small amounts of money by doing chores and running errands, those would be their quests. They can't own property, but they could perhaps could "claim" a secret hidey hole as their own.
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I like the first idea with restricting the chat options for the kids' safety but why limit their other actions in the game so much? Kids already can't own property, they can't complete complex tasks, and have to do chores to earn pocket money in real life, what's the fun in repeating that in a game? The most frustrating thing when you're a kid is being told 'you're not big enough'. But a game is a virtual world, and the point of it is you are never 'not big enough'. You can do anything.
A safe and simple area for younger kids is a cool idea but don't fence them in there. If they're savvy enough to do the grownup quests, let them. Only limit what could actually be harmful- like chat. -
the problem is that chat is probably going to be a vital aspect of the game. I imagine it will be critical to trade, collaboration, making. otherwise why have the game be massively multiplayer in the first place?
I don't think you can just remove chat without throwing a lot of other game elements out of balance, so to remove chat would require a different style of play.
if kids can do certain things that adults can't, things related to a different style of play, I don't think that makes them lesser.