Staying in touch with Multiplayer Video Games

     Video games in general get a lot of negative media attention these days.  Usually because of the amount of violence in them or what they allow your character to do in the game world.  Unfortunately one of the best aspects about them is never reported.  I have been a gamer for my whole life, but I never thought it would provide away for me to be in the same room with my family even though I am half way around the world.

     The idea occurred to me while watching the Disney channel with my four year old sister while I was home on vacation.  An advertisement for their online computer game ToonTown was shown during a program break.  The game was a Massively Multiplayer Online game in which a player created a cartoon character and had to save ToonTown from the mean Cogs.  The Cogs were trying to take all the fun out of ToonTown and the players needed to stop them by using gags like banana peels and pies to the face.  I decided to look further into the game details and see if this is something I could use to play with her while I was away.

     My first concern was who cold contact her in the game using the chat interface.  I did not want her talking to strangers for all the reasons reported in the news.  The game only allowed a set of preset chat phrases to be used unless you personally new the other person.  If you know another player you had to give them your “friend code” to allow them to chat with you whenever they wanted.  With those concerns out of the way I setup two accounts.

 Only the listed chat options could be seen by other players unless they have a friend code

     Over the next few years my sister and I had a blast!  We both logged into the game and would talk using a voice chat program while we played.  My sister didn’t care about trying to defeat the Cogs or saving ToonTown, she just knew that she was playing with her brother and he was the monkey character on the screen.  We could wave to each other, make funny noises, and go to each other’s “house” all in this virtual world.

     As we’ve gotten older the games we play have changed from cute ToonTown to the much more gruesome battlefields of the modern gaming era but the concept is still the same.  Too often what is going on the screen gets much of the attention when there are benefits to gaming that are not immediately apparent to the ignorant.  If it weren’t for this technology and the games available for them I do not feel that my relationship with my sister would be as strong as it is today.