Age Verification & Games
-
@Yam I’ll own that it was a snide comment.
But I don’t feel it’s on the level of implying that kids who choose not to MUSH were raised wrong.
Anyway. Carry on.
It’s clearly a “me thing.” Ed to note in case people are only seeing the quoted section: The complete quote is: “Even those of us in the hobby lament that there’s shit-all for fun new games right now.”
-
For the record I don’t think any kids were raised wrong. I don’t really take that attitude. I find it concerning that they default to… handling actual IDs for pretendy funtime, but I don’t really see it as their fault.
Regarding fresh blood, people actually do like this format. I did a recruitment sweep, reaching out to RPers in the fandom of a game we were running. 99% of the time because they were INVITED they eagerly jumped into things. One of our close friends is from a tumblr crowd that never heard of the platform.
I have the pleasure of being in a game that has players that have never heard of mushing! It’s such a delight!
I guarantee that if folk actually advertised their shit on discord, not just individual games but as platforms, like… Ares and Evennia being showcased in the big ol’ discord hubs, people would pick them up! Slowly, and perhaps quietly, but surely!
But for some reason we don’t advertise at all, really. If we do, we only do it in our circles.
-
@Juniper said in Age Verification & Games:
TBH I’m not worried about minors infesting my spaces because they’re not interested in the level of effort that is required to get invested in this stuff
I don’t think that’s true at all. My oldest plays on discord with a bunch of other teens. They are aware of MUSHing; have helped me playtest a few things on Ares. They write fanfiction. My youngest likes Dwarf Fortress and clunky RPGs grafted onto Starcraft, neither of which is that far afield from MUDs.
They are not allowed to play MU*s because we have a family rule about playing online with strangers. I’m not sure I would encourage it regardless, but the level of effort isn’t really a barrier in the slightest.
-
@Faraday said in Age Verification & Games:
@Juniper said in Age Verification & Games:
TBH I’m not worried about minors infesting my spaces because they’re not interested in the level of effort that is required to get invested in this stuff
I don’t think that’s true at all. My oldest plays on discord with a bunch of other teens. They are aware of MUSHing; have helped me playtest a few things on Ares. They write fanfiction. My youngest likes Dwarf Fortress and clunky RPGs grafted onto Starcraft, neither of which is that far afield from MUDs.
Agreed. Saying NO kids/teens are interested in MUSHing (or insert other old school thing here) because it’s old/outdated is like saying no kids/teens were interested in D&D in the early 2000s because it was old/outdated back then.
Plenty of minors and young adults like old school things. Are they the majority? Certainly not, but they’re out there.
-
@KarmaBum said in Age Verification & Games:
He’s aware of MUSHing, has seen me do it, has even chatted with me and brainstormed a few times, but he’s not going to join a hobby full of middle-aged women pretending to be sexy vampires.
the contempt is dripping off your wordsWhile I think our janky reliance on telnet is definitely a barrier to entry, my take is just that young people aren’t joining 'cause this just isn’t fun. If you were a young person, would YOU find any of this interesting or fun? Even those of us in the hobby lament that there’s shit-all for fun new games right now.
if the hobby weren’t at all fun for anyone, it would just die. it’s not dead. because people keep having fun
i think the biggest barrier to MU*s in terms of younger generation is just ignorance. they don’t know it’s around as a medium
-
Hey it’s me!
I had never touched a MUSH before, just forum RP. I got involved in MU*s because of a shared fandom with one of the gamerunners and advertising and an enthusiastic playerbase that was sharing stuff about their rp in places I frequented (tumblr). Granted this was 10 years ago, so I no longer count as fresh blood.
But yes, especially in the age where Discord is teetering on the edge of a profit driven enshittification cycle, I think MUSH formats could find a use among younger people! They just have to know it’s out there, and the current community would have to be ready for these places to transport their norms, communication styles, and preferences into their own mini ecosystem.
Part of the problem is that I bet those discord spaces that would get use out of it are just as closed off as MUs are, so they can’t find this place and the people here can’t find them.
-
@Yam said in Age Verification & Games:
I find it concerning that they default to… handling actual IDs for pretendy funtime
Of course they are. Because it’s not about it being pretendy funtime, it’s about them very likely believing that they have a legal, moral, and/or ethical requirement to ensure their participants are adults.
@Roz said in Age Verification & Games:
@KarmaBum said in Age Verification & Games:
He’s aware of MUSHing, has seen me do it, has even chatted with me and brainstormed a few times, but he’s not going to join a hobby full of middle-aged women pretending to be sexy vampires.
the contempt is dripping off your wordsSexy psychologically damaged vampires.
-
@Juniper said in Age Verification & Games:
Not to mention most adults don’t meet my standards for literacy, let alone some undercover minor. I won’t find out someone I was hanging out with is a kid. It’s just not gonna happen.
I think you would be surprised. The 17 year old I mentioned in a previous post could write better than most 30 year olds, and ended up attending a university that consistently ranks in the top 10 globally. Though obviously emotionally they were still a 17 year old, which is really the main issue with kids on these games, not poor literacy.
Obviously literacy rates are in the gutter these days, but wanting to play a text-game was already weird when I started it, and we’re probably around the same age. These have always been weird nerdy games, and there will always be weird nerds.
-
hello it’s me, once a minor who snuck onto games the entire time i was a teenager. Wanted to say, to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t the sex stuff or weird people hitting on me that did emotional damage, it was bullying/dogpiling/smear campaigns etc as @kestrel noted in their post. I’m also going to say the uncomfy thing that having roleplay as an intimate/sexual outlet at that age was formative, in a healthy way. I maybe unique in this; I can definitely imagine less outspoken underage ppl being hurt or traumatized by feeling backed into a corner by intimate rp. As an adult now, I less regret what I did more than I wish I’d been able to explore those things with fellow teenagers through the writing medium. I would feel very uncomfortable and betrayed if I found out someone I was roleplaying with like that was underage, and I shouldn’t have deceived people that way.
Anyway, pretty sure the best games can do is label themselves 18+ and maybe have a little agreement to sign like people mentioned. Also don’t be like fucking IRE that’s 13+ but has pests literally trawling newbie areas for sex with no administrative backlash, im not bitter. -
@sao said in Age Verification & Games:
16+ is baffling from a liability perspective. 16-18 protects you from nothing. What?
The internet is international. The age of adulthood varies.
-
@Evilgrayson I was going to reply with this as well. Age of consent even varies between US states, and Romeo & Juliet laws make things even weirder. However, this would be more like sexual communications and there may be stricter or less strict regulations than the age of consent in various jurisdictions. Sort of like how there is fraud and then there is wire fraud or how a jurisdiction can have an age of consent under 18 but minors still can’t perform sexually in front of an audience or for a camera. Someone with more legal knowledge would have to opine.
EDIT: I should also point out that Bahrain and Cameroon have an age of consent of 21. So even a minimum age of 18 could arguably not be safe from liability.
Age of majority (adulthood) varies even more. Alabama, Nebraska, South Korea, and several Canadian provinces have ages of majority of 19. New Zealand and Thailand have it set at 20. Mississippi, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and several African and Central American/Caribbean countries have it set at 21.
-
@Ominous On the forum PBP and Discord game side of the RP world, I see a lot of 21-25+ minimum age.
