Age Verification & Games
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Extremely controversial opinion: Minors on games aren’t inherently bad.
No wait, don’t ban me before I can explain!
So in the long-long ago, before Shadowrun: Denver endorsed blatant staff cheating which they continue refuse to walk it back or even apologize for it happening… there was a whole household of folks who played on there. Everyone was all on the same IP address, so there were extra steps added to account for who was which +alt, as there were (and still are) limits to the number of characters you can have.
Included among the players from there was a then-16-year-old, as well as their father (who eventually did join staff for a time and was not among the dirty cheating cheaters). There could have been others, but this was 2010 or so, my memory is more hyper-fixated on the aforementioned cheating and the players I actually did play with.
They also had a big colorful sign that was basically ‘this player is a minor, do not even consider stepping out of line around them, we will ban you immediately’. Basically, it was the boiler plate ‘if you’re under 18, you can play with a parent’s permission’ that actually got the permission, instead of just lying about their age as others might do.
Anyway, TLDR: protecc the kiddos from the creeps by keeping out the creeps.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
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@Jennkryst said in Age Verification & Games:
Extremely controversial opinion: Minors on games aren’t inherently bad.
I don’t think it’s that controversial in theory, but in practice it’s a bit more complicated. In that specific case they obviously knew that the player was a minor with their parent’s permission, but I have no freaking clue how I, as a game-runner, would figure that out.
In terms of the broader tech sphere, I think non-sucking parental controls would be a better solution to the issue than this crap, but there are problems: a) it’s really hard to make something robust and standardized, b) there’s no profit motive for them to do so, especially when c) there’s a perverse incentive for the age-gate systems in data harvesting.
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@Jennkryst said in Age Verification & Games:
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They also had a big colorful sign that was basically ‘this player is a minor, do not even consider stepping out of line around them, we will ban you immediately’. Basically, it was the boiler plate ‘if you’re under 18, you can play with a parent’s permission’ that actually got the permission, instead of just lying about their age as others might do.
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Anyway, TLDR: protecc the kiddos from the creeps by keeping out the creeps.
Couple issues with this. I’ve numbered your points for ease of response.
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I, an adult, don’t want to have to monitor/censor my own language out of concern kids might be observing. I don’t want to feel guilty when I jokingly quote a Chuck Tingle title. I also may want to play in a game that grapples with adult themes (not just sex.) It’s also not just about controlling my own behaviour; any time I play games with public lobbies like Among Us, or hang out in a public Discord server, I end up having children hitting on me. I obviously tell them to knock it off, but every time it happens I find myself thinking about the next person, who doesn’t tell them to knock it off, who likes that attention and encourages it.
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I’m immensely sceptical of anyone who believes their game is creep-free, or that they have foolproof creep-radar and always know how to deal with creeps. You just don’t know. Creeps can be extremely nice, friendly, respectable. They can have great public decorum, and then be a different person in DMs. It’s not even just sexpests we need to worry about, but more subtle things like cyberbullying. This hobby is well-known for dogpiling, hate/smear-campaigns, etc. And while I’m not going to lose sleep over an adult being made fun of for their awful desc-writing, I do think that can have a much more serious and long-term impact on a developing brain.
So if you wanna have, say, a LotR-themed MU* that’s explicitly child-friendly, that’s fine, but you need to commit. That means no Discord, no DMs, no TS, for anyone. If it’s intended to be a child-friendly game, then there should be no adult content on it for anyone, and no encouragement of private communications that enable predators to target and groom children. Strictly anonymous, public channels, should be kept free of adult humour, etc.
But if you wanna have a GoT-themed MU* that includes mature themes, then I think you need to commit to that too, and you just cannot allow children to play that game. You can’t have a game where adults are openly discussing rape, gore, torture, where players are given both adult freedoms and expectations/standards of behaviour, and expect that to be a safe or healthy environment for teenagers.
Even if an adult joined this kind of game with their teenager and said they’re fine with it, I still wouldn’t be fine with it. Because while you have the right to decide you want to be responsible for your own child, I don’t want to be responsible for your own child. I don’t want to feel helpless and unable to do anything about the brothel PC hitting on your teenager and sending them weirdly affectionate DMs or selfies. That’s stressful for me.
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I don’t care if there’s magically no creeps on my game, I still don’t want to deal with having minors on it.
When I was 15, I thought games not letting minors on was AN OUTRAGE.
I was not correct. I was 15.
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I evaded a LOT of minimum age requirements as a teenager, I admit. But I think it’s perfectly valid to want an adults-only experience (even if I also think it’s healthy to acknowledge that it’s more an adults-and-people-good-at-acting-adult only space, instead).
I do not want to give my government ID to anyone over a game. Not least of which because some people are crazy and some of these crazy people run games.
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@Kestrel said in Age Verification & Games:
So if you wanna have, say, a LotR-themed MU* that’s explicitly child-friendly, that’s fine, but you need to commit.
I agree with all this 100%. I agree with the idea that family-friendly text-based games aren’t inherently bad (with the right safeguards), but that doesn’t mean that all games can or should be family-friendly. Folks are entitled to want an adults-only experience for all the reasons you listed. Game-runners are entitled to only want adults on their games just to avoid the extra responsibility and potential liability. (I fall into that camp myself, as a game-runner.) If you are going to allow minors on an online game, you have additional responsibilities - both ethically and legally.
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Gosh, are there any NON 18+ games out there? I figure maybe some MUDs?
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@Faraday said in Age Verification & Games:
If you are going to allow minors on an online game, you have additional responsibilities - both ethically and legally.
Lordy I remember when COPPA became a thing and the complexities of dealing with that in a safe way. Now with many polities, including Australia, banning children from accessing social media… if one of our battier MPs finds out about MUing it could very well have legal rammifications for us (Australians) here (on MUs) too.
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@Yam said in Age Verification & Games:
Gosh, are there any NON 18+ games out there? I figure maybe some MUDs?
I’d say most MUDs. I grew up on Iron Realms Entertainment, personally. I recall that when Starmourn launched, the founder actually surprised me by saying it was “rated R”. Previous games made by that company have had more explicit PG-13 regulations for stuff like crafting, but then again also no rules surrounding TS/mudsex. Either way, none of those games have any kind of “you must be 18 or over” disclaimer anywhere. Considering those games are actually professionally produced and for-profit, looking back I actually can’t believe they’ve managed to avoid lawsuits given the amount of serious abuse stories I personally know to have occurred on those games. And like I’m not talking someone said something naughty to someone, I mean indecent pictures, blackmail, bad things happened after meeting IRL, etc.
I guess maybe I should look back on this Wild West era of the internet with some nostalgia, given that nowadays we have AI undressing images of minors on some of the biggest public platforms on the planet.
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@Yam said in Age Verification & Games:
Gosh, are there any NON 18+ games out there? I figure maybe some MUDs?
A quick scan of Ares games shows at least one game that’s 16+, a couple that have no age policy at all, and two that are a bit unclear (like they say no TS with underage players in one place but in another place say 18+ only, so… which is it?).
