Disney's First Mmorpg Toontown
A Kid-Friendly Online Game Designed for People Who Like Cartoons
Parents who let their kids play online games do not need to worry as much about inappropriate chat or predators in Disney's Toontown.
Letting kids play mmorpgs is a controversial topic. The target market for most of the ones on the market are teenagers, and almost all of them carry a warning that an individual's experience may change during online play. Disney addressed this problem well and filled a gap for cartoon lovers of all ages by creating their first mmorpg, Toontown. Because the game is aimed at younger players, a select set of parental controls lets parents choose who their children can and cannot chat with.
Overview of Toontown
Toontown is a town inhabited by cartoon characters, similar to the city presented in the cult classic, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Much like the film town of cartoon characters faces a threat from the outside, Disney's Toontown has been invaded by evil cogs that are incapable of taking a joke. Characters must repel the invasion of Toontown by using gags to destroy the invading robots.
Toontown's Kid-Friendly Features
The first kid-friendly feature of Toontown is that the violence is unrealistic. The worst bit of cartoon violence is the classic gag of dropping a safe on an anemy. Most of the violence in Toontown can be imitated, but throwing a pie in another person's face causes far less damage than the use of real weapons prevalent in other games.
The second kid-friendly feature of Disney's Toontown is the game's chat control system. By default, a player may only sendcustom messages to another player who has his friend code. The friend code helps ensure that inappropriate messages do not get sent to a user. It also stops potential predators from doing anything more than using a series of pre-determined chat messages.
Experiencing Toontown
Disney has designed the game to bring in money to their company, but players of any age can experience Toontown for themselves simply by going to the Toontown website and signing up for a free trial. Because the game is designed for a younger audience, Toontown's designers incorporated many mini-games to alleviate the boredom of experience grinding.
The game protects children from many of the dangers of the Internet as possible. Parents need not worry as much as they would as if their kids were playing the standard games targeted at older gamers. It could be said that Disney's first mmorpg set the standards for protecting younger children.
