Disney's First Mmorpg Toontown

A Kid-Friendly Online Game Designed for People Who Like Cartoons

Feb 2, 2008 Shawn Landis

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.

The copyright of the article Disney's First Mmorpg Toontown in Video & Online Games is owned by Shawn Landis. Permission to republish Disney's First Mmorpg Toontown in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Comments

Aug 28, 2008 4:51 PM

Guest :

My young son found out through school that there are many cheats to getting "secret friend codes", many ways are shown on youtube.com the other is while playing the game the players have figured out codes to give their "secret friend codes" by using words that begin with the letters etc. This IS very concerning, I have discovered he has many "secret friends" which he has NO IDEA who they are. I advised Toontown of the youtube.com issue and they said they can't control other wedsites (understandably). Just goes to show that ALL internet games ARE POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS - INCLUDING TOONTOWN. I have no idea who my son has been "talking" to or what about. PLEASE POST THIS, AS YOU HAVE LEFT THE IMPRESSION ABOVE THAT THIS WEBSITE IS VERY SECURE (which may be from inside out, but these kids know how to get around Disneys proection)

Aug 29, 2008 10:34 PM

Shawn Landis :

That is a good point. Yes, controls can be bypassed. That is why parents should monitor their children while they are online. Clever kids can figure out ways to bypass any filter or control. Parental responsibility cannot be taken away by careful video game programming.

Aug 30, 2008 4:27 PM

Guest :

No MMORPG is going to be safe for any person. If you, as a parent, cant trust your kid on a chat room, you don't trust them on a MMORPG. Period.

Growing up as a teenager while all of this online "stuff" started to become popluar, I realized that no matter what you do, artificial intelligence will NEVER be able to outwit a human.

Just because Disney TRIED to protect its players, doesn't mean it will be 100 percent succesful.

Play at your own discression.

3 Comments