This game isn't played by kids anymore... make the game reflect that
I have a very big request that I doubt will get much attention from the developers, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try. This request would benefit nearly all players, in my opinion. The game should better suit adults, as I believe the majority of people are over 18, now.
I've been playing this game since it first came out. I was a kid then, I'm an adult now. I do think this game started out being a very good family-friendly game and therefore the game did suit the needs of all age groups. However, I wish there was more recognition of the fact this game is mostly played by adults now. Of course, teenagers always lie about their age to get open chat, so you may have lots of false data, but keep in mind that we all started out as kids and most of us are grown now.
The issue with open chat is that things that teenagers should be allowed to say is restricted on the limited chat (not sure what its proper name is). Things like numbers have no logical reason to be censored. Using numbers is a very big part of this game, how else do we communicate our level, our stats, and so on? Especially because the game involves doing slightly complicated math to calculate various things. How are we supposed to communicate that? Nobody wants to use menu chat to state they're level 45, and such, and we have more to talk about than just our level. If you're worried about addresses or phone numbers being leaked, well that should be a concern for open chat as well... adults are not less at risk in this way, many people older than 18 make bad decisions. Why do 12-17 year olds have to miss out on a feature because of the poor decisions of others? There is a way to keep minors safe without restricting them so, so much. You'd have less false ages if this wasn't such a big issue. Being able to communicate with people (freedom of speech?!) is a valid reason to lie about age.
Just so we're clear, I waited until I was 18 to get open chat. It was very difficult to tolerate, but I did it.
It's not just numbers on limited chat; the things that are censored on open chat make no sense. You can't talk about Facebook, but you can say Snapchat and Instagram - two platforms that minors and young adults actually use, whereas Facebook is used by older adults nowadays. This comes to show how severely outdated the chat system is. It needs to be redone, or remove all restrictions entirely and rely on reports.
Another thing: therapy. I've seen too many people get muted for saying "therapist", myself included. Listen, I know what you think we're trying to say when we have to use awkward spaces to say it. The majority of us are not trying to say that. We're trying to talk about taking care of mental health! Which is something you should encourage for teens, especially. It's 2021, talking about mental health and therapists is a very, very good thing to do for yourself and others. Many players rely on the wizard101 community to talk about very big things going on emotionally, because they don't have the right people in their lives. This can absolutely be done without risking exposing one's personal identity. I strongly believe talking about therapists should be allowed. I'm in school to become one, but I can't talk about my major with fellow student players?
I think a big issue for KI is their inability to accept that their players have grown up. The target demographic has changed, or if it hasn't it should by now. We all love this game so much, but some things about it make it very frustrating. Don't you think we'd be more inclined to play it and buy memberships and crowns, if we could actually do what we want?
Finally, the last piece of evidence that this game is for kids: our characters look like children. Yet, the female headmaster for Wysteria has a very adult-themed frame. Morganthe even. I can count on one hand how many times I encountered NPCs in main quests that actually looked like my character. There are so many issues with adults playing on child-looking characters. No to mention they look like malnourished children, with the girls having their stick-thin frames. That influence of female beauty standards was quite toxic for me as a kid, and for others as well. I would love for my character to look a bit more adult, and to have more than one body type option. Or, if you're going to have one body type, make it a healthy body type. Now this, I understand is a huge, huge request. Overall, I would generally like to see the team recognize that the game should be a bit more mature, just a little bit.
I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this, if you agree or don't agree.
Re: This game isn't played by kids anymore... make the game reflect that
Interesting. Personally, I am not so sure that the game isn't played by kids any more. Fine, so those of us who have been playing for years, yes, we have aged. But that doesn't mean that new kids (or even kids of the kids that first played) are not now enjoying the game.
That said, I do completely agree with the word "therapist" and that I have no clue as to why this word would be banned. Truly. Is doctor banned? Or dentist? Or mechanic?
Numbers are very useful, but also I can see the danger in their use. I still think that if a parent is paying for the account, they should have the option of being able to limit what their child can share. Perhaps this should be controllable from the master login?
As for the character appearance, I have felt that the last update actually aged some of my characters. I really don't want to play a teenager or adult. We can find that in any number of other games. And I certainly don't want to make the content more 'adult.' I have left other games, because they chose to become more bloody or sexual. This game does not need that!
Re: This game isn't played by kids anymore... make the game reflect that
Fandango739 on May 6, 2021 wrote:
Interesting. Personally, I am not so sure that the game isn't played by kids any more. Fine, so those of us who have been playing for years, yes, we have aged. But that doesn't mean that new kids (or even kids of the kids that first played) are not now enjoying the game.
That said, I do completely agree with the word "therapist" and that I have no clue as to why this word would be banned. Truly. Is doctor banned? Or dentist? Or mechanic?
Numbers are very useful, but also I can see the danger in their use. I still think that if a parent is paying for the account, they should have the option of being able to limit what their child can share. Perhaps this should be controllable from the master login?
As for the character appearance, I have felt that the last update actually aged some of my characters. I really don't want to play a teenager or adult. We can find that in any number of other games. And I certainly don't want to make the content more 'adult.' I have left other games, because they chose to become more bloody or sexual. This game does not need that!
I have to disagree, kids older than 13 should not be silenced by parents. Parents don't know what's safe or not, and I'm not saying remove restrictions, but the current ones in place don't protect them from anything. Also, the idea that if a parent is paying for something and that justifies control over speech, that's ridiculous. Most if not all kids in the US that are 13+ have multiple forms of social media, where they say far worse things than numbers, and indulge in adult content far worse than will ever be seen on this game. My argument here is more about the chat limitations needing to be updated, there's no question that it's running on something very out of date. Even for minors, the limitations today make no sense and they don't protect anyone because kids still manage to find ways to give out personal information on a daily basis. I know this as I did that myself when I was a minor, and so did hundreds of other minors.
Also, yes there are kids on the game I did not say that there are 0 children playing. If you talk to people often, not just in pvp but in pve as well, you'll encounter far more adults, not including minors with open chat. Sorry if you've had a different experience.
Not to mention racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, etc., is experienced on a daily basis in the Commons and in other places. But no, don't let minors say numbers. Let them keep saying all the bad stuff, just not the stuff that parents don't want to see, right? If you can't see the issue in that then there's a problem. The chat caters to adult needs and not minor needs which is stupid. Adults don't know what teenagers need to say. I'm not saying teenagers should be allowed to talk about snapchat and instagram, what I'm saying is they already do and that KI is muting people for the wrong things (not including reports). It's helping absolutely nobody. Now, when I was a kid, I got muted for talking about Facebook which was appropriate. You don't see that happening today very much. However, what you do see is kids with open chat more often than not, probably paying for their own membership, sharing social media usernames and phone numbers. Kids are going to do it either way. You might as well build a chat system around that instead of baselessly muting everyone.
The content does not need to be gory or sexual to be more "adult". There are very many adult games that don't have such themes. But Wizard101 in my opinion has rather sexual looking NPCs, how is that appropriate for children? We have seen more mature contents through the addition of guns and stuff to the game, and there are some weapons that appear to have dried up blood, so this element is there, I just want to see it continue. And the update for the characters literally just made their features more attractive rather than as a block of clay. They're still children. And, if you've ever played Pirate101, the characters sound like actual children in battle. And it's a fact not an opinion that having one preset of body type is damaging for minors who don't look like their characters. This extends to skin color and hair style. The latter still needs major improvement, and the former still needs work. The textured hair styles in this game are a joke and there's like two? Maybe three? The characters appearances aren't a priority compared to gameplay but there should be minor improvements.
Re: This game isn't played by kids anymore... make the game reflect that
therapist can't be said for the same reason grapes of wrath can't be said. Take therapist and split it into 2 words; the _______. The second word is filtered, which is why we cant say grape. They also released demographic information recently about who players their games, and W101's biggest group, was the 18-30 age group (if I have the group age range correct). However, they want to try to keep W101 as kid friendly as they can. If you're looking for this chat system to be fully open where anybody can say anything, you're looking in the wrong place for that kind of limitless chat. Use discord or some other method to chat with outside of the game to get that freedom you're looking for.
Re: This game isn't played by kids anymore... make the game reflect that
icemaster95z on May 1, 2021 wrote:
I have a very big request that I doubt will get much attention from the developers, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try. This request would benefit nearly all players, in my opinion. The game should better suit adults, as I believe the majority of people are over 18, now.
I've been playing this game since it first came out. I was a kid then, I'm an adult now. I do think this game started out being a very good family-friendly game and therefore the game did suit the needs of all age groups. However, I wish there was more recognition of the fact this game is mostly played by adults now. Of course, teenagers always lie about their age to get open chat, so you may have lots of false data, but keep in mind that we all started out as kids and most of us are grown now.
The issue with open chat is that things that teenagers should be allowed to say is restricted on the limited chat (not sure what its proper name is). Things like numbers have no logical reason to be censored. Using numbers is a very big part of this game, how else do we communicate our level, our stats, and so on? Especially because the game involves doing slightly complicated math to calculate various things. How are we supposed to communicate that? Nobody wants to use menu chat to state they're level 45, and such, and we have more to talk about than just our level. If you're worried about addresses or phone numbers being leaked, well that should be a concern for open chat as well... adults are not less at risk in this way, many people older than 18 make bad decisions. Why do 12-17 year olds have to miss out on a feature because of the poor decisions of others? There is a way to keep minors safe without restricting them so, so much. You'd have less false ages if this wasn't such a big issue. Being able to communicate with people (freedom of speech?!) is a valid reason to lie about age.
Just so we're clear, I waited until I was 18 to get open chat. It was very difficult to tolerate, but I did it.
It's not just numbers on limited chat; the things that are censored on open chat make no sense. You can't talk about Facebook, but you can say Snapchat and Instagram - two platforms that minors and young adults actually use, whereas Facebook is used by older adults nowadays. This comes to show how severely outdated the chat system is. It needs to be redone, or remove all restrictions entirely and rely on reports.
Another thing: therapy. I've seen too many people get muted for saying "therapist", myself included. Listen, I know what you think we're trying to say when we have to use awkward spaces to say it. The majority of us are not trying to say that. We're trying to talk about taking care of mental health! Which is something you should encourage for teens, especially. It's 2021, talking about mental health and therapists is a very, very good thing to do for yourself and others. Many players rely on the wizard101 community to talk about very big things going on emotionally, because they don't have the right people in their lives. This can absolutely be done without risking exposing one's personal identity. I strongly believe talking about therapists should be allowed. I'm in school to become one, but I can't talk about my major with fellow student players?
I think a big issue for KI is their inability to accept that their players have grown up. The target demographic has changed, or if it hasn't it should by now. We all love this game so much, but some things about it make it very frustrating. Don't you think we'd be more inclined to play it and buy memberships and crowns, if we could actually do what we want?
Finally, the last piece of evidence that this game is for kids: our characters look like children. Yet, the female headmaster for Wysteria has a very adult-themed frame. Morganthe even. I can count on one hand how many times I encountered NPCs in main quests that actually looked like my character. There are so many issues with adults playing on child-looking characters. No to mention they look like malnourished children, with the girls having their stick-thin frames. That influence of female beauty standards was quite toxic for me as a kid, and for others as well. I would love for my character to look a bit more adult, and to have more than one body type option. Or, if you're going to have one body type, make it a healthy body type. Now this, I understand is a huge, huge request. Overall, I would generally like to see the team recognize that the game should be a bit more mature, just a little bit.
I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this, if you agree or don't agree.
I disagree, but it's because I started playing Wizard101 when I was little and I'm only a couple years older now, still a kid.
Re: This game isn't played by kids anymore... make the game reflect that
I think being able to have body types seems reasonable depending on how it gets done. Open chat vs closed chat, I think needs to be redone. With all the banned words, it should all be open chat. Or at least within your family linked accounts, always open. Try communicating with your child when playing when they are say, at their other house. And accounts that have been around for over a decade, once you use a charge card that should open up chat regardless of if you put in a DOB when you started. You should be able to fix that. And kids do play this game. It needs to stay family friendly, however I can see the reason for some updates.
