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Toontown Online 'homage' illustrates emulator quandary
Disney's Toontown Online was shut down last year, but that hasn't kept fans from working on a so-called "homage" to the game. A team of 24 or so volunteer developers have been working on making Toontown Rewritten with publicly available images and their own skills as programmers and artists. While the team isn't charging players to access the title, its status as a de facto emulator could put it in jeopardy with the Mouse House. Disney hasn't commented on it yet, but copyright attorney Scott Landsbaum noted the quandary that such projects face: "When does a fan homage that is beneficial to your brand cross the line to infringement that can no longer happen?" Analyst Michael Pachter claimed that it was "unusual" for fans to take on such emulator projects, which was rebutted by Raph Koster, who tweeted, "Sorry Pachter, but hasn't EVERY shuttered MMO (and some open ones) been remade by fans?" A similar project for the also-defunct Pirates of the Caribbean Online claims that Disney has given the emulator its blessing.
MMO Family: Are kid-friendly MMOs doomed to extinction?
Recently, the family-friendly segment of the MMO industry suffered a bit of a blow with the news of Disney's decision to shut down Pirates of the Caribbean Online and Toontown. These were both titles that had been around for years, and both had loyal fanbases. Toontown in particular has been around for about a decade and won several awards through the years. So when the sunsettings were announced, it raised questions about whether kid-friendly games are as successful as publishers might have hoped. In fact, these aren't the only relatively well-known kids' titles to be shut down over the past year. And while it might be premature to signal the death knell for kid MMOs, it's a good time to do an assessment on what's working and what might be hampering success. In this week's MMO Family, it's time to do a little state of the (kid-friendly) industry.
Disney's Toontown closing on September 19
Disney's Toontown Online is closing up shop on September 19th. As of August 20th, paid member accounts will no longer feature recurring charges, and memberships are no longer available for purchase. Disney says that all Toons may now play as members for free through the game's closing date. The announcement post also hints at "Toontastic activities and kooky celebrations" on tap for the title's final month. [Thanks Master Von SuperJinks!]
MMO Family: Why safe chat isn't so safe (and why that's OK)
One of the toughest issues that game developers have to treat when it comes to kid-friendly MMOs is chat. I touched on this in a past column, but it's worth further discussion. If you're making a game where lots of players are interacting and doing stuff together, you need to allow them to communicate, otherwise you're pretty much making a single-player game with the other players as background scenery. On the other hand, when it comes to kids MMOs, having open communication means other players can use it to harass each other. Worse is the scenario of the deranged adult abusing it to exploit young people. As a result, virtually every kid-friendly MMO has some sort of filter in place that restricts what players can say to each other. But are these chat filters really that effective? Are kids better off without them? Let's take a look in today's MMO Family.
MV Guide: January 23-29, 2012
MV Guide is a weekly rundown of the MMO gaming events planned on Massively TV. Every week, the Massively staff logs in to play various MMOs live and in person, and we'd love for you to drop by the channel and visit. We have a combination of regular weekly games and new surprises, so you'll find a variety of titles to take a look at. During our streamed events, you can participate in the live chat, ask questions to learn about the game, and simply spend some time with Massively staff and readers. (Of course, streaming is subject to the whims of outside forces like server-side gremlins once in a while.) Follow along after the jump to see what's on this week's schedule!
Survey says: MMOs taking up 15% of gaming time
World of Warcraft may have around 25 hojillion subscribers (give or take), but it would appear that only a small fraction of our collective gaming time is being spent in massively multiplayer online worlds. A recent survey conducted by GamesIndustry.com (via IndustryGamers) asked 13,000 US and European citizens, aged eight and up, to break down how much time they spent playing various types of games. The article detailing the survey's results, titled "Today's Gamers MMO Focus Report," claims that US citizens spend more time with MMOs than Europeans by far – 21 percent on this side of the Atlantic and 10 percent across the pond. Furthermore, 8-12-year-old males make up the majority of US players, "[which is] explained by the popularity of virtual worlds aimed at young children, such as Club Penguin and Disney Toontown," according to the report. We might normally wonder how the rest of our time stacks up in other gaming genres, but we're too busy playing Modern Warfare 2 online. See ya later!
MMO Family: Virtual worlds for kids
MMO Family is your resource for leveling a gaming-specced family ... From tips on balancing gaming with family life to finding age-appropriate niches for every family member, MMO Family offers you advice on MMO gaming of the family, by the family and for the family. Nestling somewhere in between MMOs and social networking, virtual worlds are a virtual sandlot for millions of kids worldwide. Think avatar-based chat and mini-games alongside other kids of the same age range and interests, and you'll catch the appeal of these kid-friendly destinations. While a gaming parent might consider virtual worlds mere training wheels for games still to come, kid-friendly virtual worlds seem to fit the attention spans, chatty nature and niche-y interests of kids to a T. The sheer variety of worlds appealing to children makes it easy for kids to find a spot where they'll want to hang out. As of early 2009, kids could choose from 112 virtual worlds designed for children and teens, according to Engage Digital Media, with more than 80 new worlds under development. The numbers of kids who've found a virtual home in these worlds rivals even the fat figures of MMO big dog World of Warcraft. Research firm eMarketer estimates that in the United States alone, 8 million kids hung out in virtual worlds regularly during 2008; that number is projected to swell to more than 15 million by 2013.
Cinemassively: Toontown Friends Forever
Not only is the machinima hard in Toontown, but the gameplay is even harder! This free-to-play virtual world for kids doesn't appear to have a way to turn off the User Interface (UI). However, even then, you'd need a buddy code just to communicate with anyone to coordinate movements! These setbacks don't deter members of the community, though. There are over 4,000 Toontown videos on YouTube! In this music video, Friends Forever, dating back almost two years, ToonTownGeekFangs gives thanks to the world and friends that have kept them safe.If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
How to make ToonTown work with your router
Are you or your children getting the above message when trying to play ToonTown Online? When I first started playing, I was unable to play for more than 10 minutes at a time. Whenever I zoned, I only had about a 30% chance for actually staying in the game. I submitted many bug reports, but the responses from TT customer service, while prompt, were completely unhelpful: Update my video driver Update my router firmware Update my network card driver Don't use wireless Delete a possibly corrupted file The first three "solutions" are of course good things to do. Your drivers should always be up to date for optimum performance, but they didn't solve my problem. Fortunately, Knuckles Fiddlefinger, an employee of the Nerd Herd Geek Squad, posted the solution on the ToonTown Central Forums. The problem is how ToonTown handles routers. So even if you are running WoW or City of Heroes or even Disney's own Pirates of the Carribean Online just fine, you still need to setup your router to handle ToonTown Online. Instructions on how are after the jump.
Disney to expand MMORPG line-up
No stranger to the online landscape, Disney's CES presentation included word on their future plans to create massive worlds based on many of their licenses. With Pirates of the Caribbean already well into production (if not due this year), Disney intends to "build more virtual worlds like "Pirates" based on a broad range of our properties." Disney is quick to throw out Toy Story as an example of this, but when they mean broad, think real broad. This may not mean that every game is going to own up to the standard, online RPG format. A "virtual world" can be anything from an online hack-and-slash like Pirates to something of a visual chatroom like MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach.Disney's first foray into the MMORPG format was a kid friendly action game, Toontown, which is still online to this day and at by last account, fairly competent. Should Disney team-up down the line with some designers worth their chops, we may not insist on groaning when we hear word of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody Online.
Disney releases Toontown for Mac OS X
Joystiq is reporting that Disney has released a Mac version of Toontown, an MMO cartoon game where users can create cartoon characters, join quests to save Toontown, race carts and even hurl wedding cakes at each other. The game seems to be fairly successful so far, as over 15 million Windows users have already been busy doing the online cartoon character thing. The Mac version is a Universal Binary so everyone on our side of the fence can play along, and the monthly subscription fee is $9.95. Of course a free, though short, three-day trial is available as well.Thanks Barb!
Disney Toontown out for Macs
Disney Online announced the Mac release -- and an update for PC players -- of its Toontown Online MMO cartoon game. The game lets players create their own cartoon characters to propagate the world; over 15 million Toon characters have been created by PC players.Both Mac and PC users can access a handful of new "gags," including the old wedding-cake-in-the-face trick. The Mac release runs on PowerPC and Intel chips and is available now. Both versions have a monthly rate of $9.95 and can be downloaded from the Toontown site. A free, three-day trial is also available.
Pirates of the Caribbean MMO on parade at E3
Fans of Captain Jack Sparrow and his motley crew will be wise to keep their eyes peeled this E3. Disney will be unveiling the first images -- along with a playable version -- of Pirates of the Caribbean Online, a massively-multiplayer online game that should be hitting shelves in 2007. Although a pirate-themed MMO isn't a new idea, taking a film with such a cult following as Pirates of the Caribbean and turning it into a MMORPG could prove a stupendous hit -- as long as it's done right. Disney's VR Studio, the developers behind the family friendly Toontown MMO, are on board for the project -- it's billed as being for "teens to adults" so it'll hopefully have more of a mature feel than Toontown. However, as long as it has Jack Sparrow in, some fans might not care.
