Virtual Marriage and Minors

That’s a tough one. I don’t think it’s inappropriate (although the thought of kids cyb0ring makes me shudder a little), but at the same time it seems a lot like a “growing up way too fast” kind of thing.

My conclusion is that if a game is focused on content that is generally “suitable” for 13 year olds, then that game probably doesn’t need a marriage mechanic. The kids will still do things on their own but there’s no reason to encourage it.

On the other hand, if a game’s content is generally more “suitable” for 17-year olds or 20-year olds, as most MMOs really are, then there probably needs to be better technology or policies to help keep 13-year olds out of those games.

This isn’t to say that a young person of 13 or 14 years can’t be a good player - heck, I’ve had players as young as 11 in various guilds over the years (either the children of other guildmates or occasionally someone whose parents let them roam free online) and for the most part, they were good kids. A little immature, but they learned quick and became assets. At the same time though, we had to make it very clear to the rest of the guild that there were indeed children playing and to keep it clean. You can do that within the confines of a guild, but you can’t do it within the confines of a game very easily. In the end, I think it is the parent’s responsibility to know what their kids are doing online and take appropriate actions, but at the same time, I think game developers can help make things a bit easier on the parents by trying to keep the content within certain expectations.

It just made me think of why kids want wedding? Weddings are not very fashion (at least in france from where I write) and so, why (though older people dont want wedding IRL) kids say that they love such a social relationship.
It would be interesting to have stastistics on weddings in game for married people, bachelors and for each age… It would be a way to find the incentives that lead people to weddings ingame and IRL…

In matter of public policy i dont see the point of limiting people due to their age. If youre affraid of chatsex, ban specific words from the game with some “*****” but a virtual romance cannot hurt if it doesnt lead to a MSNchat or real date (and even a 13 year old boy or girl should not be permitted to have such a relationship with an unknown person). Ageis not the question to me.

When I was six years old, I got “married” to the girl that lived next door. We had a ceremony. One of the older kids down the street said the invocation (he was 15 at the time). We had a combination best man/maid of honor who was another friend of ours. Then, like most marriages where people get hitched too young … it ended in flames about two years later. She did something that made me mad … I ended up calling her a “stupid-head” and she told me that we were no longer married. Fortunately, there were no shared assets to be divided up … so it was pretty amicable.

The thing I’m trying to point out here is that at no point did we think that sex had anything to do with marriage. Yes, we were a bit younger than you’re talking about and probably somewhat naive … but aren’t these games really just big balls of “let’s pretend”? Why does it necessarily follow that a kid is going to immediately start thinking about pretend sex (and then the slippery slope of course leads to real sex) if he decides to have a pretend marriage?

I remember when a kid could play house and not be accused of sexual harassment … what happened?

If you’re going to promote a foolish social institution, you might as well let people who are “underage” take a shot at it. But then again, I’ve never liked discriminating based on age on anything, so I’m weird. =P

I guess what worries me is not two 11 year olds pretending to be married but a 40 year old and an 11 year old! The kids may not be telling how old they really are and if the person on the other side is an adult there could be a problem.

The only way to really avoid this is for parents to monitor what their children are doing. My daughter is 11 and she is allowed to play toon town online and club penguin because they can only use pre-selected chat bubbles. We also have netnanny installed and a keylogger so that we always know what is going on.

Parents just need to be more responsible.

Well Matt, being the mother of two girls who roughly fit this age group I will say that their barbies and playmobil get married regularly (never divorce though). I know that the older one loves the SIMS, and there is content that I consider edgey there, BUT I cannot shelter her from today’s reality. Kids having been playing house and marriage as long as I know. This is an extension of it. As with all things web though, the social taboos of taking things ‘a step further’ may no longer exist.
Good question.

I know that some of my very young neighbours have played DIVORCE. Including argueing about who keeps the babies this weekend. It’s what they see in their own lives and TV, so they play that. They get bored after a bit and go playing together something else, so I think it’s friendly divorce as well.

Was the question how many people did he marry or how many people did he have sex online with? Those would be in my eyes the real problem. That and did somebody ask the 11 years old how many players had he killed violently in all those gaming years, and if he had a lot of fun doing it?

I tend to agree with the people who pointed out that issue is less about what kids are chatting about with each other and more about the idea that a 40-year old can “marry” and chat with an 11 year old (and perhaps even unintentionally, although I find it unlikely that you could chat with someone on a regular enough basis for an in-game marriage and not recognize that wide of a maturity differential).

Of course, the issue then isn’t marriage at all… it’s that you have 11 year olds and 40 year olds in the same game space, which is unavoidable and undesirable for many games. Segregating players by age is difficult and adds an additional level of complexity to registration, and it’s built on the assumption that parents know what their kids are their using credit cards for, anyway. When I was in high school my mom paid for my Ultima Online account, but at that time she had very little concept of what an MMO was and just knew that she was paying $12/month for a game I wanted to play.

So ultimately, I agree with Adele. This is an issue of parental involvement and responsibility. It’s our duty as parents to at least familiarize ourselves with our children’s interests so we can make informed decisions about what’s in their best interest, and then apply appropriate controls.

but i still don’t get what virtual marriage is.

This is an interesting conversation.

Cameron mentioned that there is a wide gap of maturity between the two age groups.

Not always.

I know 11-year-olds that have been literally and honestly mistaken for 20 years old or older. In fact, there was one 16-year-old I knew on an MMO who was going to a kid for advice on her own virtual relationship. The 16-year-old though the kid, a 10-year-old, was at least thirty.

The thing about MMOs is that you can never tell how old the person you’re talking to is. Children, especially mature children who want to be aged based on their maturity, don’t tend to tell people their ages. In response to “How old are you?” questions, people, both adults and kids, say things like, “Old enough to play this game.”, “I’d rather not say.”, “I don’t know you well enough to tell you my IRL age.”, or “Why do you ask?” Sometimes, children simply ignore these questions as well.

Cyboring should be outlawed. It is disgusting and entirely wrong. Children shouldn’t be exposed to this or read this mess enough to know “how to do it.” But I think a virtual marriage between a mature adult that agrees that cyboring is wrong and an exceptionally mature child over the age of 10 is not entirely wrong. Sure, it’s wrong if the adult starts to be suggestive and the child takes the hint, but if it is an innocent virtual marriage I see nothing wrong. Of course, these exceptionally mature child would be responsible enough to go to their parents and calmly ask and explain. They would request their parents permission first. And that is where the parent could say, “No way.” if he or she wished.

But the children we need to worry about are the ones that are not exceptionally mature, see nothing wrong with cyboring, and don’t ask their parents before a virtual marriage. Other than those types of kids, a virtual marriage can be an enriching virtual exprience as long as the child and the adult/other child know to keep this whole relationship virtual and completely separate from an IRL thing. That way, the adult or the child doesn’t end up falling in love IG and IRL.

Just my two cents. =)

My son, 17 at the time married a girl in AC who happened to be 15-ish because it was q QUEST that produced a unique ITEM that gave them special POWERS. They didn’t play house.

Her parents found out, freaked, and pulled her from the game.

Designers should be more careful with mixing metaphors with game mechanics.

Sometimes marriage is JUST a quest…

u shodnt have to pay for habbo credits

you shouldn’t have to pay for habbo credits

u shoudn’t have to pay for habbo credits