Op/Ed: The Case Against an Adults-Only Server
by Alphaville Herald on 30/01/04 at 8:29 pm
Contrary to proposals made by Urizenus in recent press interviews, I think age-segregated servers are a very bad idea. The game would die if Maxis were to create an adults only server.
There are not enough players to support all the cities and servers as it is. I played for a while in Mt. Fuji and had a top money house in it’s heyday. Come the summer, people dropped out of the game to do summer things, and after the summer many did not come back. A lot of people got bored and left the game. The cities started to die; not enough people. As a top money house I was used to having 18 or more on the property whenever I was open, and jumping to let more in. Traffic slowed down to the point where I was lucky to have 5 or 6 in house, but I had not fallen down the list. No one else was doing better, and all of the top houses were sharing the same experience. Not enough players were present to keep all the cities alive. The same thing was happening in East Jerome. My friends and I (only one or two were BDSM and at that time I was not publicly in the lifestyle) did a count on numbers present in the top houses in different cities, and we discovered that Alphaville still had a sizable number of players. And that is how and why I returned to Alphaville. I had played there long ago as a beta tester. (Julianna is not on my founder account, but I am a founder.)
If Maxis were to try to create an adult server and segregated certain players onto it… well, one of the servers would die. Either Alphaville or the adult server, or perhaps both. This game is constructed so that you need other players for the economy and skill building to work. You need a certain number of players for a city to work, and I am not sure what that number is but I am very sure that Maxis has a pretty good idea. And subscription numbers are low. If we had the number of subscribers that EQ has, then it would be possible.
Who would want to play in Alphaville after we and others were forced out? I can tell you where the kids would want to play, and it would not be in Alphaville. They would be trying hard to get onto the adult server, and a determined teen can usually succeed in these efforts.
This would also mean that Alphaville would then have to be better policed by Maxis to ensure that adult content did not occur there. We already know they would not do that; there are not enough time, resources and money. The game is not profitable for them. EA would probably just pull the plug on the game as they have other non-profitable games.
Your intent may be good, but I do not think you have considered the consequences, and you might unintentionally cause the death of the game, and that would upset me.
Look at the median age of the game: 26. Most of the kids quickly get bored with the game. Perhaps they get more social interaction in their lives at school or with their real life friends. Friends are very important to teens. I think the game ultimately fails to hold the younger player anyway, and they usually leave to find a shooter game where they can kill something and be truly violent (and that worries me more). It is too bad, and I think the kids become griefers before they leave to try to entertain themselves.
My son John at 17 played the game for a while. I am well aware of the sexual content in the game. I was also aware that at 17 my son was not a virgin. He had had sex and we talked about it. I wish he had not so young, but.. at the same time I recognize that probably most kids have sex for the first time between 16 and 18. The sexual content of the game did not concern me for he had discovered sex in the real world. If he did go to a cyber brothel and learned about cyber sex… it would not be new to him either. I am sure he had encountered that before in ICQ. I never revealed myself to him as Julianna. There are certain things that my kids do not need to know about me, and just because I am their mother does not mean they have a right to know all things about me.
He became bored with the game after three months. He started to become a griefer.. landing on lots, making rude comments, stealing gnomes, and getting banned from a lot of houses. I became aware when I received account suspension notices from Maxis. He said he was trying to spice the game up for himself and have fun by tormenting others. I was disappointed. I told him I had hoped that he would use the game to hone some of his social skills and have fun through making friends and building something online. To him, this would take too much work and he was frustrated by working months to build and then having no visitors to his home. After the third suspension, I told him I was cancelling his account, and he was not upset. He said he was bored with it anyway and he moved on to Battlefield 1942.
My point is that kids won’t stay longer than three months anyway. They probably knew about cyber sex in ICQ long before I ever did. They will be exposed to it. They are the computer and internet generation. They might be better at policing their children than we are. The truth for a lot of us is that our children know more about the net than we do and they exploit it far more than we do.
Okay, so worse case scenario… a 15-year-old has cyber sex in the game. It is just words, it is not real. It is a fantasy. They could find worse in the playboy magazine hidden under their bed. I would hope they interact with someone their own age and not an adult. In the end I worry far less about this kind of exposure to sex than I do the violent video games. I do want my children at some point in their lives to have sex; I want grandchildren after all! I do not want them to go to school and shoot someone though. Worry more about violent video games and violent movies.
We are soooo hung up about sex in our society… sheesh.
I remember at 13 I was finding my mother’s books.. Harlequinn romances and some juicy bodice rippers. I went out and bought some, and a few had some very juicy passages. No-one questioned a 13-year-old girl buying books. I did not need to hide them and no-one has suggested that books be rated. I loved those books, lol. Sexual interest that young is also normal. We begin to awaken at that age. Now that I have admitted that, should we turn our scrutiny to the publishing industry? Should we burn books?
I think the warning label on the box about adult content is sufficient. Relax, sex is not evil. Bigotry, segregation, censorship, book burning… these things are evil.
Could I recommend that Urizenus correct press interviewers in the future when they describe his goal as being to expose the seamier side of TSO life? I really hate my name or my property or BDSM coming up as a part of the discussion of something as seamy or dirty or vulgar. Correct them and emphasize that you are only interested in our community as an example of the evolution of a social group within the game.
I might be Domme, and yes I am sexy, but I am not dirty or seamy or vulgar. I will not tolerate swearing or bad behaviour in my house. I am a lady, and woe to anyone who fails to treat me as such.
Tommy Morta (now GF-Antonio Armone)
Feb 2nd, 2004
agh…just the thought of an “adult only server” makes me pissed off..
I’ll say id loud…I AM FOURTEEN –
Mostly all of my friends in TSO are above 21..
..and thats ALOOOT
As well as having older friends, i have younger friends like Adele Armone, Leroy, Zipper, Ken, Kimmers…LOOOTS of them too..
If i cant hang around with my older friends like Eva Marie, Snow, Andy…Id be lost..
So what if there’s the occasional sexual word/conversaion, etc..
Thats what the parental filter is for…
If you cant take the heat, get outta the kitchen…
If ya cant take the conversation, get outta the game…
-Ant
toy
Feb 2nd, 2004
hmmmmmmm….. please read full posts before making a quote AngryPornClerk… yoy did a quote aas if toy posted this comment…….. “Toy:
Please kill yourself. You are so stupid it makes my head throb.”
if you would read properly, toy did not say this
it was said to toy by some child who cant articulate and goes into a tantrum 
hmmmm tantrum could be used to discribe many of dyers posts also now couldnt it?
please check your quotes before making a fool of yourself further
falara kajira toy
toy
Feb 2nd, 2004
Oh messiah dyer!!! please grant yourself time in your mighty crusade to answer this girls questions… toy realizes you consider yourself to high and mighty to answer this poor slave… but please your holiness find a small amount of time in your holy crusade to take pity on this little slave and answer her honest questions… in actuallity admit it dyer…. you refuse to answer this girls questions simply because you cant
so you resort to labeling toy, calling toy names ect…ect…ect….
sleep well dyer, toy always does
falara kajira toy
Catseye
Feb 2nd, 2004
Anyone else surprised that in all these posts in all these threads it is Dyer that tries to post not one but two sites that he claims points to real life BDSM and the evils in a non aged checked area? of course in his defense one is no longer there (*frugal* or wasnt when I checked)
hmm Ok Dyer so you posted a link to a real life site. This site was posted to lord knows how many under the age of 18.. you are recruiting by bringing attention to us and not being able to actually make a case against us… hmm Dyer congradulations you are BDSM according to your own twisted defination of it so do you look any different? have you grown horns?
Catseye
Feb 2nd, 2004
oops sorry I posted before actually viewing the other site.. what I was expecting to be BDSM ends up being an 100-125 dollar an hour for courses in various Love Making techniques and you are not even garunteed to do more than watch Possible Love making.. sounds like a few cat houses I have been to in my younger days.. of course it wasn’t that costly
Lady Julianna
Feb 2nd, 2004
Tommy, I just want you to know that I do not dislike young people. I like them very much.
I would hate to see us segregated onto different servers. I enjoy when my children’s friends visit my home and have become quite close to some of them.
Regardless of whether or not they segregate us, and I don’t think you will see that happen, my property remains closed to those under 18. It is not intended to be an insult to young people. It is just my personal opinion that it is better for youngsters to develop a firmly grounded, basic sexuality before venturing into BDSM. It is meant to be protective of young people.
Others can and will disagree with me on this, but it is my property and therefore I get to make the rules there.
I have the right to form my own opinions and belief system and my own moral values. Integrity means living in accordance with what you believe. My conscience rests easy, for I do that, even when there is a cost or consequence. To have integrity, you cannot behave well only when it is convenient or easy to do so.
Dyer, you have no integrity, for you have no clear cut moral system for yourself to act in accordance with. If you do, you abandon it when it is convenient for you to do so.. lying, twisting and misrepresenting information, name calling, personal attacks… You don’t care if you hurt people in the pursuit of your own selfish goals.
I do none of the above Dyer. I, like toy, will sleep well tonight. I honestly do not know how you sleep at night after attacking people as you do, and using others (like the wiccans) just to hurt others.
Maria LaVeaux
Feb 2nd, 2004
Unfortunatly My Lady, He probably sleeps all too well.
In his views That which is wrong for others is perfectly alright for him. He Views himself as a Special case, Therefore, ANYTHING he does in furtherance of his goals no matter how Unethical is justified by what he views a greater Good. So, he lies, it doesn’t matter, he believes he is only doing it for our own Benefit. So he uses people as Pawns, No Matter, they are necessary sacrifices to his greater good.
And of course, as we have seen so many times with Dyer, when the Evidence simply does not support his point of view,, Nothing wrong with replacing it with another lie.
remember, Dyer won’t try to cloud the issue with Fact when it interferes with his “Truth”.
Maria.
Storm
Feb 2nd, 2004
Dyer…I ask of you to answer your questions ; for you seem to keep making excuses and avoiding the point of everything? These people are not idiots; and it seems almost that you are stereotyping them because of their sexual beliefs…so may I ask has TSO almost resorted to the ages of segregation/extreme prejudice? Or are we actually the utopia you claim to want? Seems to me by bringing this upon people you are only derailing your own personal goals. You cannot stay on topic for 3 posts Dyer…because you have no purpose/reasoning behind them.
-Storm
P.S ~ Dyer, I ask of you to answer Toy’s questions
-no, I do not do BDSM, so don’t even start *that* attack on me Dyer.
Mikal
Feb 2nd, 2004
Tommy, i must say that at age 14, you are a very smart young person. i commend you on your speaking your mind, and i agree and have said what you said before…about if don’t like it…get out of game.
i also don’t wish for an adult server only 1) for the reason that you stated above…and 2)it would kill the game entirely. i hope that you continue to enjoy the game Tommy. Be well.
Mikal