Jan
16
More on Travian’s virtual world
Filed Under General
Given my misgivings about virtual worlds in general and Travian in particular expressed in my post the other day, I found this blog post rather interesting.
In a nutshell, a father was playing the Travian game along with his son. His son received mail via the game that requested real life e-mail contact information. This would move the game from being a virtual and anonymous world to being a more public one where potentially creepy people have your contact information.
The father used the message to teach his son about online safety, but as a teacher this message makes me nervous. It’s one kids might easily respond to without you ever knowing about it, and might give away information that is simply not safe. I guess I’m still really nervous about the potential harm of virtual worlds while still coveting the very cool things you could do in one if your could ever find a safe world.
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Dear James Dykstra,
Given that there are some very good commercially produced social studies computer simulations such as Civilization and Age of Empires, what are the advantages of online simulations?
Jeff
Online games are usually cheaper.
Online games can be accessed from school, home, and wherever you want because they’re not installed on only one computer.
Online games can possibly involved people from more than one school or town.