I had an interesting experience this weekend. My oldest daughter (she’s 9) was playing an online game (not one of ours and not WoW) and someone asked her how old she was. As I had taught her she immediately put this person on the ignore list, reported them via an in-game command and came to me and let me know what had happened. Since this had happened one previous time in this particular game (with the exact same response from her) I immediately cancelled the account.I’m a parent with 4 kids ranging in age from 5 to 11. All 4 of them play games. I actively game with my son (the 11 year old). My youngest 2 kids (ages 5 and 6) also play games (Disney’s ToonTown which I highly recommend as a VERY SAFE game).

Why am I talking about this? Very simple - online games are great for kids. My son is a lighting fast typist and absolutely loves online games. We have a set time he’s allowed to play and I actively use parental controls in all of the games that make them available.

My wife and I have sat down with each of the older kids and discussed what is and isn’t ok in the online gaming world. They know never to give out private information of any kind, and they know to immediately come to us if someone asks for it. In each of the games they play I have personally checked out their friends list to make sure the only people on them are people they know in real life. We also only let them play games that we feel are age appropriate.

We’ve all seen the stories about kids being contacted by older strangers and trying to lure them into doing some dangerous and bad things. I’m here to tell you to be extremely vigilant. Make sure as parents you are very aware of what games your kids are playing and exactly how communication happens in these games.

Just like the real world there are some bad people out there. It is our job as parents to make sure that kids understand what safe playing is all about.

It’s been interesting to be running an online gaming company at the same time my kids are old enough to play some of these games. It’s given me a very strong opinion about online safety. I cannot stress enough how important it is for parents to be involved in what their kids are doing and playing online. Recently one of the things I’ve been seriously considering here at SOE is allowing parents to have other tools as part of their checking up on just what their kids are doing online.

I’d like us to implement a parental control that would allow parents to receive an email once a day of every piece of chat that their child was able to see that particular day.

Now I haven’t vetted this idea with our general counsel or with our technical team. It’s possible that this could be a lot of work to implement and it’s also possible that doing this might not be something that’s entirely smart from a legal perspective. I just know as a parent this sure is something I’d like to see.

I welcome your thoughts on this. Feel free to email me at jsmedley@soe.sony.com