Parents can breathe a bit easier thanks to Crisp Thinking's NetModerator

by Krystalle Voecks on Feb 24th 2010 12:30PM

MMO industry, News items, Free Realms, Kids

Letting your children play MMOs can be a tricky balancing act for gamer parents. On the one hand, you want your children to have fun playing games online while gaining socialization and computer skills. On the other, you're a protective parent who wants to make sure your kids are safe -- without making them live in a bubble. You can teach them about online safety and how to protect themselves, but there's always the possibility that something will take a wrong turn.

Thankfully, it seems that a company called Crisp Thinking have developed a tool to help parents in their fight for online safety. Their system, called NetModerator, has been put into place in kid-friendly MMOs like Free Realms and FusionFall to combat against predators, bullies, and the like. It watches for certain keywords and phrases during online interactions. When detected, the system will step in and moderate the conversations -- allowing for real-time changes in potentially dangerous situations, as opposed to a reactionary method of dealing with abusive or predatory accounts after the conversations have taken place.

The entire concept is fascinating, so we're sure parents will want to pop over to VentureBeat's Games Beat and check out Dean Takahashi's great write up about this new technology. With an accuracy rate of 98.4% in terms of flagging dangerous and harmful conversations, and the ability to learn cloaked phrases, we're sure parents will be glad to hear that there's another layer protecting their kids from online danger. It's no replacement for the first line of defense -- good parenting -- but it certainly doesn't hurt.

[Thanks, Pete!]

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Tags: cartoon-network, cartoon-network-digital, chat-moderation, children, crisp-thinking, cyber-bullying, free-realms, fusionfall, kids, netmoderator, online-safety, parent, parenting, parents, perv-blocking, predator, real-time, soe, sony-online-entertainment

Reader Comments (3)

How good is it at avoiding the clbuttic mistake? FR's word filter is kind of bad about that.

I worry more about how it effects standard communication.

When I played Free Realms a kid gave out his home phone in broadcast so they responded by removing ALL NUMBERS from all chat. In other words not only numerals but spelled out numbers as well.

So it's efficiency at stopping the display of phone numbers was excellent but you also couldn't trade or even ask someone what level they were.

Totally understandable response but very difficult to play with.

I'm all for this system so long as it doesn't hinder my ability to effectively communicate with other players. If implented in a fashion that recognizes the status of a player as either a broodling or an adult, thusly freeing the latter from such ridiculous restrictions, then its nothing but good. However, it seems as if this system does not discriminate who you are talking too, only what you are saying.