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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

One thing I'd do is play as her character at times - the cousins should know you do it, and she should (hopefully) be fine with you grinding whatever it is Roblox's have. Anything untoward should also occur to you whilst playing.

And be completely open and upfront about the dangers, and how the "scams" work.

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I think this is likely the best way to go about it, but offer some sort of reward for their transparency such as helping them achieve in-game goals, and maybe rewarding them for out of game accomplishments (good grades, cleaning dishes, putting away clothes, etc) with in-game rewards you normally pay for. At least then it's not some creepy old man asking for inappropriate things in exchange for a in-game reward.

Also make it clear, that you're worried about other players doing bad things to her that she might not realize is insanely bad.

When I first would use the internet, my mom freaked out one of my friends typed a little too fast, I don't know if my mom was right or wrong, I don't know how much faster I would of typed at the same age had I had a computer for a few years more, but she was like nope. Block them. So I did.

This is prime example of good parenting. I did something similar with my kids. I’ll let you play but I want your logins, in exchange for being transparent about your goings on, I’ll grind some for you while you sleep or help you defeat that hard mob. Sometimes even joining in on the fun myself with my own account to make sure the group is playing nicely. That all strangers are enemies come to take their loots. And that eve-online isn’t the only game out there with cunning scammery.

> And that eve-online isn’t the only game out there with cunning scammery.

I've recently met a few old school Eve players, I never joined back in its golden days, but basically that's been my take away is that everyone on that game was a sketchy scammer, extracting data and information from other players off the game to take advantage of their location.

There's one story going round where someone actually cut someone else's power during something important happening, I can imagine how that would get repeated wrongly over time.

My experience from years of intermittently playing EVE is that because it's only one server and you can't get your character renamed or just transfer to another community people might be roleplaying assholes ingame but the toxicity level is actually lower than in other games.

Former old-school EVE player and sketchy scammer here. Pretty true, yeah, but keep in mind it's in-world scamming and is considered a valid or even respected part of the game. I doubt most of them would consider ever scamming or defrauding people IRL or find that remotely acceptable. It's a role play. (I stopped playing long before the official ability to exchange things for real-world money was available, though. For me it was all just exchange of shiny pixels.)

No doubt! Thank you for clarifying for those who might misunderstand. I've heard it described as a fancy game of Excel with space ships as well. What I was describing is people joining other Eve Corps TeamSpeak / Ventrilo servers and listening in for key details, and using that intel to rip off other players. Not anyone IRL.

Year(s) long spy operations and social hacking is a thing. You used to have to give away your API keys to your corp so they could verify you don’t have any alts in competing corps. Then the free to play disaster. It’s a free for all now.

What was the concern about typing too fast? That the mom couldn’t monitor what they’re typing because they were submitting before she could finish reading?

No I think that it's a clear sign of an adult. You don't see many 12-year-olds who can type at the speed that I can type at, although you do see some.

Twelve year old me learned to type fast from flaming my opponents during StarCraft: Brood War public 1:1 Lost Temple matches.

Gotta type the message and send as quick as possible: those SCVs ain’t gonna start mining minerals or vespene gas on their own; supply depots won’t build themselves.

MUDs did it for me. Type faster or DIE!

I was about to disagree, but I realized that 12 year olds typing fast is probably even more rare now than it was when I was 12. Let's just say, in the days of dialup lol ;) At the time, I typed faster than anyone I knew, other than a couple computer-geek friends who also spent hours chatting online etc.

My 14 year old types faster than most adults. And has been able to do so for a couple of years. She wanted the skill for the game One Hour, One Life and there are free typing apps out there.

I was about 9 or 10 years old when this moment happened mind you, I was typing with two fingers, one on each hand, nowadays I use at least three or four fingers per hand to type, which is a lot faster.

When I was 9, we had a typing class at school and I learned to touch type (i.e., 10 fingers) at about 20 wpm. By 12 I was up to 40 or more. I suppose I would have been blocked.

Gemstone III and Dragonrealms had me at 90wpm with near 100% accuracy at a young age. Way better than Mavis Beacon.

Ah. I misread. Thank you.

I don't think that you can play as a child character because you won't know what kids do, never mind understanding the actual game. It is how they interact with each other that is will be foreign to adult non-players. It is like, as an adult, trying to sit down and have a barbie tea party. After 30 seconds you're done and wonder how on earth it can keep a child occupied half an hour.

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