Inside Social Games

Not all MMOs have to involve orcs, swordsmen, angels, or demons. Vector City Racers, developed by Vector Entertainment, is a relatively simple browser-based Flash game tailored directly to kids ages 6 to 12. Riddled with simple, yet colorful visuals, creative user customization, and safe exploration, it certainly seems like a viable place for the young racing game player.

The game is a vectorized world of ramps, speed boosts, stores for upgrading parts, and item pick ups that players are able to drive around in and explore. As such, the avatar of this game is actually the player’s car: A simple, blocky looking thing — at first — that, thankfully, can be changed to the player’s own personal, aesthetic tastes.

This customization is perhaps the most entertaining element to the MMO. Users are able to visit, what is called, the “ModShop” and in an almost Lego-like fashion are able to move blocks around to build and change their vehicle. However, rather than just connect blocks, players are able to intersect them and drag on each corner, on all three axis, in order to change their shape, allowing kids to create an avatar that is truly unique then showcase them to the world.

Despite the fact that there is a great deal of potential in ModShop feature alone, and the general exploration of 13 different cities is quite amusing (running into and knocking down buildings, for example), a racing MMO can hardly be called such without some actual racing. So, players can race one another in fairly simple circuit track races for rewards, increased leaderboards standings, and so on. Furthermore, for a quick time trial race (simply setting the best time), players can hop onto the Facebook rendition and challenge friends to beat their highest completion time.

The game has around 290,000 player registrations, including 15,000 daily unique visitors. This traction has apparently led to a handful of kid-friendly partnerships, including The National Childhood Obesity Foundation (N.C.O.F.), which promotes on healthy eating for kids.

Currently, the game is free to play, but offers extra “perks” for paid memberships that range from about $5 to $50 for a monthly and annual subscription respectively. The game also has deals for family memberships as well, so it certainly encourages parental involvement. As a matter of fact, kids can’t even play a full version of Vector City until the parents have approved their sign up.

Whenever a child does visit the game, in order to create a username and password, they must input a parents’ email — that needs to be confirmed — followed by the creation of a “Parent Login” before all of the game’s features are unlocked. Until such time, kids are limited to just racing about for only 30 days and are not granted access to any social features (i.e. chat). Granted, it is hardly a fool-proof plan to mediate where one’s children goes on the internet, but at least it is an attempt. And combined with the overall quality of the game, it seems a better place than most for kids to be spending their time online.