Hello weevils!
I've been doing some thinking lately of the current situation of where the game stands and I think I can happily say that the game formerly for 7-13 year olds but now for 3-10 year olds is actually not suitable for the children themselves. Let me explain using evidence I have gathered.
EXHIBIT A: TEAM RIVALRY EVENTS
As you may already know, the Bin Weevils Team seem to sometimes plan events in which players get to decide what 'side' they are on. One in particular event I would like to go into is the 'WEB Vs SWS' event they held back in May 2015. Here is a video which presents the event's first kind of announcement:
I've been doing some thinking lately of the current situation of where the game stands and I think I can happily say that the game formerly for 7-13 year olds but now for 3-10 year olds is actually not suitable for the children themselves. Let me explain using evidence I have gathered.
EXHIBIT A: TEAM RIVALRY EVENTS
As you may already know, the Bin Weevils Team seem to sometimes plan events in which players get to decide what 'side' they are on. One in particular event I would like to go into is the 'WEB Vs SWS' event they held back in May 2015. Here is a video which presents the event's first kind of announcement:
Now, for a game mostly populated of primary school students, I would not say this is a good thing to do for a kids game. The first thing I had spotted was the fact it promotes betrayal in which of course, is a bad 'stunt' to perform in real life. We know this as the players get given the choice between remaining with the SWS or joining the WEB. Now, from what we already know about the WEB, they have in the past kidnapped a Bin Pet, tried to blow up Castle Gam (in which you could say is as form of terroism), hijacked Lab's Lab and whatnot and children are been given an easy choice to join the evil crew. The other thing wrong was that when the event came to place, moderators such as drewbian joined the WEB which would give a lot of encouragement for children to go ahead and betray their side (98% of players join the SWS anyway).
Now, of course, it's a virtual game and it isn't real and maybe it can be fun and games bending the rules if your an older age but for the majority of children who play, I can garuntee that they are more likely to copy what happens on the media and perform it in reality. This in a way would show younger audiences that being the one that starts the fight is somehow a good thing. From my own past experiences, I have copied some stuff off TV and many other children have done to. For example, a 5 year old copied an action performed on a cartoon known as 'Beevers and Butthead' and went as far as burning down his home in which tragically killed his baby sister. Obviously, Bin Weevils doesn't go as that low down but it's just to show how virtual things have an effect on young viewers.
Whilst talking of events, there is also the semi-common team events involving hats. Yes, just hats. Here is an example of one below:
Now, of course, it's a virtual game and it isn't real and maybe it can be fun and games bending the rules if your an older age but for the majority of children who play, I can garuntee that they are more likely to copy what happens on the media and perform it in reality. This in a way would show younger audiences that being the one that starts the fight is somehow a good thing. From my own past experiences, I have copied some stuff off TV and many other children have done to. For example, a 5 year old copied an action performed on a cartoon known as 'Beevers and Butthead' and went as far as burning down his home in which tragically killed his baby sister. Obviously, Bin Weevils doesn't go as that low down but it's just to show how virtual things have an effect on young viewers.
Whilst talking of events, there is also the semi-common team events involving hats. Yes, just hats. Here is an example of one below:
As you probably know, these team events involve nothing but choosing a hat (in which shows what team you joined) and going to a selected area in which you attend a scheduled flash mob consisting of moderators and bin celebrities. And what do you do at that flash mob exactly? Why all it is about is shouting "Team {name}' is the best" constantly as there is nothing actually special or explainable about these teams and how one of them can be better. This would indeed promote a violent attitude for younger players to adopt as all it is you have to do is shout and shout at your opponents. Language and behaviour through virtual media is one of the most common ways young children have changed how they express themselves. I can assure you that young children have said swear words picked up from adult cartoons on many occasions and games like Bin Weevils think it is alright to teach children how to only use the 'P' in 'PEE' rather than teach them to get their own opinions on things so that at least situations won't be like a pack of wolves but rather a friendly debate.
When it comes to team events, it needs to involve doing something counter productive like playing games against each other. I mean, sports and what not can cause a lot of conflict but it is not as bad since new attitudes and aggressions can't be properly picked up. Furthermore, at the end of a game of some sort, one team can clearly say they are better due to an overall score in which would also tell the opponent team that they have an area of improvement.
EXHIBIT B: OVER ADVERTISING
As mentioned by me and a lot of older people in the community; 55Pixels go way over the top when it comes to advertising. One area I would like to go in is their memberships. You probably already know they have had an issue with that as in the past, Bin Weevils along with Moshi Monsters were called out for breaking the guidelines of how they should be advertising their membership upgrades to their audience. But, from looking at a few things in the game now, I have figured out that Bin Weevils are still going over the top with their Bin Tycoon advertisements just that this time, rather than constantly demanding the players into buying, they may have this time actually found a way around it by showing it to the players. Look at this picture below:
When it comes to team events, it needs to involve doing something counter productive like playing games against each other. I mean, sports and what not can cause a lot of conflict but it is not as bad since new attitudes and aggressions can't be properly picked up. Furthermore, at the end of a game of some sort, one team can clearly say they are better due to an overall score in which would also tell the opponent team that they have an area of improvement.
EXHIBIT B: OVER ADVERTISING
As mentioned by me and a lot of older people in the community; 55Pixels go way over the top when it comes to advertising. One area I would like to go in is their memberships. You probably already know they have had an issue with that as in the past, Bin Weevils along with Moshi Monsters were called out for breaking the guidelines of how they should be advertising their membership upgrades to their audience. But, from looking at a few things in the game now, I have figured out that Bin Weevils are still going over the top with their Bin Tycoon advertisements just that this time, rather than constantly demanding the players into buying, they may have this time actually found a way around it by showing it to the players. Look at this picture below:
From knowledge of young children in general; vibrant, bright, rainbow colours stand out better for them and isn't it just a coincidence that Bin Weevils suddenly has more vibrancy than it did before it was rapped for it's promotions? In addition to promoting more rainbow coloured tycoon areas, young children will see it as 'cool' and would desperatly want a Bin Tycoon membership.
For example(s), I can just use my own past experiences with these virtual games. Back in 2009 when Bin Tycoon first came out, they introduced the 'Tycoon Plazas' in which uses quite a range of dull colours. This in fact didn't stand out as much to me and out of honesty, I didn't find them amazing. But, in 2010, I saw Tycoon Island being promoted and for me, it really stood out as unique, exciting and fun as it was just about the right level of bright colouring in order to reel children in. Of course, I will say Tycoon Island wasn't actually bad for it's colours and I would say it was just right for when it came to appealing to a young crowd. I mean, maybe you could argue that we could visit Tycoon Plazas and so we kind of already got a taste but I personally think it's how the presentation looks.
Secondly, we have the commonly ranted third-party trivial promotions that have taken over Bin Weevils rather than stand aside it. If you logged into Bin Weevils from 2007-2014/13, you wouldn't see a spam of advertisements. When I used to play back in the day, I used to easily not take much interest in adverts. Here and then, you would perhaps hunt for bubbles in order to get a few mulch or maybe you would pick up a small nest item but that was pretty much it. The promotions were always at expected places such as Slam's Party Box or the third pipe in Gong's Pipenest (in which both places have now been removed) and so you could simply see most of the game being weevils related.
Nowadays, it has come to this:
For example(s), I can just use my own past experiences with these virtual games. Back in 2009 when Bin Tycoon first came out, they introduced the 'Tycoon Plazas' in which uses quite a range of dull colours. This in fact didn't stand out as much to me and out of honesty, I didn't find them amazing. But, in 2010, I saw Tycoon Island being promoted and for me, it really stood out as unique, exciting and fun as it was just about the right level of bright colouring in order to reel children in. Of course, I will say Tycoon Island wasn't actually bad for it's colours and I would say it was just right for when it came to appealing to a young crowd. I mean, maybe you could argue that we could visit Tycoon Plazas and so we kind of already got a taste but I personally think it's how the presentation looks.
Secondly, we have the commonly ranted third-party trivial promotions that have taken over Bin Weevils rather than stand aside it. If you logged into Bin Weevils from 2007-2014/13, you wouldn't see a spam of advertisements. When I used to play back in the day, I used to easily not take much interest in adverts. Here and then, you would perhaps hunt for bubbles in order to get a few mulch or maybe you would pick up a small nest item but that was pretty much it. The promotions were always at expected places such as Slam's Party Box or the third pipe in Gong's Pipenest (in which both places have now been removed) and so you could simply see most of the game being weevils related.
Nowadays, it has come to this:
From looking at this screenshot, you can clearly see that advertisements are able to follow you everywhere you go! If your doing an SWS mission such as 'The Blue Diamond' which involves going to very remote places in the game, you'll always have that blue Furby looking at you. Not only that, but you can also see that the small bubbles for these hunts have now been enlarged and formed into the product itself in which it is so big, you can't exactly be out of the way from it. There have been places in which these pieces of product have blocked a lot of view of the actuall virtual look of the game itself. Not only that, but on several occasions, the in-game map gets a load of promotional advertisement. There was one time where they were advertising 'The Good Dinosaur' in which when you clicked on the map or somewhat, you had to wait for a freaking animated dinosaur to move around on the screen before you could select where you would want to go (this would have been extremely irritating for slow computers). That is clearly trying to force advertisement on young children when all they really want to do is play the game and they can't even click a button without being bombarded with adverts that they may have simply seen on the TV. Speaking of which, they also like to tempt children to view advertisement even more by offering 1 Dosh coin to watch an advert. Dosh is a virtual currency too valuable as we know it and when you are offered that, all you can really do is accept the task. Finally, the promotional nest items they give out are also much bigger than ever. Back in the old bin, I picked up some nest items from the 'Ben 10 Alien Force' promotion and they only took up a spot on a shelf. Nowadays, you are given massive posters and huge statues in which take up a fairly big proportion of your nest room.
Now, I am not saying reaching out products to children in general is bad as companies do need to make profits but on Bin Weevils, it has got to the stage when they are more likely irritated with adverts rather than actually advertised with adverts. I mean, on children's TV channels, children expect advertisements and waiting times between their programmes and can simply choose to watch or avoid the adverts until their programme is back on.
The ways in which Bin Weevils advertise is appauling and it is very unfair to children as younger children have not understood how money and finance work and can not understand why they get declined when they ask their parents when they can't earn money for themselves and even when they do have money, they only really get enough to buy a bar of chocolate and whatnot.
EXHIBIT C: THE GAME'S ENVIRONMENT
Last but not least, we have the current environment that the current version of the game has. Over the past 2-3 years, Bin Weevils has just become a ground used for illegal hacking. I say this is because the Bin Weevils Team actually have no skills on fixing minor database and server exploits and since they haven't shown any skilled coding through creating major updates, I think hackers have clearly picked up on it and have found it to be a great place to practice their hacks. Througout months upon end, people have lagged/crashed the servers by spawning a load of mushrooms around Flum's Fountain and not so long ago, this happened:
Now, I am not saying reaching out products to children in general is bad as companies do need to make profits but on Bin Weevils, it has got to the stage when they are more likely irritated with adverts rather than actually advertised with adverts. I mean, on children's TV channels, children expect advertisements and waiting times between their programmes and can simply choose to watch or avoid the adverts until their programme is back on.
The ways in which Bin Weevils advertise is appauling and it is very unfair to children as younger children have not understood how money and finance work and can not understand why they get declined when they ask their parents when they can't earn money for themselves and even when they do have money, they only really get enough to buy a bar of chocolate and whatnot.
EXHIBIT C: THE GAME'S ENVIRONMENT
Last but not least, we have the current environment that the current version of the game has. Over the past 2-3 years, Bin Weevils has just become a ground used for illegal hacking. I say this is because the Bin Weevils Team actually have no skills on fixing minor database and server exploits and since they haven't shown any skilled coding through creating major updates, I think hackers have clearly picked up on it and have found it to be a great place to practice their hacks. Througout months upon end, people have lagged/crashed the servers by spawning a load of mushrooms around Flum's Fountain and not so long ago, this happened:
Now of course, this sort of language is very innapropriate for younger children and the team were too incompitent to try and prevent this from happening. Time to time, you may get that odd slip in which hackers do find extreme ways of exploiting like above but the hacking is happening too much (recently, I reported 55Pixels to KidSafe for the innapropriate hacking and 55Pixels started telling me that everything is fine since they removed the exploited magazines but look around, it's not just that!). A lot of children themselves are going to see all this in action and when you see extrordinary things like that happen in-game, you may just start researching how to do it. Not just this, but many accounts have been comprimised from time to time and that would send an instant emotional effect onto a young child who's account got hacked.
A lot of scripted exploits like the Flum's Fountain mushroom spawner and the ability to chat whilst chat is disabled can be downloadable from the creators and downloaing is in fact something a young child shouldn't be doing as it doesn't have the judgement of whether or not you should trust the link or if they happen to click on a disguised virus download, that would sure not be good for the computer! So in a way, I guess you could say it influences children to perform advanced, risky computer operations or even get influenced to do something illegal unknowingly.
Furthermore, we can go into the community in general. There are several older people who go on the game at late hours and start online dating with one another and if say a younger child was granted permission to stop up late went online and tried interacting with these people, they will likely get harassed or perhaps get told things they shouldn't know! Also, there are many at the moment who use extra letters in order to disguise words that no young child should be hearing and 55Pixels decide to block caps locks and spaces in names in order to attempt to stop it from happening and it hasn't worked! They can clearly see that it hasn't worked but would continue with the silly block anyway. I myself would have blocked the ability to add a character or two in between innapropriate words so that it makes it almost impossible for the disguise to even say right. For example, I would code something that makes it so that 'tRape', 'tRtape', 'tRtatpe' etc can't be allowed or perhaps, I'd implement a system like a few Disney games have where the player's chosen name has to be sent to a staff member in which the submitted name can be either rejected or approved. As said earlier in this post, language is one thing children likely copy and if a child says 'duck you' without knowing it is a disguised swear term, they will get into trouble and would have stooped down to that level unknowingly.
Overall, for as much as Bin Weevils aim their game at young children, the game itself and how it's run by undealt community makes it unsuitable for children to even play on. Mums have already been complaining about the game from as far back as 2010, just after it had a huge makeover!
I myself wouldn't recommend this game to young children due to how it advertises and how it can teach you the opposite of what's right. I'd say maybe to playing Club Penguin since any form of violence is just typical stunts made by playing cards in which no child could even perform but even then, Disney are over 25X worse when it comes to money loving so Club Penguin can be very commerical too. Out of all the popular games so far, I'd myself recommend my child to Animal Jam as from what I've seen from what a few friends in my community have shared; there are major updates and even though I haven't played it myself, I can already see it's a good influence since it's made from National Geographic (a company specialising in the beauty of the Earth) in which it promotes friendly relations and interests towards animals in which in my opinion, I think all children need a connection to nature. You never know, maybe in the future, there will be less deforestation, less animal cruelty, less hunting etc because of it! Please note that I am not speaking on behalf of Animal Jam and I'm not advertising anything; this is just what I've gathered from what I've seen and have had no experience of the game myself.
It's such a shame to see how even 55Pixels themselves play a part in bringing a bad influence onto younger children. Now finally, we reach the end of this MEGA post so as always...
That's it for this post!
A lot of scripted exploits like the Flum's Fountain mushroom spawner and the ability to chat whilst chat is disabled can be downloadable from the creators and downloaing is in fact something a young child shouldn't be doing as it doesn't have the judgement of whether or not you should trust the link or if they happen to click on a disguised virus download, that would sure not be good for the computer! So in a way, I guess you could say it influences children to perform advanced, risky computer operations or even get influenced to do something illegal unknowingly.
Furthermore, we can go into the community in general. There are several older people who go on the game at late hours and start online dating with one another and if say a younger child was granted permission to stop up late went online and tried interacting with these people, they will likely get harassed or perhaps get told things they shouldn't know! Also, there are many at the moment who use extra letters in order to disguise words that no young child should be hearing and 55Pixels decide to block caps locks and spaces in names in order to attempt to stop it from happening and it hasn't worked! They can clearly see that it hasn't worked but would continue with the silly block anyway. I myself would have blocked the ability to add a character or two in between innapropriate words so that it makes it almost impossible for the disguise to even say right. For example, I would code something that makes it so that 'tRape', 'tRtape', 'tRtatpe' etc can't be allowed or perhaps, I'd implement a system like a few Disney games have where the player's chosen name has to be sent to a staff member in which the submitted name can be either rejected or approved. As said earlier in this post, language is one thing children likely copy and if a child says 'duck you' without knowing it is a disguised swear term, they will get into trouble and would have stooped down to that level unknowingly.
Overall, for as much as Bin Weevils aim their game at young children, the game itself and how it's run by undealt community makes it unsuitable for children to even play on. Mums have already been complaining about the game from as far back as 2010, just after it had a huge makeover!
I myself wouldn't recommend this game to young children due to how it advertises and how it can teach you the opposite of what's right. I'd say maybe to playing Club Penguin since any form of violence is just typical stunts made by playing cards in which no child could even perform but even then, Disney are over 25X worse when it comes to money loving so Club Penguin can be very commerical too. Out of all the popular games so far, I'd myself recommend my child to Animal Jam as from what I've seen from what a few friends in my community have shared; there are major updates and even though I haven't played it myself, I can already see it's a good influence since it's made from National Geographic (a company specialising in the beauty of the Earth) in which it promotes friendly relations and interests towards animals in which in my opinion, I think all children need a connection to nature. You never know, maybe in the future, there will be less deforestation, less animal cruelty, less hunting etc because of it! Please note that I am not speaking on behalf of Animal Jam and I'm not advertising anything; this is just what I've gathered from what I've seen and have had no experience of the game myself.
It's such a shame to see how even 55Pixels themselves play a part in bringing a bad influence onto younger children. Now finally, we reach the end of this MEGA post so as always...
That's it for this post!