Disney Launches Online DS Community

Disney has apparently launched "DGamer", a service designed to allow Nintendo DS users to create online profiles, track accomplishments, and connect with other users. First announced back in February, most every Disney game going forward will be completely integrated. "'DGamer was built around the vision to connect Disney video game fans in a secure, fun environment and it is truly the first integrated online community of its kind to do so on multiple platforms,' said Graham Hopper, executive vice president and general manager for Disney Interactive Studios. 'We recognize the importance of delivering unique experiences to our consumers and how crucial it is for parents to feel confident that the community is secure for their kids.'"

Exactly what Nintendo did not want

[CogDissident]

Nintendo has gone to amazing lengths to avoid having anything that even resembles names on any of their games. All the Wii games have anonymous players, with chat functionality purposefully removed. You can't even add people by name, you need a 15 something digit randomized ID to add a friend to your system.

I'm surprised that this was allowed at all. Maybe its because Disney will take the blame from parents the first time a child-stalker story hits CNN?

Technology section?

[CogDissident]

Why the heck is this in technology and not games? It's not really "tech" news, because its not really anything that hasn't been done before. It really is just gaming news.

Re:Exactly what Nintendo did not want

[KDR_11k]

Does Nintendo actually enforce the use of those codes or are they just using them and some developers are following their lead?

Re:Social Networking for the DS.

[Slashdot Suxxors]

Kingdom Hearts flashed through my mind as I hit submit, but that's the exception. The majority of Disney titles however, are utter garbage.

No there is precedent for this

[zeromusmog]

Remember that Disney ran Virtual Magic Kingdom for quite some time, and closed it down recently, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was because they were basically moving it to this new DS platform. If Nintendo for some reason lets them bypass the friend code thing and have something vaguely resembling an online chatroom, it's because Disney used VMK to make a very impressive case to Nintendo to circumvent the rules--keeping in mind that S-E was denied when they wanted to port Final Fantasy XI to the Wii, this is the only way it could be explained if DGamer allows communication with strangers.

The reason for this being that with VMK Disney went out of their way to control chat activity. I only played it very briefly and mostly at Disneyland park, but the most striking feature was that yes you could chat with random Disneyholics connected to the service, but you could only use pre-approved dictionary words to do so. It seemed robust enough to keep from being excessively limiting (unlike the auto-translate feature of the aforementioned Final Fantasy XI which was more useful for being entertaining and saying naughty things--I played for months before I knew the FFXI dictionary well enough to be able to even use it effectively) but I was led to assume that using it to say anything personally identifiable was excessively tricky.

So if Nintendo greenlights this with the inclusion of chat with strangers, it's going to be because Disney proved that they made VMK safe when their users had full keyboards, and that on the DS they're going to tighten it even more, and that they will have employees constantly monitoring communication to make sure it is safe.

Re:Social Networking for the DS.

[XenoPhage]

Someone hasn't played any of the Kingdom Hearts series...

While Kingdom Hearts had Disney characters in it, I'm not sure I'd call it a Disney game, per se.. I'd probably label it more of a Square Enix game with Disney licensing..