In early December of 2005, my daughter sat on my lap in front of the computer, and together we created our first set of toon avatars and joined the blossoming virtual world of Disney’s ToonTown Online. One in particular, a bear three shades of brown, caught my eye as we decided on a name. My daughter typed in “brownie” and I thought about fixing the capitalization, but curbed my college-writing-professor reflexes, and let the name go. As a land of primary colors flooded the screen, brownie landed in a cartoon world filled with talking dogs and cats and other various animals of all shapes and sizes and colors that walked upright and all wore gloves similar to the ones made famous by the presiding mouse. One of brownie’s first actions was to splash into the fountain in the middle of the playground. My daughter and I spent the next half hour trying to get out of the fountain. Finally, I closed the program. But it was too late; I was hooked.
Over the next months and years, Hannah and I would play together, or take turns playing. I quickly realized that ToonTown was unlike other MMOs in that it required teamwork to progress in the game. This, in a time where every other game seemed to pit players against each other (PvP), was a welcome relief. So, too, was the absence of blood and gore in battles since the enemies were a series of robotic “cogs” with names like “Glad Handers” and “Corporate Raiders” that would spin and explode in a flash of light and a shrapnel-spray of bolts and gears when defeated. Like many online games, ToonTown came with the most basic instructions, encouraging players to discover the rules as they progressed in the game through what Steven Johnson calls “probing” and “telescoping” in his book, Everything Bad is Good For You. We soon learned that the CTRL key allows a toon to jump, and using the arrow buttons while jumping allows a toon to move in any direction, or even change direction mid-jump. Come to think of it, the game never followed the laws of physics, opting instead to follow the laws of cartoon physics where toons might be flattened, or might go sad, but they never died.
That is until notice was given on August 20th 2013 that Disney is shuttering ToonTown as of September 19th, 2013 at 11:59 a.m. PDT. Suddenly, tens of thousands of toons were given a death sentence and a date of execution in one fell-swoop. Anger and disbelief rolled across ToonTown fan-site forums and Skype chat-rooms. Videos of children making tearful pleas to Disney to reconsider began to surface on YouTube. Petitions asking Disney to reverse course were formed on Change.org and quickly began to amass thousands of signatures. Within 48 hours, one petition, started by Miho Nosaka, has garnered close to 10,000 signatures.
Why this outpouring, the casual reader might ask? Surely if tens of thousands of “real” animals were facing extinction, a petition would be in order, but ToonTown is a collection of pixels on a screen, strings of code on a server. Eight years ago, I would have agreed with this and dismissed the petition as some first-world trivial piffle, a sign of misplaced priorities. But having spent the last eight years immersed in ToonTown, I understand the anguish, the fear, the real pain my co-players are feeling. ToonTown is different than other MMOs.
First, ToonTown is designed for kids, but also for adults who want to enjoy time with kids or grandkids, playing together in the same house or from across continents. The game requires teamwork to complete the quests and defeat bosses of all types. One of Disney’s hints at successful game-play encouraged players to find other toons with similar tasks and work together. Progressing through the game with others allowed for friendships to form, and taught children the benefit of teamwork and relying on one another. As critics lambasted online games that promoted violence and kept players in isolation, ToonTown stood apart in its basic gaming strategy, creating a strong appeal to adults who might feel disconnected from their co-workers, their neighbors, but strike up friendships with other adult players.
Like most adult players, I started playing with my daughter and continued as she lost interest in the game. Truthfully, some of the harder quests were beyond the ability of young children, and more geared toward teens and adults. And the limited ability to chat in the game, rightfully controlled to protect children players, led to the organization of numerous fan-site forums and Skype chat-rooms devoted to the game. Most of the fan-sites are run by responsible teens and adults and adhere to strict privacy and content controls, again to protect minors. ToonTown Hall is a good example of these sites: it adheres to content that is “PG” and its site moderators are professional and fair.
These sites allowed for players to get to know each other better, to share information, strategies, and successes from the game, and also to share art, stories, thoughts and opinions about the rest of the world. Clans were created, focusing on certain aspects of the game, offering help to those who needed it, company to those who shared the same interests. Players became even more entwined with their avatar toons, as the personalities began to show through in the forums. Kids struggled with life issues, and friends of all ages offered advice, good advice. Friendships, sprouted in the game, flourished in the fan-site forums. Teens found boyfriends and girlfriends; adults found other adults; sometimes resulting in divorce, sometimes in marriage. Fights and misunderstandings led to rival clans being formed. People drifted in and out of the game-world. Children and adults got sick and died, and tearful family members came onto the game and fan-sites to thank the community for the smiles, the friendships, and the solace survivors had in playing on their loved one’s toons. The players became a community, immersed in the stuff of life, facilitated by ToonTown.
I have met wonderful adults in ToonTown and the ToonTown Hall fan-site. I met a cat named Sir Wilbur Octofoot who regaled us with humorous stories and updates about his vacation, as well as his construction of a large fish pond in his back yard, and his fruitless attempts to keep his fish from being eaten. I met two brothers, both retired, who play ToonTown with their wives: together, the four of them run the Tie-Dye Nation clan, known for its bizarre events and special game marathons. I met a multi-colored dog, Cool Hector Fizzlegoober, whose player fought in Operation Desert Storm, and who demonstrated chivalry to many in the game and outside the game. I met Bella Bug, a hospital nurse who plays ToonTown with her son on her nights off. I met One Noble Bunny, who lives in Scandinavia, and whose unbridled optimism, manners, and his generosity with the children players in the game should earn him sainthood. I met grandparents in Ireland, parents in Central America, young adults in Hong Kong. And I met Lady Murky Mommo, who taught me the value of friendship and self-respect.
I have also met many awesome teens in the game, although I limited my friendships with them outside of the game. I met teens who ran clans with hundreds of members; I met teens who probably slept in their Math and History and English classes but who could quickly calculate the amount of damage needed to destroy a cog with minimal waste, teens who wrote engaging social commentaries and wonderful stories and poems on ToonTown Hall. I woke up at two a.m. last June to watch a streaming video telecast of one teen player’s high school graduation in Okinawa. I gave teens advice about attending college, or family matters; and from them, I got a sense of hope for our future.
But it was not all a Utopia. I sit and think about why ToonTown failed, why Disney is pulling the plug. ToonTown was written in open-code, which made it vulnerable to hackers manipulating the game play. At first, the manipulations were small, barely noticeable, but they grew in scope and frequency. And hackers, mainly teenage males according to their videos on YouTube, became more emboldened and started competing with each other to create the most destructive hacks: players were being disconnected from the game, entire servers were crashing, toon-bots were filling districts, bringing down the entire game. Hackers were avoiding game bans, and causing mischief and financial damage to Disney with smug impunity. This has been the ToonTown of the last two years. I was part of a number of adult players, formed into loose groups to research the hackers, to alert Disney when we found new hacking codes posted in the far corners of the web, to do what we could in the game to counter the hackers. But as the hackers continued to operate freely, and released the hacking codes, suddenly any teenager with the ability to copy and paste could hack into the game. The problem spread exponentially.
Disney was unable or unwilling to pursue effective action against the hackers. I imagine nobody wants to think of Mickey Mouse arresting teenage boys, and Disney tries to avoid bad publicity as much as corporately possible, but from the eyes of honest players, Disney did very little to take back control of the game. We players tried; we counseled those we knew were hacking, and some of them listened. Most laughed at us.
And then Disney announced it is pulling the plug: the heavy irony that players have been fighting corporate cogs in the game, and the game gets axed because of a bottom line on a spreadsheet, decided by a suited executive who probably never played ToonTown, flattens us like a piano from the sky.
Perhaps the petitions will work; most likely they will not. Perhaps the game creators, now working for different companies, will make an offer to purchase and repair the game…although it is improbable that Disney will give up control of the mouse. Perhaps an enterprising company will create a similar game that champions teamwork, limits violence and gore, and immerses players in a beautiful virtual world where one can socialize as one goes on quests. A nice wish on a dying breath.
September 19th, 2013 is a black day, looming just on the horizon. Imagine the horror if you woke up one morning and the entire city of Muskogee, Oklahoma had vanished and suddenly, 40,000 souls perished. Imagine a half dozen of those souls to be your sole creation, crafted and perfected for thousands of hours over the course of years. Yes, real people will live when ToonTown closes and we players stare at a green computer screen announcing our permanent disconnection from the game server. But a vibrant, thriving community, made up of real humans and real toons will cease to exist. We are losing our home, our community, the children inside our selves.