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Parents 'ignore game age ratings'
Jim Hall writes "With all the fervor recently over the 'Hot Coffee' mod and the upcoming 'Bully' game, I found it interesting that no press time seems to have been given to this little gem from the BBC: Parents 'ignore game age ratings'. I think most of us agree that the games are already rated appropriate to their audience - GTA:SA was previously rated "M" (17 and up) in the US, before public outcry forced the ESRB to move it to "AO" (18 and up). However, as this article points out, parents are more concerned about children spending too many hours playing games, rather than about what type of title they were playing."
Mr Freund suggested that the problem was that parents felt disconnected from the world of video games and so showed little interest in this aspect of their children's lives.
"Parents are too divorced from what teenagers play," he said.
Most parents are too divorced from nearly all aspects of their children's lives because they are too wrapped up in their own and the lives of those they live vicariously through via the television.
As long as the television isn't telling them that the video games are bad and the politicians aren't doing "their job" and telling parents that the video games are bad then they must be just fine.
Remember, everyone wants the politicians living inside the little electrical box to tell them what to do. Anything else is too much added stress - unless they can place the blame on someone else.
Plus, maybe the 18+ games should not be mixed in with the other games. Maybe they should be kept in an area where kids can't shop them with all the other titles. Like they keep 18+ magazines behind the counter. If a parent wants to buy it, they can ask for it.
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I suspect most of the fervor about this didn't come from the parents in the first place. The thing is, yes, most parents want to protect their children... but most of them also know that the world does contain scary/violent/sexual things, and they're less concerned with sex on television than whether their kid is doing drugs. This is as it should be.
If you're trying to get a child to turn out well-adjusted, which is more important... making sure the kid is never exposed to sex, or making sure he actually goes outside sometimes and makes friends and has a life?
All this says, I think, is that most people really do believe the latter. Media hype generally ignores this... but since when has the media cared about reality? Remember the West Nile Virus, which is really not much more dangerous than influenza? The 'sex bracelets' which most kids had never heard of before the TV was claiming they were all having middle school orgies? This isn't any different.
Parents simply assume all games are designed for children. The folks in the government seem to assume the same thing.
I mean, come on, people.
Of course parents don't pay attention to the game ratings. They're printed right on the box! in Letters, often Boldfaced, right there!
You'd have to actually read to learn what the rating is!
When's the last time you saw the masses pay attention to anything that has to be read?
As a correlary: How many of you went to see South Park, The movie in the theater? Now how many of you remember sitting within 20 feet of a bunch of little kids?
Exactly.
A) People piss and moan that there aren't enough warnings.
B) Then they ignore them so they can piss and moan about what they were warned about in the first place and demand bans.
C) Then when the thing gets banned, they complain about how the government is too intrusive.
[Almost forgot: D) Profit!]
one word: fucking people.
s'wut i sed.
Raise your kids, not mine, has always been my motto.
I am involved in what my kid plays, what he watches, who he hangs with.
I let him be exposed to more and more as his maturity level grew with him.
I showed him consequences for bad behavior.
I explained why bad was bad.
He's seventeen, and a great kid.
Not that I'm taking my hand off the switch just yet.
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They don't normally catch it on their own.
Case in point: A few years ago I worked at a game store. Woman comes in to get a game for her son and after several questions to narrow down which game it was (she forgot, but knew it had cars in it), I got a copy of the latest GTA game for her to purchase.
After asking if she wanted the hint guide to go along with it, and her refusing, she asked if this game was appropriate for her 12-year old.
"No Ma'am. This game is NOT appropriate for a 12-year old. Each game has a rating on the cover (quick explanation of the rating system) and this one is rated M for Mature. It means you should probably be 17 to play it. We don't enforce it, but we do encourage it." I flipped the copy of GTA over and showed her why it had been rated mature.
Needless to say, a parent left a little more educated and her son did not get the game that day. He probably also got a talking to over trying to get one over on mom, but I don't know that for certain.
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You know, the problem is that ratings like AO and M just aren't strong enough. Parents see it and it just doesn't look that threatening. They need to have large icons that show the detrimental effect that the game is likely to have on children. Like: TRENCH! (displays picture of a kid in a black trenchcoat with a shotgun in each hand) This game will cause your child to blow holes you could drive a truck through in their classmates! ANAL! (displays picture of child dragging another child by cute pigtails) This game will cause your child to anally rape their younger sister on a daily basis! SENATOR! (displays picture of legislation) This game will cause your child to run for office in the legislative branch! See, warnings like that will really speak to the actual fears parents have about video games, and then they'll pay more attention.
Slices, dices, eats your lunch.
The research showed that parents were more concerned about children spending too many hours playing games, rather than about what type of title they were playing.
Never mind the fact that some video games can be educational and good for you. Gentle Brain Exercises for the Nintendo DS comes to mind. Additionally some studies have shown video gaming can improve hand-eye coordination.
The older generation needs to realize that first of all, video games are no longer just for kids. The kids that were playing them back in the 80's have now grown up and have children of their own, but many of them are still playing video games. This means that there just might be games out there tailored for this more mature audiance.
And to a certain degree, sticking an 18-rating on a game made that title more desirable. "We called it Magic 18," said Mr Freund. "The 18+ label was seen as promoting the content, promising adult content rather then saying 'my parents will stop me playing this.'"
As has been shown with just about anything you put an age limit on (drinking, smoking, pornography), younger children will find this content more desirable simply for the fact that they're not allowed to have it. This might make them curious as to what about it makes the content not for them. In other cases the children will want to use the product to feel rebelious or more mature. Regardless of whether this idea of thinking is stupid or not doesn't stop it from happening.
You'd think that being young themselves at some point, the older generation would understand this phenomena and figure out a way to stop it, but obviously not. You could say that regulartory boards are designed for this, but they've failed miserably as far as I'm concerned. So rather than take direct action, people for the most part seem more interested in abdicating their parental responsiblity to government legislation.
Of course the people who need to understand this most are the people who don't read slashdot. The tech savvy crowd here is generally well aware of modern video games and the content they can contain, both good and bad.
Ironically, most people knew that games had age ratings, the study by the Swiss research firm Modulum showed.
Doh! So they actually do know that games can contain really bad content.
However, parents were still letting their children play 18-rated games.
Double Doh!
To quote the parent, "Most parents are too divorced from nearly all aspects of their children's lives." According to the article it would seem that more people than expected know about what their kids are playing, but just don't give a shit about it. So when society goes to hell because the children of today, just remember it's your fault for doing a shitty job of raising them and have no one else to blame but yourselves.
Desensitized would be if I enjoyed watching real people fly out of car windshields. It's funny when it's fake. That's not desensitized, that's seeing a line between fantasy and fiction.
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We start focusing on the issue described in this article ; as a society it is entirely hypocritical for us to decry game ratings when we do not enforce them ourselves.
Too true. Remember the V chip? That was a huge fricken deal that parents could block out certain kinds of programming that they didn't want their kids to see. Its a mandated part of every TV manufactured for the last several years. Just about every TV show has ratings and shows them as often as after each commerical break.
With all of this in place, people STILL complain about whats being shown on tv and the same lame "think of the children" argument.
As reasonable as these advocates try to appear, the fact that they're not appeased after all of these ratings systems are instituted is proof positive that nothing short of eradicating objectionable material will please them.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
well clearly
This is uncontravertable proof that partents know how to parent than senetors.
No, nothing was clear there.
Even I fell for this, to an extent, but not with video games.
I'm 24, with no kids, but I'd always considered "comic books" to be kids' stuff. This year I finally opened my mind and checked out some of the classic graphic novels like V for Vendetta. No way is that stuff at a kid's level; I think most kids would completely miss at least 50% of what Moore was saying there, and the violence level was disturbingly high in that, as well as, say, something like The Watchmen or Hellblazer. Again, not something I'd imagine most parents would want their kids to be steeped in. GTA sounds like it's at about that level.
With that said, I also think most parents are complete morons when it comes to deciding what their kids should/shouldn't be allowed to do, and also morons for blaming anyone but themselves if they aren't keeping track of their kids and have no idea what they're up to.
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I do blame the parents, and I'll tell you why.
They chose to work two jobs, they chose to have kids, and they choose not to supervise them properly. With freedom comes responsibility.
They could work less (and yes do with less money) and supervise their kids.
They could have not had kids.
My wife and I have decided that when we have kids we will have to make certain sacrifices to our personal lives and careers and standard of living to raise them properly. This is one of the tradeoffs of having kids.
I know some other people who think a child is slightly more responsiblity than a puppy and that it shouldn't really impact your life too much.
In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I had fun by stealing a police bike (since they are easy to acquire and relatively fast), going to the top of the big skyscraper downtown, gunning the engine and flying into the air.
Did I do this because I was desensitized to the idea of my own death? Of course not! Did I do this because I personally harbor suicidal thoughts? I doubt it.
I did it because it was interesting. It was a game, and I knew I wasn't driving off a skyscraper. I was seeing what was possible in the game engine. (Turns out that if you land the bike just right, you take minimal damage).
In the same light, I drove up and down the big hill in the SanFran clone town. Its possible to get quite some air on the bumps in that hill. Of course, a few unlucky pedestrians did die when I came over a hill too fast. So am I a reckless driver? Or did I realise that the pedestrians were simulated computer people and I have no intentions of doing such an act in real life?
I think the main point is that this was only a game, and I understood it was only a game.
Hate to be blunt, but every one of you that says that "Video games arn't just for kids anymore" is an idiot. Video games have NEVER been just for kids. Do you think that Custer's Revenge was designed for kids? It was way worse than anything in GTA:SA.
And for those of you that whine about parents not looking at the Rating...Have you thought that maybe a huge number of them understand that ratings bodies are designed for the lowest common denominator. Being 36, and having the 20/20 hindsight of over 20 years, I can say with confidence that by somewhere between 10 and 13 there was absolutly no content that I was not able to deal with.
It is popular today to retard our children. Historically 13 was a full adult. These "Children" built nations, ruled nations, fought wars, married, had children, ran farms and businesses. Maybe your genetic line has degraded into mush in the last 100 years, but mine has not.
And before anyone spouts off about how 'we live in more complicated times', I will call BS on that. We live in the safest, easiest, most gentle time in history. Not once have I ever had to fear that the hords were coming to rape our women and steal our crops because the weather was good. I've never had worry that me and my family were going to die because we had a bad season for our crops. (except during a brief period during a bathroom remodel) I have always had indoor plumbing, and all I had to do to get rid of my shit was to pull a little handle. The fact is, even if you have no job, and are homeless, SOMEONE will feed you. I know this is the case here in the US, and I have good reason to believe that it applies to any country that has wide distribution of video game systems.
Calling parents that don't follow the ratings 'bad' is just plain hypocritical. If anything that is in any game currently availible is going to damage your child, it is already too late, and you have already failed as a parent.