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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.
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.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
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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