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Nintendo Puts Emphasis On Parental Control
Gamespot is reporting that Nintendo will allow parents to control what games can be played on the Revolution based on game ratings and other factors. From the article: "The password-protected system will let parents set which rating categories are acceptable for their children, and prevent the system from running any software outside the approved range. The system is based on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board's industry standard ratings, and each game's rating will be encoded on each Revolution disc. Nintendo says the system will be instituted on every Revolution console worldwide, presumably utilizing the local ratings system of each region."
The Xbox has had this feature in it from the start. It just didn't get much use, for obvious reasons.
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Actually put the responsibility Squarely at the feet of the parents , no fobbing it off to the government to pass legislation or even letting the "MORAL PANIC " groups start a witch burning .
Though I don't know how many parents will actually bother to read the Manuel and discover about this feature , or how quickly the child will find a way to reset the defaults .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
As a game programmer as well as a parent, I think this is a really good idea. I think the public thinks that game developers want kids to buy all the violent or inappropriate games they can, but it's not true. People don't realize how many adult gamers are out there. Developers don't need or want kids to play violent or sexual games.
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is non-parental control. I wonder how much less greif there'd be in online games if the Mature audiences only recommendation was followed.
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I would let my kids play most things that might get an "M" for violence, but not an "M" for drugs or sexual content.
if that isn't sarcasm, i find that outright hysterical.
abort, retry, fail?
playing a violent videogame DOES NOT MAKE YOU A VIOLENT PERSON.
Please stop yelling. Why are you so upset? Hey! Hey stop HITTING ME! Oh no! It's happening again! SOMEONE MAKE HIM STOP!
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I may just be overly pessimistic here, but I don't think Nintendo intends this feature to get used. If someone starts screaming at them that one of their "overly violent" video games caused their son to... I don't know, jump up and down on the family pet turtle... Nintendo could reply:
"How awful! We're very sorry that this violence made it through the hardware lock-out we have in place to let parents control this sort of thing. Your machine MUST be defective. Oh, wait, you WEREN'T using the lock-out? Even though we broadcast it as a feature on the front of our box, in the packaging, at initial start-up, on the instruction manual for the console, on the box of each game, and in the instruction manual for each game? Er... right. We'll let our lawyers take care of this."
...will parental control really help? I'll illustrate with an example. To stop us from watching TV, our parents would lock the TV up with parental control. Naturally, my brother and I began an intensive program of password cracking. Using intelligent brute-forcing, we cracked it on the fourth try. The number? 4444. Another example. My school locked its computer (yes, singular- there were onyl 120 students) with an administrator password. It took 2 minutes to crack it- we just rebooted into safe mode and changed the passwords. As long as kids are more tech-savvy than adults, "parental control" is a joke.
I wouldn't say that is pessimistic , more that is exactly to the point . Rightly so , Nintendo cover their own backs and also give parents the power and responsibility to control what content their children have ,Quid pro quo .
,or the games developer if the software is not tagged properly )
Nintendo may not intend it to get used , but if it is well label and explained then the fault rest solely with the parent (bar any bugs
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
As a shoddy attorney who makes his fame and fortune blaming the gaming industry for society's ills, I must strongly protest anything that puts power and responsibility in the hands of other parties.
Who can I sue if the parents do a poor job raising their children? That's right, either the child or the parents. They don't have any money! We must keep all the responsibility where all the money is: centralized, in the hands of corporations. Decentralized authority only serves to keep the money away from me, a fine, upstanding lawyer, and hell of a guy.
Sincerely,
Jack Thompson
How is this going to work for countries like New Zealand where we have our own ratings that are determined after publication? It can't be encoded on the disc for obvious reasons, and games are sometimes re-rated if published in Australia (e.g. they don't have an R18 rating, but NZ does. R18 games in Australia are banned. R18 games in NZ are restricted sale).
I didn't realize there were adult titles available for Nintendo systems. Or is this just in case someone, Microsoft or Sony, mayhaps, releases "Harry Potter Does Hermione," "Yugioh's Big Score" or "Mario gets High?"
Its only as good as you use it to be. My XBox media center (yes, modded) has a "parental control", you just hit 'x' and accept that its a high level. Same for my roommate's (unmodded) PS2. Put in a high rated DVD, and whomever the first person to turn on the system is, sets the password.
Now, if you give a kid this for christmas, who's more likely to be the first to turn it on?
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
Honestly, playing a videogame that involves sexual content DOES NOT HELP YOU GET LAID. If that were true, I'd probably be...... Maybe I should just stop there..
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can be played.
If the game won't work at dinner time/homework time, that would
be wonderful
When you input the password onto Xbox Live with the ABXYLR buttons, how will you enter the parent password onto the revolution? Rotate it around, throw it in the wall, punch and slash?
THIS IS THE INTERNET. PLEASE PICK UP YOUR SERIOUS BUSINESS SUIT AT THE FRONT COUNTER.
...but the PS2's parental control system has a universal reset password clearly printed in the manual. Now call me crazy, but I think more kids read these manuals than parents. I have fond memories of my dad going crazy trying to set up the NES.
I strongly doubt any parental control system will be particularly "stronger" than the PS2's either. People forget passwords, especially when they only use it once on Christmas day. Unless Nintendo wants a lot of dead boxen out there, there'll be some sort of back door, so the system won't be very deterent to the determined, and by "determined" I mean "taking three seconds to Google it".
But seriously, why would anyone want this feature to work anyway? Parents presumably buy their kids games, or at least live in the same damn house. Paying attention to what your kids are doing will always be more effective than trying to regulate it with some machine.
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Is there any explanation for it that doesn't make the game industry look either absent minded or greedy?
Having been a child in those days, I believe I can answer this question.
The answer is yes.
Parents, even now, will have their own movies. Being adults, they would have adult movies. These aren't movies for junior, these are movies for mom and dad.
However, kids being kids, they'll find some way to reach you movies if they want to (barring you locking them up in a safe). Making it important to have some way to keep kids from playing inappropriate DVDs on the PS2, as they are very likely to be lying around the house.
Until recently, very few gamers were parents, let along parents of children who might play games. Beyond the whole issue of parents buying M rated games for their children, there are now parents who want to play M rated games. However, they would rather not let their kids do so. Having a parental lock is important to these people.
The parental lock is also useful for non-gaming parents, but the non-greedy reason for its lack of appearing before now is as above.
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