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Gamers Don't Want Grief
An article at the Guardian Gamesblog looks at the frustrations of online griefers. They talk about some of the unpleasant activities online gamers engage in, and briefly discuss the future of dealing with griefers. Scott Jennings and Richard Bartle chime in with ideas on how things might be handled. From the article: "'I expect we'll see more and more self-government,' says Scott Jennings, game developer and author of Massively Multiplayer Games For Dummies. 'The reason is fairly obvious if not particularly noble: it's less expensive for game companies to have their customers police themselves than hire people to do it. The trick, and why you don't see it generally, is to construct self-policing schemes in such a way that they don't enable unscrupulous players to use them as tools of grief.'" Darniaq disagrees, on the basis that players just don't care about immersion.
No, if you have to verify with a credit card the age limits work quite well, and if a parent lets their child use thier card to get on, you can sue them for fraud. Seen it done. And while yes some children will sneak through, you can usually quickly identify them by their behavoir and get them kicked out.
There is a reason society limits the rights of children, and I myself prefer not to deal with someone online who is a child unless I know that upfront. I also do not like to play online games with children in them, mainly because their behavior is often obnoxious and they usually have no social skills. Like I really want to hear some 14 year old trash talking to me.