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A Real Mom Reviews the Games Industry Report Card
Last month's National Institute on Media and the Family 'report card' was pretty much more of the same from the reactionary group. Recently a real parent (Colleen Hannon from GamerDad) sat down with the report to offer up some comments. "They still can't seem to read the names of the games off the front of the box. What they have listed as 'Call to Duty 4' is actually Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. That may seem like a minor mistake, but if you type what's on their list into a search engine to get more information off the ESRB's website or Google, it won't return the real results on the game. And without that last bit at the end, you're going to get a list with all the games in the series which can be confusing and not all of them are M rated. For someone who thinks parents should pay more attention and research they aren't helping them out much." Via GamePolitics.
Frag?
This whole mess is more about politicians being able to seemingly protect children, and get money/support from lobbying groups that want to protect the children than anything else. Parents that truly care take the time to look at the back of the box, read the descriptions and check the ESRB sticker. They don't bow to pressure from their kids to get a game that they're not comfortable with their kids playing. And then they probably watch their kid play some and make sure it's not outrageous.
Parents that don't care, or are just prone to give into their kids anyway aren't going to do any research and aren't going to be watching their kids play.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
... with someone who's completely biased the other way?
OK, so she's a "mom", but that doesn't make her the spokesperson for all moms.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
If this guy is a Mom then don't come yelling that his kid is messed up cause of video games.
(I'd complain about the irritating use of "mom" but nowadays I'm just grateful for any adult who doesn't say "mommy".)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
First Off:
"Retailers must return to the level of compliance in previous years" - Ok, lets see when I was a Babbages(Now Gamestop) Manager we didn't enforce anything. You have $59.99 to buy this game here is your copy. You know what - thats the way it should be. Your the parent pay attention to what your kid is buying and playing.
Then:
The list of games to avoid, thats a joke too, at least without context. My Daughter is 10 weeks old, but lets scale this up and say she was 10 Years Old instead. I'll go an record as saying several of those games I would let her play when she is a 10yo I don't see a problem. The Half-Life franchise, Gears of War, Call Of Duty and several others I'll let her play those from the moment she can point the mouse in the right direction. She will know the difference between shooting someone on a computer and really shooting someone. Thats my job as a parent to teach her that. Its not some out side random organization's job to dictate that to my child. Now its also important to note that she will not have a computer/game system (or TV for that matter) in her own room until she is 14 at least. Therefore the only systems she will have access too will be in shared and/or public spaces in our house. We will know what she is doing.
"Mediawise Recommend Games for Children and Teens"
Not a shooter among them interesting...guess what shooters are fun, and they always have been Atari 2600 when I was kid had a shooter came with the system it was called "Combat" funny that...all those games of combat and I'm not twisted warped or on death row.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
My girlfriend and I were discussing this a couple days ago, actually. We are both avid gamers (and also both 23). She is more of a classic gamer (Atari, NES, etc.) and prefers platformers, puzzle games, and horror-style FPS (her current favourite to watch is Bioshock...she doesn't like playing scary games, but LOVES watching them be played). I am more of an "in the now" gamer (although I've been going through my back-catalogue of N64 games lately) and prefer RTS, RPG, and RPG/Shooter hybrids.
Both of us have no problem (and quite enjoy) violent video games. What happens when we have a kid?
The same thing that happend to us when we were little. Both her parents and my parents would ensure that we could discern the difference between the fantasy in a game and the reality in life...as long as we did that, there were no restrictions insofar as what we watched or what we played.
I imagine I'm going to do the same with my kid. Naturally, since both of us are regular gamers, we would prolly know what is in their games because we will have played them. Don't get me wrong, they aren't going to be in a Dukematch when they are five, but if at age 12 they want to play GTA7 and can prove to me that they know it is fantasy (and that they know what would happen if they did such things in real life), then they can play it to their heart's content. I would rather my kids be exposed to sex and violence early on in life enough to be able to look at it objectively and not be suprised when they are older and suddenly see something violent and react in the same way that most of the sheep do. I don't want them to be sheltered, I want show them that the world is a violent place, but I don't want to have to show them using national media or ogrish.com or some place like that. Video games make for the perfect medium to introduce children to modern day real issues while not succumbing them to all the bullshit that usually goes along with it.
After all, would you rather your kids learn about sex and violence WITHOUT you by their side?
Living With a Nerd
Parent seems to think it might be funny to misquote the article for some kind of troll purposes. Read the original article because the author didn't say anything like that.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
I've spent some time in game stores, and overheard a good few conversations. The best parents ask the salespeople what happens in the game. And the better salespeople can give the kind of information the parent wants:
"Some people fight each other. Like punching and kicking. There's not really so much blood, but the girls wear very revealing outfits."
"You skateboard around doing tricks. The crashes are pretty brutal, and there's some crude jokes."
"You collect and control little monsters that fight and stuff. You don't actually see them fight, you just kind of read what they did."
And I think that's what's missing from the ESRB web site - they don't give the kind of context many parents need to evaluate a game. Now I think it's reasonably clear a young kid shouldn't be playing either Dead or Alive Extreme 2 or Mass Effect (and both are M rated, which seems right) but look at the content descriptors:
Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Simulated Gambling
Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Blood, Language, Violence
From just that, you might think these are comparable games. Compare that to the information you get from a synopsis:
"You ogle bikini girls and buy them bikinis. That's the whole point of the game."
"You buy guns and shoot aliens. In the story, there's a love scene where you can see a girl's bum for a second."
Whatever you may think of the relative offensiveness of that content, I think that's information a parent needs to have in order to make a decision. These games' content are very different.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Isn't that what constitutes "balance" in this partisan, post-Fairness Doctrine world?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Ummm, those funny little lines around words are called quotation marks, the mark a "quote". If you look at the "quotes" and do a search based on those in the article you will find those "quotes". Perhaps you are too important to read the article but important enough for everyone to listen... You should me modded down for wasting our time.
1) I can't remember the last time I saw a rating on a book...any book...the last I checked, if your 12 or 13 year old has a library card, they can go check out Stephen King, Clive Barker, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, V.C. Andrews...all kinds of books depicting violence and sex without anybody saying much of anything.
2) Age is a number, it may provide a yardstick for maturity but it doesn't have a 1:1 correlation to it...just because someone made it to 20, doesn't necessarily mean that should any more or less freedom than a 14 year old.
3) As an individual, it's my responsibility to evaluate whether or not something is an acceptable risk. I know I evaluate all the games my children are allowed to play and determine yes or no based on their maturity and the content of the game. Ratings provide a false sense of security and don't usually tell me anything until I play the game. There are some pretty obvious ones but football is based on the principle of pummeling the other guy to stop the ball yet all of the games I've seen have been rated E...with no-one bothering to acknowledge the violence.
4) Thank you puritans for managing to mess with American society 300 years later! That's so swell!
The problem I've observed with too many parents is that they try to hard to be their children's buddy or they don't want to come off as uncool. So they wont even venture to ask about a game at the risk of coming off as a prude. Too many parents also apparently can't be bothered to look into what their kids are playing.
Earlier in the year when the media has spun itself into a frenzy, yet again, over violence in games they ran a story about a mother who was shocked to discover that the game she had purchased for her son, Grand Theft Auto, was violent. As if the name wasn't enough of a tip off to questionable subject matter she didn't even have the wherewithal to flip over the damn box and look at the rating or at least see what she could glean from the screenshots. Then again I've seen parents getting games for children which considerably more graphic imagery on the packaging. And I've seen parents taking small children to see fairly intense movies.
Too many parents can't be bothered to see what their kids are up to. The excuse I often hear is that they can't observe their kids 24 hours a day, so why even bother? They absolve themselves of responsibility and then expect the government to take over for them. And this is where the problem arises. They want to government to oversee everything so that they don't have to worry about anything.
Parents aren't supposed to by cool; they aren't supposed to be buddies. They need to be responsible for what their kids do and what they're exposed to.
You really want to know how few women there are on Slashdot? Here's how.
Step 1: Go anywhere* that there are two or more moms.
Step 2: State that some mom is "A Real Mom".
Step 3: (duck)
Anywhere but here, that headline would have sparked a 500+ post flamewar.
*Note: Do not attempt this in meatspace.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
The more I read this stuff, the more I realise that it's all terribly ironic that all of the opposing factions are fighting for the same thing.
The ESRB, flawed as it is, is trying to provide information for consumers to make decisions. Two interesting quotes from their website:
"ESRB ratings are an excellent source for guidance and information about game content, but we also encourage parents to go beyond the ratings and do their own research about the games they or their children are considering for purchase or rental."
"While the ESRB does not have the authority to enforce its ratings at the retail level, it does work closely with retailers and game centers to display information that explains to customers how the rating system works."
The goofballs at NIMF may be going about things the wrong way, but they honestly do seem to believe that they're protecting children. By making decisions for parents, they are implicitly informing them. (Compare this to the movie industry: If a parent sees that a movie is rated NC-17, they don't have to make any decisions about whether it's appropriate for their 10-year-old, because the kid won't be able to get into it anyways.)
The good folks at Gamerdad are trying to avoid the protectionist attitudes of NIMF and the studied neutrality of the ESRB, and examine the content of games in context with regards to kids. They also are more than happy to enjoy adult games as adults, while keeping them away from their own kids (and letting you make your own decisions with your own kids). This is really how a maturity rating should work.
Finally, I'm sick of reading that most parents suck for not being the sole voice of responsiblity their kids' lives. YES, parents need to make these decisions. YES some parents neglect that field, and some of them (certainly not all!) do so because they don't care. However, most parents want what's right for their kids as well. ESRB ratings should be used as an indicator for the parents on what to look for. If some parents rely too havily on the ratings (or the comments from NIMF or gamerdad, or their kids' word, or...) part of it may be because they're not aware of the potential for video games. Consider someone in their early 40s, with a ten-year-old kid. It's entirely possible that the last video games they played were before the Commodore 64 hit the shelves. In order to make informed decisions about video games, they need to know that video games have evolved to the point where informed decisions need to be made, and they're worried about their kids making friends, not taking candy from strangers, avoiding street drugs, school, etc., etc., etc..
Bottom line in defense of flawed parents: raising a kid is different now than it was when we were raised, to the point that you can't always see where the new risks are coming from. More tools and more information is an asset, not a 'crutch for shitty parents who don't care.'
(Random aside: This also applies to 'netnanny' style blocking software. My son is being raised to use the internet responsibly, and until he's older, not without one of us being present. That doesn't change the fact that I ALSO am going to install blocking software, maintain and review firewall logs, and bring up any issues that occur. It's called defense-in-depth, and it works.)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I don't know about you guys, but when I search for "call of duty 4" the first hit is http://www.callofduty.com/ which has call of duty 4 modern warfare as the main page. It even has an age restriction drop down menu to make sure you are old enough to view a site advertising a rated M game.
Weaksauce as they say...
For god sake stop retarding the development of your child. The human mind learns from input, be it media content, life, or activities. There is no such thing as bad input, ALL input is useful and the brain derives useful information from it, learns to cope with it, learns what to avoid from it, and so forth. You can't dictate how a child will interpret and store that input, nor are you bright enough to define it by regulating the input, they will get that input anyway eventually and you will only serve to have slowed their mental development.
Perhaps you think ignorant children playing with imaginary friends are cute. I prefer rational and logical children I can have a discussion with. Ignorance may be bliss but I don't know many adults who would choose to be ignorant or mentally retarded. Maybe you are in the other crowd who wants them to be childlike, read ignorant, for as long as possible so that they are easier to control. Unlike those other pesky teenagers who use critical thinking skills and ask authority figures, such as parents, hard questions, like "Why?"
How about you try something new. Stop censoring your children altogether, to hell with the other parents, and start advising your children on how THEY CHOOSE to interpret the input. There is nothing wrong with a child learning about the birds and the bees while a toddler. Exposure to foul language can an excellent introduction to the sensitivities of others and consequences. A video game with cars being chased by police (as mentioned in the article) is a great opener to a continuation of the discussion on consequences, being less of an establishment type I would have fun with that discussion. A three year old won't fully understand, but it all goes into that mind somewhere and who said these talks only occur once?
Worried about desensitization? Don't be. Sensitization is a bad thing, it's what happens when you are underexposed to something and you are unable to cope with the something. It may be a sad world we live in and there may be some things we don't want to have to cope with, but that is a seperate issue. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, it is never advantageous to not be able to cope with something. That leaves you less able to take rational action in the face of that something. Interestingly, the more you let yourself encounter things you are underexposed to, the better your brain becomes able to cope with not being able to cope and the more capable you are acting rationally.
I'm not saying go find the nastiest goat porn you can and start driving into your child's mind 24/7. I am merely saying don't censor what comes your way anyway.
And what about those of us who feed their kids real food (like fruit and milk and all those "weird" non-frosted, non-processed things), and teach them to distinguish good TV (and games, and books) from bad, so they can make their own decisions?
There's nothing inherently wrong about TV or games. I'd much rather see my kids watching good documentaries on BBC or Discovery (or playing games that stimulate their brains) than reading shallow commercial crap like Harry Potter. But I won't forbid them from reading it, either. I'll just give them a taste of Tolkien and Terry Pratchett, and if they're smart (which they are) they'll figure out which ones to occupy their time with.
Back in the 80s I worked at a paper and The last Temptation of Christ came out to great controversy. A local church ran an ad telling people how horrible the movie was and not to go to it. Only thing is, they called it "The Temptation of Jesus."
Stupid fuckers hadn't even seen the movie. We ran the ad uncorrected.
This space available.
Its good to see that not everyone wants to destroy gaming as being evil and corrupting the poor little kids. This was the first time that I have seen gamerdad.com and i plan on using it more in the future. Its a nice reference site from the little that I have seen so far. Also reading the original report, i noticed that they based their findings for the adults on "2,392 adults (aged 18 and over) of whom 690 have a child in their household." Even considering that all of those 2392 adults were partners and that the corresponding partner was also polled, effectively halving the total households to 1196, then that would mean that some 500 households polled didn't even have a kid present. Suddenly the numbers showing adults saying "Ive never seen this" or "I dont know what this means" dont mean as much because they DONT NEED TO. Either they included data from 1500 people without kids (or without custody) or they drew their conclusions from a sampling size of 700. Neither seems to me to be very reliable. Another point that Colleen could have brought up.
You know one way those buddy parents could get in on the game monitoring is to read reviews, or better yet go to metacritic. Sure, a lot of games "journalism" is garbage, but you can use it to compare relative merits of games. I teach high school and I have more credibility talking about whether a game is good or not versus how much "mature" content it has. I am a gamer myself (since like 1980) so I don't get my info from reviews. Certainly any parent who didn't want their kid playing Kane and Lynch could point to the number of reviews that labeled it a turkey. Or insist that your kids show you good reviews before you consider a purchase. There's something to be said for insisting on quality instead of just looking at ratings. I mean, consider the ratings too, but treat it like a movie or TV show. You don't want your kids watching The Pink Panther (2006) when they could be watching The Pink Panther(1963).
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
When i was 10 my father used to park me on the company's mainframe to play NetHack.
I lied in a succubus arms and time stood still.
Curse you society!
Or rather, what is a fake-mom? ;-)
Visit http://www.crunzh.com/ for free software. Mac/Lin/Win
Actually, wouldn't that be an appeal to authority?