Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

A Real Mom Reviews the Games Industry Report Card

Posted by Zonk on from the oooo-you-are-so-in-trouble dept.

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.

3 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. If he's such an expert.. by kailoran · · Score: 4, Informative
    From TFA:

    If I had to come up with some suggestions for a tween/teenage car nut that don't involve getting chased by cops at any point in the game, I'd replace Need for Speed with either "Project Gotham Racing 4" or "Forza Motorsport 2".
    Someone should tell him that the new NFS actually has no cops and is about legal racing this time
  2. So we counter a biased "report card" by n6kuy · · Score: 3, Informative

    ... 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.
  3. Parent's responsibility by MaWeiTao · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.