Gamertell

The average gamer age is higher than it was when most of us started gaming. Content is much more mature than when the older gamers started as well. Parents, who are often gamers as well, still want to insure that their kids play age-appropriate games.

If you don’t want your kids to have exposure to inappropriate content, the only place you can really limit their exposure is in the home. Even then your control over inappropriate content in your house is still lacking to an extent. Unless your child is home schooled, has no friends, doesn’t watch TV, never goes online and doesn’t flip through magazines or the newspaper; sooner or later there’s going to be exposure to content deemed inappropriate for a child.

Even with the general availability of information, there are a couple ways to deal with the rise in mature content.

You can limit your own exposure to things that wouldn’t be appropriate for your children. But if you look at any game, sooner or later you might find something that’s questionable. An example is the Pokemon franchise. An argument from an overly analytical and critical eye that could be made regarding the franchise is that it promotes animal cruelty at certain level, yet it’s still rated “Everyone” without any controversy. Another example is Pong Toss, which was talked about in the Gamertell article “MADD shouldn’t be so mad about Beer Pong’s E rating.“

The other way to deal with the availability of information isn’t to forbid exposure but to accept it and limit the time spent playing with the content. Ease the child into it. That way you can at least control how long your kids play a game with questionable content. Easing the child into gaming, it doesn’t mean thrust them into a game like Grand Theft Auto or Gears of War from the start. Start them off with more age appropriate content but also mix in “Teen” rated games. As the child starts showing a higher level of maturity towards the content bring in games that require a higher level of maturity but take away the limit on the “Teen” rated games.

There is something good about easing the child into gaming. While the child is getting used to gaming, you are able to control the length of time they spend playing with certain content until they show themselves mature enough for it. You can also bond with the child on a common ground by playing more games with your child.

Read [Dallas News] Also read [Gamertell]

Image borrowed from MSNBC

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