Florida Attorney General flip-flops his attitude toward video games
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum used to be similar to nearly every other politician, believing that video games would train young children to be mass murderers. He took particular issue with the Wii version of Manhunt 2 due to the fact that he thought the Wii’s motion controls would enable kids to act out their “violent tendencies.”
According to GamePolitics, the person who planted that seed in his head was, of course, a certain Jack Thompson.
However, now that the holiday season is upon us, McCollum is taking a stance that other politicians are beginning to take - cautioning parents to exercise restraint when it comes to…
Rumor: Street Fighter Alpha 2 coming to PS3, PSP
According to the ESRB, that is.
While researching a rumor about Marvel vs. Capcom 2, we stumbled upon a listing for Street Fighter Alpha 2 coming to the Playstation Portable and Playstation 3. What’s particularly interesting is that this news comes hot off the heels of Capcom’s announcement that Sakura, the schoolgirl fighter, is being added to the Street Fighter 4 roster.
Street Fighter Alpha 2 was…
Some advice for gamers raising gamers
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.
So with the general availability of information there’s a couple of ways to deal with the rise in mature content…
Sorry, Aussies: Censorship goes too far down under, everyone loses
Censoring video games has been an issue since Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil. If parents don’t want their children to play violent games, that should be up to them and no one else. However this isn’t the case in Australia where censoring laws are so strict, not even a forty-year-old man can play Grand Theft Auto.
Australia uses the rating R18+ for their mature games. With censoring laws as they are, however, it is very unlikely to ever see a game on a shelf with that rating. Australia bans any game that is deemed too violent, includes sexual content or has too many drug references. Apparently the government is full of old fogies who think video games are only for kids. Not only is this not true but it is ridiculous…
Enforcing game ratings may be a waste of time
Do game ratings even matter if kids can get their paws on M-rated games either way? That’s what Cnet writer Don Reisinger contemplates in a recent editorial, and he concludes that the answer is a big fat “No.“ Citing a recent survey that found that 17 percent of Grand Theft Auto IV buyers were under the minimum age, and that a full 80% of the underage buyers had no problem getting their parents to buy it for them, the ratings clearly aren’t doing their intended job.
I think the solution to the whole thing is adequately educating parents so they can (hopefully) make informed decisions about what their kids play. Sites like What They Play, which explains games and breaks down objectionable content in a parent-friendly format - are really the way to go.
Read [Cnet] Also Read [What They Play]
Related- Rumor: Street Fighter Alpha 2 coming to PS3, PSP
- The benefit of bundling stuff with videogames
- Florida Attorney General flip-flops his attitude toward video games
Opinion: ESRB effectiveness a matter of consistency and attention
Two things are important with video game ratings: who rates games and who pays attention to them. The “who rates games” is the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and similar boards across the world. Quite simply, they are there to think of the children so you don’t have to.
If the ESRB and similar rating companies think that user-generated content would be enough to change a game’s rating, those organizations negate their own credibility by flip-flopping a rating for content not even made by the game company. That could hinder both some gamers and all developers in fulfilling their purpose in the industry.
The other problem with the ratings is that no one pays attention to them. If someone is too young to get a popular game, they end up running to the parents. The parents quite often don’t check things out before buying them, then start complaining when violence or sexuality pops up in a game. Even with full bans…
Ireland begins banning violent games
According to the European Commission survey, Ireland is now banning violent video games.
The reason for banning violent games, according to the EU’s study of the implementation of Pan European Game Information ratings, is that many of the EU nations are not enforcing the age limits on the games identified by PEGI.
The only game currently known to be banned in Ireland is…
ESRB warns that GTA IV isn’t for kids
Leave it to the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) to take the fun out of this year’s most anticipated game, Grand Theft Auto IV. Teaming with the National Institute on Media and the Family, the two forces are strongly advising parents to take special notice of the ESRB rating for the upcoming game before buying it for children under the age of 17.
Due to be released Tuesday April 29, 2008, GTA IV isn’t the first game to be targeted by watchdog groups. Upon the release of GTA III numerous media groups and even the United States Congress targeted GTA for its explicit violence and graphic nature, many calling for the game to be pulled from shelves. However, these comments only helped promote GTA’s sales.
Free speech champion says Sony might embrace AO games
Adults Only-rated games have been despised by major retailers and console manufacturers. But there is a very distant possibility of console manufacturers giving the green signal to AO-rated games if they see any merit in the argument that AO-rated games are a form of free speech. Adam Thierer, director of The Progress & Freedom Foundation and a proponent of free speech, has addressed the possibility of AO games appearing on consoles on his blog.
Thierer feels that AO games should be accommodated into the mainstream but disagrees with a suggestion that…
Aussie government contemplating R rating for games
The Australian Federal government is contemplating the introduction of the R-18 certification for video games that contain highly explicit content not deemed fit for minors. The absence of such a certification means that titles which exceed the MA certification (only for sale to persons 15 and above) are altogether denied an Australian release…
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