Top 5 Countdown, Day 2
All this week, I'm doing a countdown of what I deem to be the top 5 threats to gaming society in America. If you miss a segment, you can catch it in the links below.
1/30/06 - Threat #5
And now to continue...
Parents, Don't let your kids grow up to be you...
#4 in my week-long countdown is the Irresponsible Parent. Generally speaking, an irresponsible parent is a bad thing, and I firmly believe that there are plenty of people out there who should never procreate. They simply lack the maturity and sense of responsibility that should be requisite of someone who's responsible for the care and raising of another human being.
However, many otherwise wonderful parents fall short when it comes to their kids and video games. We hear all too often of some lawyer going after a game developer/studio/publisher because a parent felt that a game their child played was too violent. I know I'm not the only person who sees the problem with this situation. I ask one simple question: "Who bought the game for the kid in the first place?" Its the underlying problem that's frequently being overlooked; the kid had to get the game from somewhere, and someone had to have bought it for him/her.
Its becoming increasingly commonplace for people to blame everyone they possibly can, except themselves. The Irresponsible Parent epitomizes this fad in gaming society. How many minors have an income aside from the paltry weekly or monthly allowance? Not too many. So when I read or hear about a parent who's aghast at the violent video game their child has been exposed to, the only one who's truly at fault in my book is the parent. After all, they're the one who supplied the greenbacks to buy the game in the first place.
Now, that still leaves two possible ways that things could have played out in the store. When I worked retail at a store that sold video games, the most common scenario was as follows: the parent and child came into the store, the kid picked out a game, and the parent just took it to the cashier and paid for it. They never once paid attention to the icon in one of the two bottom corners of the game packaging that explicitly states the game's ESRB rating. That rating, had the unaware mother or father paid attention to it, would have told them that the game was rated to be appropriate for an audience little Timmy wouldn't be a part of for at least another half a decade.
The other frequent case, and again something I encountered personally when working retail, is that an aloof parent will simply give their kid the money to get the game they want. The parent lets the kid shop on their own (with the parent looking in another department, or sitting out in the car), so the kid purchases the game on their own. This is when you can start blaming the retailer a bit, because they're technically responsible to verify the age of a customer before selling age-limited products. Wal-Mart's PoS terminals actually prompt the cashier to verify a customer's ID when they ring up tobacco, alcohol, R-rated or unrated films, and video games that aren't rated E (for Everyone), and many other national chains are following suit. The store I worked for (which shall remain nameless) had no such system in place, but I tried to enforce a similar policy at the store level in hopes that it might become a chain-wide policy. Still, the parent is not involving him or herself with their child enough to know what their child is being exposed to, so the majority of blame still rests squarely on their shoulders.
One kind of Irresponsible Parent that seems to be increasing in numbers is what I like to refer to as the Opportunist. For example, there was a grandmother in the news recently who filed a lawsuit against Take Two and Rockstar Games after hearing about the "Hot Coffee" mod scandal surrounding Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. She had purchased the game (rated M for Mature) for her grandson, and then was appalled when she found out that the "Hot Coffee" mod existed. I won't even go into the fact that a company shouldn't be held responsible when a 3rd-party reverse-engineers their product to release something like "Hot Coffee," as hacking/reverse-engineering a game violates a game's End-User License Agreement (EULA).
Obviously, some reform should happen at the retail level to help prevent young children from buying games like Doom 3. Stores need to start verifying the ages of the customers on video games just as they're supposed to do with movies and explicit music. However, all the lawsuits in the world won't change that the gaming industry is protected by 1st amendment rights, and have every right to produce that bloody, violent shooter game. Its the parents, above all else, that need to become more vigilant in what they allow their kids to be exposed to. If you think that GTA:SA is going to turn your kid into a criminal, don't buy it for them in the first place.
1/30/06 - Threat #5
And now to continue...
Parents, Don't let your kids grow up to be you...
#4 in my week-long countdown is the Irresponsible Parent. Generally speaking, an irresponsible parent is a bad thing, and I firmly believe that there are plenty of people out there who should never procreate. They simply lack the maturity and sense of responsibility that should be requisite of someone who's responsible for the care and raising of another human being.
However, many otherwise wonderful parents fall short when it comes to their kids and video games. We hear all too often of some lawyer going after a game developer/studio/publisher because a parent felt that a game their child played was too violent. I know I'm not the only person who sees the problem with this situation. I ask one simple question: "Who bought the game for the kid in the first place?" Its the underlying problem that's frequently being overlooked; the kid had to get the game from somewhere, and someone had to have bought it for him/her.
Its becoming increasingly commonplace for people to blame everyone they possibly can, except themselves. The Irresponsible Parent epitomizes this fad in gaming society. How many minors have an income aside from the paltry weekly or monthly allowance? Not too many. So when I read or hear about a parent who's aghast at the violent video game their child has been exposed to, the only one who's truly at fault in my book is the parent. After all, they're the one who supplied the greenbacks to buy the game in the first place.
Now, that still leaves two possible ways that things could have played out in the store. When I worked retail at a store that sold video games, the most common scenario was as follows: the parent and child came into the store, the kid picked out a game, and the parent just took it to the cashier and paid for it. They never once paid attention to the icon in one of the two bottom corners of the game packaging that explicitly states the game's ESRB rating. That rating, had the unaware mother or father paid attention to it, would have told them that the game was rated to be appropriate for an audience little Timmy wouldn't be a part of for at least another half a decade.
The other frequent case, and again something I encountered personally when working retail, is that an aloof parent will simply give their kid the money to get the game they want. The parent lets the kid shop on their own (with the parent looking in another department, or sitting out in the car), so the kid purchases the game on their own. This is when you can start blaming the retailer a bit, because they're technically responsible to verify the age of a customer before selling age-limited products. Wal-Mart's PoS terminals actually prompt the cashier to verify a customer's ID when they ring up tobacco, alcohol, R-rated or unrated films, and video games that aren't rated E (for Everyone), and many other national chains are following suit. The store I worked for (which shall remain nameless) had no such system in place, but I tried to enforce a similar policy at the store level in hopes that it might become a chain-wide policy. Still, the parent is not involving him or herself with their child enough to know what their child is being exposed to, so the majority of blame still rests squarely on their shoulders.
One kind of Irresponsible Parent that seems to be increasing in numbers is what I like to refer to as the Opportunist. For example, there was a grandmother in the news recently who filed a lawsuit against Take Two and Rockstar Games after hearing about the "Hot Coffee" mod scandal surrounding Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. She had purchased the game (rated M for Mature) for her grandson, and then was appalled when she found out that the "Hot Coffee" mod existed. I won't even go into the fact that a company shouldn't be held responsible when a 3rd-party reverse-engineers their product to release something like "Hot Coffee," as hacking/reverse-engineering a game violates a game's End-User License Agreement (EULA).
Obviously, some reform should happen at the retail level to help prevent young children from buying games like Doom 3. Stores need to start verifying the ages of the customers on video games just as they're supposed to do with movies and explicit music. However, all the lawsuits in the world won't change that the gaming industry is protected by 1st amendment rights, and have every right to produce that bloody, violent shooter game. Its the parents, above all else, that need to become more vigilant in what they allow their kids to be exposed to. If you think that GTA:SA is going to turn your kid into a criminal, don't buy it for them in the first place.
posted by IcarusFountain at
5:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home