Video Game Ratings Mostly Ignored
from the M-is-for-what? dept
Pretty much the whole point behind video game ratings was to stop parents from buying games that were considered "too mature" for their kids. Of course, it appears that many parents don't actually pay attention to the ratings, though the article here is mostly anecdotal. There seem to be a number of reasons why parents don't follow the ratings. Many don't know about them or don't understand them. Many simply don't care. However for a lot of parents, it sounds like the constant begging from kids who absolutely must have the latest version of Grand Theft Auto is simply too much to deal with than to worry about something like video game ratings. One interesting point in the article is that many parents may ignore ratings in video games, but not movies. The reasoning is that because they see movies, but don't play video games themselves, they don't realize what happens in the games. It may be interesting to see if this changes over time as a larger population of adults plays video games.
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But why not?
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20041216a1.htm
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Video games
Ths ongoing demonisation is nothing new. Its happened before - a huge shift in the recreation of young people, totally misunderstood by their parents and cloaked in the colours of forbidden sex and violence. Only last time it was called rock n roll, and now we have Rolling Stones with CBEs and rock n roll musicals at the Royal Variety Performance.
In the interim it is up to parents to take responsibility for their children's media consumption. If you block the satellite adult channel, buy a spam filter or even just hurry past the top shef when out with little Johnny, then learn about the games and follow the damn ratings.
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games
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