Game ratings in everyday life

Posted on October 12, 2004 @ 15:29 in Games

I was queuing for the cash register in an electronics store and in line before me was a mother with two boys, who were maybe 8 and 10 years old. The oldest boy handed the cashier the game he had picked and I saw it was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. While the cashier was busy getting the disc that belonged in the case from one of the drawers behind the counter it became clear that the boy had taken the PC cd-rom version from the shelf and not the PlayStation version. While the cashier put the disc back in its protective sleeve and into the drawer behind the counter, the boy ran to the PlayStation shelves, only to return looking disappointed, because there were no more copies of that version of the game left.

The mother and her boys left the store without a new game and I stepped up to the counter. I asked the cashier if he knew he had almost sold a mature (17+) rated game to a couple of young kids. He said he knew GTA was rated mature, but that there was nothing he could do if it was an adult buying the game. I then asked if he didn't think he should have explicitly told the mother that she was about to buy a game for her kids with quite a bit of random mayhem, blood, violence and sex in it. He started to mumble something about people's own responsibilities and with a growing line of people queuing behind me, I left it at that and paid for my purchase.

I've been thinking about what annoyed me most about this situation. It's not that I am opposed to blood, violence, or sex in videogames, but I do think that these themes, if they are handled the way they are in GTA, are not suited for young children. It's not that I think that age ratings are an unmitigated good, because publishers will force certain decisions on developers to achieve a certain rating (as happens with movies) and I do think that a responsible 15 year old can safely enjoy GTA whereas I'd rather not see certain 20 year olds play that game. I do think that the mother should have been more aware of what her children wanted her to buy them, but I can't really blame her too badly for maybe thinking that all videogames are kids stuff.

I am rather annoyed by the cashier who didn't think it was/is his duty to tell parents they're about to buy a mature rated game for their young children. This sort of thing must happen all the time and consequently a fair number of (too) young kids are playing pretty serious games. What annoys me most though, is that these kids' parents probably don't play videogames with their children. If your kids want to watch a good, but scary or mature movie, you'd watch it with them and talk to them about it. What's different about videogames that you shouldn't do that as well? Then again, maybe parents who buy GTA for their ten year olds don't care about what movies their kids see or books they read.

Comments and Trackbacks

  1. I totally understand your concern here. Some time ago I finished a research project about parenting and regulation of audiovisual media. Not very surprising, a rather clear finding is that parents are most likely to know about their kids use of 'traditional media' like TV, and much less likely to know what their youngsters are doing on the internet or in computer games. On the other hand, the parents are overall very concerned about their children’s media use, and media regulation in general is highly regarded. About 95% states that they often or always look at the age ratings when purchasing these kinds of goods for their children. Lets hope the mother you met would have reacted when she finally understood what she had actually bought her kids…

    The report is btw available at http://www.filmtilsynet.no/Publikasjoner. (only in Norwegian at the moment, an English version of it will be published there in a couple of weeks).

    Posted by Faltin on October 13, 2004 @ 15:10

Post a comment

Comments and trackbacks have been closed on this site. My apologies.

Since MT-Blacklist inexplicably stopped working I had no other recourse than close comments and trackbacks to stop the spam. I've been meaning to correct this for quite a while, but life got in the way... in a good way I should add.