Anne Collier, With only brief information about a game you are buying, how can a parent monitor the content when they can't preview the whole game. With movies you can watch the whole thing whereas with these games we have to rely on censors?
Asked by yvonnef on Nov 15 2007 10:24:18 AM and supported by 22 members
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Right, movies are different. But a lot of parents - even really good ones - just check a film's rating before deciding if their children can view it. There are videogame ratings too - and, because they're on the Web, they're accessible to any parent anywhere who has a Net connection (and speaks the language of the Web site). Those ratings help a lot. There are also magazines and searchable magazine-like Web sites targeting the gamer market with descriptions and reviews of popular games. More fodder for parental research. You're right that there's a huge amount of material in a videogame that no one, not even the rating board, has enough time to view. And there's a whole lot of unpredictable, player-generated material in multiplayer online games. But what anyone can find about a game in the above resources or with a Web search engine can give a parent a pretty good feel for what a child player would encounter.
Parents should also know that there is content - in the US called "mods" for "modifications" - that's not in off-the-shelf games that kids can download from the Internet. Sometimes it's x-rated. Some game manufacturers encourage gamers to create and circulate mods, whether or not x-rated, and some don't. It's another thing for parents of highly Net-literate children to be aware of.