Video games, kids and violence
p2pnet.net News:- "If merely sitting there on your sofa late at night nursing a warm beer while watching your sticky ‘Girls Gone Wild’ DVD for the umpteenth time isn’t doing it for you any more – or if you simply miss all those booze-soaked spring break experiences you never had – you might want to check out ‘The Guy Game’, a new release for Xbox and PlayStation2 that IGN succinctly describes as ‘like You Don’t Know Jack with boobs.’ It’s the next best thing to actually getting drunk, making a fool out of yourself, and scoring with hot chicks who probably wouldn’t give you the time of day otherwise that we’ve come across."
So says Fleshpot and not at all coincidentally, Guy Game was labelled one of the 10 worst video ‘games,’ together with Doom 3, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half Life 2, Halo 2, Resident Evil, Psi Ops: the Mindgate Conspiracy, The Guy Game, Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, Mortal Kombat Deception and Rumble Roses.
Who did the labelling? The National Institute on Media and the Family.
JFK: Reloaded wasn’t on the list but, no doubt, that’s because it hadn’t been released when it was compiled. However, if it had been included, it would have been because of real or professed moral outrage, not because JFK is particularly bloody and/or violent.
Using Kennedy’s assassination as the hook offended the sensibilities of a lot of people who apparently have no problem with "the next best thing to actually getting drunk … and scoring with hot chicks" or, for that matter, with a game in which players build a crime empire by robbing banks, stealing cars, running drugs and killing the competition.
"It’s been a very disappointing year for ‘E’ games," a Knight Ridder story has video-game critic Steven Kent saying, referring to the "suitable for everyone" rating used by the Entertainment Software Rating Board. Its ratings system is roughly comparable to the MPAA’s (Motion Picture Association of America) system for movies.
"All of the blockbuster games this year are M (mature)-rated," Kent said.
Well that’s OK then. If they’re M-rated, kids won’t be exposed to them. And if they do get hold of them, it’s the parents’ fault, says Doug Lowenstein, president of Entertainment Software Association, quoted in the Knight Ridder story.
Take-Two and its Rockstar games sell a group of the worst video games going. ‘Snuff movies’ (where the victims, usually young women, are literally murdered), maximum brutality, sexually oriented violence, thievery, drugs, and a lot more, are standard fare.
"San Andreas features a whole host of new ways to challenge budding virtual criminals, including burglary and fencing stolen goods," says a write-up on Moby Games.
"All games on the institute’s objectionable list are rated M, which shows the industry is doing its job," says Lowenstein, adding:
"The reality is that most of the time when kids get these games, they get them from an adult or a parent, and that is a failure of parenting."
But Take-Two gave the exclusive UK magazine cover rights for San Andreas, Rockstar’s latest, to GamesMaster, a magazine which targets mid-teens.
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See:-
labelling – Violent video games slammed, p2pnet, November 24, 2004
very disappointing – Video watchdogs say almost all new games are M-rated, Knight Ridder Newspapers, November 26, 2004
