Retailers Turn Away 80% of Kids Trying to Buy M Rated Games
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
It means were calling them on their lies. Think of it as saying shenanigans and making sure the perps don't forget it.FamoFunk said:
Thats what I thought too, 20% is a rather high number of kids when you add it up. And your idea that the retailer should be held responsible, I agree with. If a shop sells underage customers products (smokes, booze, solvents, knifes) then that shop and the salesmen are held accountable.AxCx said:
I really, really have a problem with this point of view. If I was a parent, I would be concerned about the content my child has access to; on the internet, on tv and especially in the most interactive medium, gaming. I'm a huge exponent of games as a recreactional medium and thoroughly enjoy them, and I hope my progeny will get similar benefit from them. But I wouldn't want my child playing Manhunt until they were old enough, of course they are aware of dismemberment, death, wanton violence and the like but this doesn't mean they have to expose themselves to it.thefreeman0001 said:
There are plenty of games that I love that are perfectly child friendly. Sports titles, puzzlers, platforming, racing...I could go on, and I would encourage my child to mix this with a healthy an active life socially and in recreation. When they get to mid teens they're old enough to decide for themselves and beyond fifteen they will have seen and experienced enough that "OMG, I totally just shot that guy in his face" should not cause raucous squeals of enjoyment and morbid pleasure.
I think these parent groups are right to want to protect their kids from some of the gory stuff, but they almost always go about it the wrong way:
-Attacking developers for making these games (What about post-watershed TV or 18+ Films?)
-Atacking distributors for not controlling sales (Disproved in this report)
-Labelling all games as immoral (Plain stupid, Mario Kart? Rachet and Klank?)
We need to communicate with them on their level, show them reports like this that prove we are doing enough to ensure that they can allow their child to game without it compromising their own moral standards. Failing that, tie them to a chair and leave them in a room with a Wii with Wii Sports, and a Gameboy with Pokemon Red, after 48 hours you will have a convert, I guarantee...
P.S. Anyone questioning my use of Pokemon Red needs to take a very hard look at themselves. I don't play the series now but good grief that game was digitized crack, I may well have completed it three or four times, after twenty minutes they'd be hooked...
Well I wouldn't say that. See, it's up to parents what they want to expose their kids to, and there some M-rated games that aren't that big a deal (Halo comes to mind. Offline, it could probably be a T rated game these days), while others I would never let anyone under the age of 15 who I didn't know near. In addition, you also have some kids who are exceptionally mature for their age, who you know could handle certain content. This is where the back of the box is important, and something that I can say parents don't know enough about. I met a parent who knew the ratings, but didn't know about the content advisory on the back, which almost resulted in a disaster.dex-dex said:
When it's all split up, the specialty retailers compliance rates are averaging 95% while the ones dropping it are the big box stores like wal-mart that are around 30% compliant.AxCx said:
And as for parents that don't understand the ratings system, I call BS. The ratings system is almost identical to the ones used on television in the US that parents groups love and think are doing great.
Ok so we got the game designers who make the game for older aduiances. We got rating systems refelcting this and retailers honnering those ratings. Can we now stop blaming meture games for young people and parents and gardians for buying them.
This is what I've been saying for ages. Games already regulate themselves better than anything else. The ESRB was made for this reason.
Yes some get through, but is it any worse than movies, music, or books? Any kid can go buy the Karma Sutra, yet no one bitches about that.
Yes some get through, but is it any worse than movies, music, or books? Any kid can go buy the Karma Sutra, yet no one bitches about that.
Thankfully that is an irrelevant point in this debate.Logan Westbrook said:
This debate is for a law banning sales to MINORS!
In fact showing that many parents STILL buy M-rated games for kids is an argument AGAINST this law as it show how ineffective it would be... kids would just nag their parents to get them "Grand Duty 5: World of Modern Warfare 3: Reach".
The parents need to do their job just like the store, and the media needs to stop flipping shit every time some kid who touched some toy more advanced than a rock once in his life hurts someone else. This needs to go across the board and only punishing the retailers is a stupid idea.AxCx said:
Pretty sure that they used maths to fill in the blanks and the problem with maths in this scenario is that it requires everything to remain constant. By that I mean they assume thats the way it is at every retailer in the country.
It just simply cannot be proven.