jarredtheawesome said:
Today i was in my local brick and mortar game store buying the game Eternal Sonata when i came upon some little kids with their mother. they were trying to buy some new Wii games. Now these were some i dont know 8 to 10 year old kids and the mother was trying to recommend games for them. She had no idea what she was talking about either! she would say oh do you want back yard football? or how about this tennis game! now i know that this isnt my place to tell parents that they are idiots and that even though the wii lacks tons of amazing games (to all fanboys i still want one for the soon to be amazing line up) but i knew right away that these kids were victims of uneducated gaming parent syndrome. The parents will never go for the good game because they wont research what the good games are. if i walk into a game store i hear something like this all the time like my very favorite, Does mario galaxy come on the xbox 360 you should have seen this employees face (i digress) my question to you all is, "do parents need to be more educated on what they are buying for their kids so that they dont waste their money?" And also if you want throw down a funny story im all ears
[Edit] This could also be about the whole parents shouldnt even buy their kids violent video games
I've seen this kind of thing too, but you might be mis-interpeting it as well. Don't forget you've got parents who want to get their kids a game or two to keep them occupied, but also don't want to spend a lot of money. Sure, they know that there are expensive games their kids will love, I mean they see the TV commercials too, and they probably are quite aware of some of the games on the shelves, but they don't want to pay the money, especially seeing as with kids and video games it can be a big risk as to whether it's going to keep them occupied or not.
Chances are "Back Yard Football" or one of the myriad Wii Tennis games that seem to be out there are massively cheaper than say some of the newly released titles like "Super Mario Galaxy 2". With the wii in paticular games vary greatly in price due to it's mixed record of success, ranging from regular new release price games, to some that are insanely cheap especially used.... The savvy parent of 8 to 10 year olds probably wants insanely cheap, and is hoping their kids can be convinced to be satiated at least temporarly by something that doesn't cost a lot of money.
Of course kids aren't that stupid, I mean chances are as kids we all had situations where our parents were going to get us a toy, and we had the one we wanted in mind (and our parents knew this) but tried to convince us that somehting similar but obviously inferior was "the same thing". You know getting something like "Army Action Guy!" instead of an actual "GI Joe" character you thought was cool.
Are the parents actually that ignorant, or are they playing a role for their kids?
Oh sure, I suppose the "Do they have Mario Galaxy for the 360" thing is pretty bad, that's sort of like someone getting the Marvel and DC comics universes confused when talking about super heroes or whatever, but then again a lot of parents grew up just before gaming started to become as big as it is now. As "dumb" as it sounds a parent with little free time doesn't have time to really educate themselves on video games (if they didn't grow up with them) any more than they do to actually learning the ins and outs of Pokemon just because their kids play it.
On a side note for those who mentioned it, I will say that when it comes to video game ratings I personally blame the people who have messed them up more than the parents in most cases. I think a lot of the problems today aren't so much that parents don't "know the ratings" but simply that all consistincy with them has broken down compared to say Hollywood. With say a movie you know that in a PG-13 movie there can be breasts, but no full frontal nudity, and there might be some kissing and making out, but no paticularly graphic sex scenes. With video games this is what a "T" rating is supposed to be, however due to some overenthusiastic "protect the children" politicians, and a gaming industry that isn't willing to fight for itself or maintain ratings integrity, a lot of games with "T" rated sex and violent content get marked "M", leading a lot of informed parents who have seen games to treat that rating like they should the "T" one. Sadly this means when a game that really deserves an "M" rating comes along people get shocked and scandalized that they brought it into the house, when the problem could have been averted had prudes not been forcing people to "up rate" so many games.
Or simply put, the current rating system is garbage, and the only safe way to buy games is if parents can be familiar with every title they buy, which is frankly unreasonable since few working parents with children are going to have enough time for that kind of thing.
I applaud gamestop employees who do their job, and I do think enforcing the age limits on "M" rated games is a good thing on principle, no matter how mature some kids think they are.
On the other hand there are a number of games that are "M" rated that I remember having nothing in them that I would object to a 13 year old seeing, since it's on the level of a PG-13 movie. This is from the unusual position of being fully aware of the titles though, which is why I crticize the ratings. I don't nessicarly think that a parent buying an "M" rated title for a teen (not a young child) is nessicarly a sign of a bad parent. I mean heck as a teenager I grew up with horror movies and became something a of a genere fanboy, not to mention all those great campy vintage action flix (like Total Recall, which people were discussing due to an impending remake). I'm not a big "Halo" fan, so I could be forgetting something but if that is "M" rated, I think it's probably a good example of exactly why the rating system is borked because I can't see any reason why a 13 or 14 year old would have a problem with that. I mean nothing I've seen in that, and other similar games, is any worse than your typical Arnie movie.
