NIMF Gives Industry Bad Report Card
December 5th, 2007 by Will Prusik in Business, News, Xbox360
Despite their generally positive report from last year on the state of the gaming industry with regards to keeping inappropriate content out of the hands of children, the National Institute on Media and Family has given the gaming industry a bad report card. They do laud the efforts of Microsoft, GameStop and Target who all took steps towards controlling the availability of violent games to children. In many other respects they say that the industry is in an ‘ominous backslide’ and insist steps need to be taken to improve the process. There are some legitimate concerns that they raise, such as libraries and churches holding tournaments with games like Halo 2 and other mature rated titles that are designed to bring in younger crowds. Many of their arguments however are illogical and poorly thought out. One of their arguments is that ’significant changes are needed in the rating system’. They claim that making buried content such as the mini-game that sparked the GTA San Andreas controversy known is not enough. They complain that the ESRB does nothing to discourage hackers from accessing this content. This of course raises the question of what they propose the ESRB do to ensure that hundreds of skilled, intelligent individuals with clearly plenty of time on their hands to spend examining code of video games and creating mods to access it? The only likely solution would be to simply refuse to release any game with ‘unaccessible’ content. If it’s not part of the game, take it out. Short of that, there’s likely nothing that will keep some determined individual from getting around whatever safeguards they build into the software.
They also attack the ratings system, complaining that few retailers educate their patrons on the rating system. Their report says: “It is hard to completely blame parents for not understanding the rating system when retailers come up short on their commitment to educate the public”. To the best of my knowledge, the retailers only commitment is to making money. It’s up to the consumer to educate themselves on the product, its pros and cons, not the retailer. It’s not as if the ratings system is particularly complex either. Anyone could grasp the system in about five minutes of reading.
One of the most ridiculous issues the NIMF raises is the fact that parents and children are arguing about video games. First of all this is a bit ridiculous of a problem as parents and children have argued about things for years. Curfews, allowances, car usage, phone bills, dating and privileges have always been a source of friction for families everywhere. Children and teenagers are generally hedonistic and parents have to teach them the balance between responsibility and fun. Their statement is also deliberately misleading. In their report they say that 38% of parents and children argue ‘often or sometimes’ about video games. Only 8% of that is in the ‘often’ category. A problem with polls such as this is that there are only four option: ‘often’, ’sometimes’, ‘rarely’ and ‘never’. How many times does an argument have to occur for the parents to place it into the ‘often’ category? Or the ’sometimes’ category? With no comparable figures it’s hard to say what the actual effects are.
Tags: Business, News, Xbox360
