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AOL has officially launched PlaySavvy.com, a new website aimed at informing curious parents about the games their children play and generating revenue from ads aimed at this lucrative demographic.
Along with the NIMF Annual Video Game Report Card comes the annual MediaWise Video Game Buying Guide, which instructs parents on which games to buy for their children and which to avoid like the plague.
Basically it is a list of video games split into two categories: "Great Games for Kids" and "Games to Avoid." They've enhanced the guide this year by adding descriptive paragraphs after each title, along with further splitting the recommended games up by ratings.
The list reads as you'd expect. High School the Musical is good, Nancy Drew, Hasbro Game Night, and some sports games. They've included LittleBigPlanet, which they've obviously never played with me on the headset. The "Games To Avoid" section is totally off though. Gears 2? Resistance 2? Those are great titles! I agree that everyone should avoid Legendary and Blitz the League II, but otherwise completely inaccurate. Hit the jump for the full list, but beware - major spoiler in the Silent Hill: Homecoming listing.
The US National Institute on Media and Family have issued their annual Media Wise Video Game report card on how parents and the industry deal with game ratings, and once again the industry wins.
Babblebaby told us their votes for the best kid friendly music games, now the folks at Parents.com have just issued their list of the Best Kid-Friendly Video Games of 2008, a quick and dirty guide to games that aren't...quick and dirty.
It's been a while since we've had a really good "video games make our children violent" study, and I was beginning to fear we've given up on the idea, but then the story "Violent video games linked to child aggression" showed up on CNN.com this morning and my fears were completely assuaged. The story is about a study conducted by Dr. Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D., of Iowa State University, who studied three groups of children in both the United States and Japan to gage their violence levels three to six months after playing violent video games, versus children who did not play violent video games. The results may not surprise you at all.
It's about damn time the media watchdog groups got around to blasting Sega and PlatinumGames' upcoming Wii-slaughterfest MadWorld. I was worried they were losing their touch, but galloping to the rescue on his bright and shining white stallion comes John Beyer, director of pressure group Mediawatch-uk.
'This game sounds very unsavoury. I hope the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will view this with concern and decide it should not be granted a classification. Without that it cannot be marketed in Britain. What the rest of world does is up to them. We need to ensure that modern and civilised values take priority rather than killing and maiming people.
Beyer goes on to worry that the game will spoil the family-friendly image of Nintendo's console in the same way that Manhunt 2 completely managed not to. By far the most interesting thing about the Mail Online Article is the title, "Parents horrified as most violent video game ever to launch on 'family friendly' Wii", especially when the article doesn't seem to mention other horrified parents whatsoever. Oh well, it's a start.
Parents horrified as most violent video game ever to launch on 'family friendly' Wii [Mail Online]
Back in my days as a teen, my parents weren't afraid of anything as far as I was concerned, but not all 15-year-olds are 6'6" with a goatee. Today's parents have plenty to worry about in fact, though a recent survey performed at the family-focused consumer game site What They Play seems to indicate their priorities are a bit out of whack. They asked a series of asked over 1,600 respondents what they'd fear the most if their 17-year-old were to participate in a sleepover. The results, picked from single answers only - no multiple choice here - indicated that while 16% were concerned about pornography and 14% about beer, 19% voiced concerns that their child might end up playing Grand Theft Auto.
Proving that parents haven't gone completely crazy, the vast majority - 49% - were worried that their child would smoke a little chronic with their pals and then...I dunno, giggle for 8 hours straight, like we did back when i was a teenager. That's the real danger folks.
This month sees a big push among Christian publications around the country towards educating parents and families about the growing influence of video games in our culture. The focus of the push is a lengthy article by Christian journalist Steve Rabey titled "Getting serious about gaming - Impact of video game industry raises concern", and quite frankly it isn't at all what I expected. Instead of being a religious rant about the dangers of video game, Rabey's article offers varied points of view on the subject, especially when discussing video game violence and the effect it has on children.
Some researchers are convinced that repetitive play of violent games instructs kids in violence, making violent acts more likely. But others argue that video violence is a cathartic replacement for real violent crime, which has gone down since the advent of video games.
Finally getting to grad school was — in some ways — a rude awakening for me; I still haven't mastered the art of balancing the demands of my work with, uh, everything else, which had never been a problem to this point. My gaming life has been sporadic at best since January, and I spend more time writing about games than actually playing them. But despite my ineptitude, I felt a little hopeful after reading a nice piece over at GameSetWatch that explores the art of growing up and balancing a beloved hobby (gaming) with the demands of adulthood, like parenthood:
