Man, I don’t have kids (that I know of) and I’m dawwwwwing all over this PSA that the ESRB just put out. It’s a reminder that it can be hard to say no when your kid’s so excited for Ninja Attack!, or whatever they’re clutching, and you want him or her to be happy. But it’s important to read the ratings and use parental controls.
This spot’s so cool, Vice President Biden retweeted it out like, 12 hours before anybody knew it existed.
Good on the veep; I’m sure the ESA and publishers are happy to have his stamp of approval too. And yeah, check the ESRB Rating on every game. It helps parents and it helps kids. And, frankly, it helps those who make the games we enjoy, whether they’re rated E, T or M.
Comments
8 responses to “The ESRB Brings You This Unbearably Cute Reminder About Game Ratings”
We need an OFLC version of this……..
I don’t mean to be rude but we don’t have a OFLC anymore. It was replaced years ago with the Australian Classification Board.
That aside, even if we did have an ACB version it’s not going to work because the rating system we have still has too many holes in it. Even the introduction of the R18+ rating was bitter sweet.
You’re right, my mistake; still in the habit of saying OFLC.
And yes the system has holes, but it’s not like it’s going to hurt to have something like this right? It’s not by any means going to start a revolution of more game-rating aware parents, but every little bit helps…. Even with a semi-broken system behind it.
Still doesn’t solve American’s issues when parents just buy GTAV for Little Tommy anyway, despite Tommy being 10 years old. Then they throw their hands in the air when Tommy takes Mummy’s 12-Gauge from the counter and goes outside to play with it like he saw in the game.
Ratings and warnings mean nothing if people don’t heed them.
Tommy picking up Mummy’s firearm and failing to treat it with any kind of respect probably has less to do with the games that he plays and more to do with having the kind of parent that would keep a gun easily accessible in the house.
Yeah, I was being partly sarcastic/ironic in my comment – I totally believe gun access is a major part of the issue, but I do have to agree that massively underage kids playing some types of games isn’t going to work well – I’ve seen it first hand with children as young as 8 playing M and MA games unsupervised, and it leads to (what I think) is overtly physical violence, especially for little kids.
I think you’re right about the supervision. I suspect (though I don’t really have any proper research to back this up) that media in isolation can be harmful, but that parenting has far more impact on a child than what video games they play.
My parents stuck hard and fast to ratings guidelines (no M rated movies until I was 15, and I didn’t even have access to video games until after I was 13), and my brother and I still regularly beat the crap out of each other when we were little.
I kind of think that kids are just inherently raw. They’ll be cute one moment and psychopathic the next. The point of a parent is to help them learn to control themselves and find the socially acceptable middle ground.
There’s an app to explain to people about ratings? I thought ratings were pretty straight forward. I guess every little bit helps, but then, the parents who don’t take notice of ratings aren’t going to bother with an app that explains them.
Personally I didn’t find the video to be anything special, certainly not “unbearably cute”. It was ok. Perhaps if the headline was “ESRB brings you this ok reminder about game ratings” I may have been impressed (you want to undersell things, not oversell things).
“ESRB brings you this ok reminder about game ratings”
That definitely sounds like an article I’d read…
this is essentially aimed at parents who are too stupid to understand the ratings system and either can’t be bothered to or incapable of reading. They need pretty pictures otherwise they won’t pay attention.