What ever happened to accountability?
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry
EU orders gaming industry to better protect youth.
FTC Entertainment ratings guide.
What’s interesting to me is that with minimal searching, I was able to educate myself on the ratings and they’re meaning. Is it the responsibility of the video game industry to educate the populace at large of the ratings system?
Looking up video game ratings in goggle links me to this site, the ESRB website. This information is easy to come by and very easy to digest. According to my rough estimations, there are roughly 100 extremely violent video games released each year. This includes horror games, which are generally overlooked, just like B rated horror movies. Now given that last year 1415 games were released, we can assume less then 10% of video games are violent and released each year.
What’s more interesting, is that on many occasions the violent video games sell and rate very high. Ironically, I think this points more to the video game audience and less the video game industry. If there is a market, industry will create a product. The video game industry is full of business after all. And in order to stay afloat, business needs to sell product.
Beyond interesting statistics that can be gathered from google use, what’s of further importance is that the EU board is eluding less to violent video games and more to online video games. How intriguing. Even more specifically, parents can govern who their child speaks with when they go together to the park. What if this park is virtual? How will parents be able to govern their children’s exposure to the vast and very adult world of Internet use. This very thought, leads to a very controversial path.
I understand the concern parents have over controlling the play environment of their children. I know I didn’t watch any sexual content in movies until I was beyond 8th grade. This was accomplished by tight parental control of the media I was allowed to view. Technology has increased. It is becoming more and more difficult for parents to be involved in their children’s moment to moment life. However, I question whether the responsibility of a child’s upbringing rests of the authors of its entertainment, or with the authority units in its life. I do know however that when I signed my NDA to work for my game company, there was no clause that stated I was responsible for the reaction to the content I created.
Especially for 2008, the topic of ratings and responsibility are in the lime light. The overall interesting question for us as gamers, is the following: Are we accountable for the enjoyment of others in an MMO game space? Are we responsible for having an adult conversation in a public chat channel if there are minors present?
Interesting indeed.
One Response to “What ever happened to accountability?”
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Jay-z » What ever happened to accountability? Says:
April 24th, 2008 at 4:49 pm[...] Green Text on Black wrote an interesting post today on What ever happened to accountability?Here’s a quick excerptWhat ever happened to accountability? EU orders gaming industry to better protect youth. ELSPA Ratings Website FTC Entertainment ratings guide. What’s interesting to me is that with minimal searching, I was able to educate myself on the ratings and they’re meaning. Is it the responsibility of the video game industry to educate the populace at large of the ratings system? Looking up video game ratings in goggle links me to this site, the ESRB website. This information is easy to come by and [...]
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