Games

Parents Are Right This Time!

Felipe Martino Gagno Ceotto — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:00:38 GMT

I just can't believe that Nintendo did this mistake. It's just unbelievable that such a great company, in days like today with all these discussions about how games affect our lives and how they should be regulated, especially with children, did not take into consideration the possibility of a child getting a wrong BMI evaluation from its Wii Fit. But as unbelievable as it sounds, that is exactly what happened, like reported by BBC in its "Parents' anger at keep fit game" article: a kid got a wrong BMI evaluation by Wii Fit, saying that she was over weight and needed to loose 4 pounds.

Nintendo should know better. Wii Fit got rated by PEGI as 3+ (except for Portugal, where it is 4+), so basically anybody that can talk can play it, so this should have been taken into consideration within the game, either adjusting the BMI calculations to fit kids, or at least by telling the players under a certain age that the results might not be accurate for them, or that they should talk to their parents before doing anything. And that game in particular can tell the player's age because it asks for it! So the statement of the company saying that "the resulting figures may not be entirely accurate for younger age groups due to varying levels of development" should be in the game! Making this comment afterwards makes them look even worse because then they know about it but didn't make the game react accordingly.

Although I do think that this mother is right with her complaint and that Nintendo did make a mistake, this will give ammunition to people that want to censor games and give them ratings that are not appropriate. I've written two articles already about all this "game rating" discussion and I'm sure I'll write many more because it doesn't look like this will get sorted out soon, if ever, but I just wish it would and Nintendo might has just made it harder.

It's the Parents' Fault

Felipe Martino Gagno Ceotto — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:23:15 GMT

I'm always paying attention to news related to electronic games since it is not only something I like but something I intend to get more and more involved as time passes. After writing an article about Game Violence, today I read this other article on BBC about a survey with parents (Games content 'concern parents') and I had an idea from it.

The article, as you can read, shows that the survey demonstrated that kids play videogames on their own most of the time and that the parents are the ones that usually choose what games are suitable for their children. It also shows that 43% of the parents are not aware of the ratings systems that exist for games, to determine the suitability of them.

So my conclusion from this survey is that it is the parents' fault that children are playing games with unsuitable contents for them, because they are choosing games without the proper knowledge about the ratings. Like films, games have their own rating and the industry has been doing a pretty good job with it, which takes us nowhere if whoever is choosing the games don’t know about them.

What is it about games that the parents don't get the knowledge about them that fast? This generation of games is also focused on adults, and videogames have been around for quite some time now, so I would think that parents would know them and know what to do with them for their kids. Even if you're new to it, being a parent is having the responsibility of checking and learning about the things your kids are doing and want to do. I hope that when I'm a parent I will be able to select properly the games for my kids and also play with them, to have some fun and also to check what they're playing.

There is a good website about ratings for games, created and maintained by the games industry, at www.askaboutgames.com, where parents can learn about the ratings systems for games, and it's not rocket science; whoever is used to film ratings will see right through it too.

So, let's not blame the games or the game industry for games with violent contents. We don't blame the film industry for violent films; we just don't let the children watch them so why not do the same for videogames? Eliminating violent games is not the solution. I'm not advocating violence or anything like that, but I'm an adult who likes to play games and I don't want the industry to be limited to create games for adults with good and realistic contents. I enjoy the games for kids too, but not only, and I believe in choice, which is what the parents should be making.

Game Violence

Felipe Martino Gagno Ceotto — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:43:15 GMT

I've been trying not to get into this subject because it's just like discussing football or religion but reading this article today I couldn't help myself. The UK government is doing (another) study about the effects of violent computer games on children and young people. My guess is that the results will be either inconclusive or presented in a way that allows people to doubt them because one of the interested parts was responsible for them as well.

While reading the opinions I give here, please take into consideration that I know nothing about psychology and I don't have children. But I do know games and I've played them since I was a kid. I've even studied them and learned how to make them, although I can't call myself a game designer or a game developer (not yet, anyway).

Let's take the case of Stefan Pakeerah who was horribly murdered by a friend with a claw hammer. I am very sorry for this kid and for his parents and friends and of course I don't support whoever it was that committed the murder but what strikes me as odd is that Stefan Pakeerah's mother "called for violent video games to be banned" because the kid who confessed to the murder played Manhunt.

That is odd to me because we all should know better: unfortunately or not (and I'm not here to discuss that) violence is everywhere and it has always been. We can see it on TV, we can see it in Nature, and we can see it in people's acts, art, video games, cinema, pretty much everywhere. If you don't agree with that statement, no problem - I'm not even sure if I agree -, but I'm sure you will agree that violence is present in a lot of different places and that people in general (including children) have access to demonstrations of violence from time to time. That doesn't mean that everybody that is exposed to a demonstration of violence will be violent too. Otherwise everybody would have violent behaviour and that is definitely not true. A lot of kids played Manhunt all over the world and they didn't went out to commit murder, so I'm guessing there must be something else wrong with that kid that confessed to the murder besides playing a violent game, wouldn't you agree? So the trigger could have been the game, a movie, or nothing at all... right?

I have played my share of violent games including some that I shouldn't have, according to their classification. When I was 17 I played Carmageddon, a very violent race game which was banned for minors, and I've played all the Grand Theft Auto games that were released for PC, for instance. These are pretty violent games and you could say that they encourage questionable (not to say worse) behaviour inside the game. The point is that I didn't go out after playing these games to commit crimes and I didn't take my car and started running people on the streets. I didn't even feel that it would be something I'd want to do: it is a lot of fun in the game and I loved all those games but it has nothing to do with my "real life". I've been playing Need For Speed: Most Wanted for a while now, and I go out from home after playing it to drive my car but I don't feel the need to race with it. Got my point?

Blaming a violent game (a movie, book, TV show, music or whatever) for a murder is in my opinion a lame excuse. I'm not denying that they can trigger violent behaviour in some people, but they are not to blame. Anything can trigger violent behaviour in the wrong person. I'm all for classifying correctly the games and making sure that kids don't have access to material they shouldn't but banning a game completely because it is violent is unnecessary. Several studies were already done on the subject of if a game can provoke violent behaviour but a recent journal was published with a meta-analysis of these studies and it basically demonstrated that no current study was reliable enough to provide definite results to one side or the other. To quote an article written about this journal, "the overall conclusion is that there does appear to be a connection between violent games and violent thoughts in a laboratory setting. But the connections between such thoughts and violent behaviour in the lab or elsewhere are tenuous at best. The studies that try to address those questions currently suffer from a lack of a standardized measure of violent behaviour and a lack of sufficient background on other potential influences on the test subjects' tendencies towards violence, such as family environment".

So, since we live in a society where, very intelligently, everybody (and everything) is innocent until proven guilty, until someone actually proves that violent games are a direct path to actual violence, let's not condemn the games, ok?! They are fun and they are cool. :) And I hope my prediction of the results of the new study requested by the UK government is wrong and that this study gets to conclusive results so we can end the discussion.

Wanna play Manhunt 2? :D

Update (2007-10-11 15:02): Please read the article "Playing games with freedom" as well which is much better than mine and with the same point of view (almost). :)