By Jonathan Mathias
In-between the controversies of Grand Theft Auto 4 and whatever the next computer game witch-hunt may be, you’ll find the ‘Christmas Top Ten Most Unwanted’. Each year America's National Institute on Media and the Family assembles a list of all the games that feature guns and bombs and blood and naked ladies and swearing etc to make it easier for parents to decide which games are most likely to destroy their kids’ morals and tenuous grip on reality.
Given that the titles and artwork for these games give a clear indication of their content. why is this kind of list necessary? Is your average parent really so devoid of common sense? Do people genuinely find this kind of nannying valuable? We don’t have lists of paintings or poems or novels that are likely to upset kids, so why the trend for singling-out video games for persecution?
The problem with classifying games as you would a movie – like the PMRC tried to do in the 80s over the horrors of popular music – is that it’s impossible to have absolute control over access to them, whether online or just around at a friend’s house. You can ask for ID at the pictures, but is Timmy’s mum going to be as conscientious as his best friend Johnny’s?
I can’t help feeling that trying to restrict content to an appropriate audience is going to have a negative, or at least undesired effect - those little ‘15’ and ‘18’ badges tend to have a magnetic pull on kids. At the very least, this kind of heavy-handed categorisation and pigeonholing risks stifling free choice.
Although I'm instinctively with you - they've marked down all the good stuff, basically - I do applaud that they've backed up their stuff with actual empirical evidence. So they have linked to papers which show that games can have a harmful effect on the young. Probably.
That said, it does seem a bit over-paternalistic to provide a guide basically saying 'don't buy games marked '18' if your kids are under 18.'
Posted by: Christian | 04 December 2008 at 14:19