E3: Study Shows Majority of Parents Oversee Gaming Purchases

From Yahoo! News - http://news.yahoo.com/s/macworld/200...chases20060510

Quote:

New data published Wednesday by the Entertainment Software Association shows that a majority of parents are present at the time games are purchased or rented. Eighty-nine percent of the time, parents are present. The study is also giving rise to a new term — the “gamer parent:” Parents who play games themselves, often with their kids.

The survey, conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, also showed that a majority of the parents — 61 percent believe that parents believe games have a positive influence on their children’s lives. And 87 percent of the time, kids are getting their parents’ permission before purchasing or renting the game.

Thoughts? Fairly short article, but its something to discuss anyways.

For me at least, these new findings will give ignorant congressmen less fuel to attack with, and may even shut up ol' Jack Thompson (Who am I kidding, he'll spin this around SOMEHOW). Anyway its nice to know that more parents are acitvely getting involved with thier children's acitivities. I;ve heard it a lot and agree that active involvement in your child's life is much more effective then relying on any one acitivity to 'babysit' them, because the parent wants to have the child without the responsability that comes along (Like TV/Movies/Videogames/etc., taking place of human interactment).

I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case, but does this mean that it's just a 13% minority of parents who are railing against video games as the source of all evil?

To me this just proves what I already knew, parents don't do their homework before purchasing violent games for their kids.

Then at some point they realize what they did, and instead of blaming themselves, they decide there wasn't a big enough label or something on the game or the store clerk should have to ramble on for 5 minutes about the rating.

I'd like to know what the sample size was for this study. I'm betting that it wasn't very big, which isn't a good thing.

Originally Posted by Devo

To me this just proves what I already knew, parents don't do their homework before purchasing violent games for their kids.

Agreed. I can't count the number of times I've overheard a parent buying GTA or some other violent game for their kid, and they're shocked when the clerk tells them how gruesome the game is. Give it 10-20 years, when our generation has kids, and we won't have the problem anymore because we know about games, but today's parents still equate video games with Pac-Man and Frogger.

If the parents would just do 5 minutes worth of research there wouldn't be any problems. My favorite is still the time when I saw a 6 year old boy explaining the ESRB rating system to his very confused father in Best Buy. It's just pathetic that the parents don't bother to take enough of an interest in what their kids are playing until they see it for themselves and are filled with rage against the terrible people who produced such trickery.

Do your parents oversee your thread placement?

Moving to General Video Gaming.

Originally Posted by NYRSkate

Do your parents oversee your thread placement?

Ehh, honest mistake.

So was little Timmy getting his hands on the latest Grand Theft Auto game, then taking out his policeman dad's car and gun and having some fun on the city streets. Do you think Timmy admitting to an honest mistake will get those hundreds of people's lives back?

Is moving a thread that inconvenient for you, Skate?

Parents don't know what the ESRB is, at least not the majority of them. For Christ's sake, I had a kid bring to the counter GTA: San Andreas with parent in tow. At this point, one of two things always happens when I tell the parent this game is rated M (or AO):

Situation A: Parents say "Okay." and buys the kid the game. What can I do about it? Nothin.

Situation B: Parents say "What's that mean?" and after I explain it to them, they get a near-horrified expression on their faces because they just realized how many M-Rated games they've purchased or rented for their kids.

Probably the last game my parents bought for me was FFX during the first few months of getting a PS2. They really didn't gawk at the "T" rating, but at the absurd price. God what was it. $75 some? I can't even believe that now. Now I just go get what game I want, so it's my mom that's complaining more on the money spent rather than the content. She knows I have M rated stuff, but tells me to not bring those out when guests are over with their 6 or 7 year old kids. Katamari fits the bill, unless their parents consider rolling humans in a giant ball "grotesquely violent".

Originally Posted by SILBER-4

Katamari fits the bill, unless their parents consider rolling humans in a giant ball "grotesquely violent".

Unfortunately, you just know that the loud 13% minority will find a way to pervert that into "disguised violence" or something equally stupid :@

I wish all parents were gamer parents Although it's pretty silly when they are told "This game is rated M" and in order to preserve the facade of knowledge they'll just agree without knowing or bothering to ask. It really brings to mind the ESRB. How could you possibly make the system easier to understand? Or probably, I'm approaching from the wrong angle here. How do you expose parents to this without having to make the rating designation over half the size of the cover art before they take notice?

I hear SSX Tricky encourages children to recklessly try to do impossible snow boarding stunts which they go flying 230 feet in the air and try to land on a wire the diameter of sewing thread and eventually crash into the crowds. This is rated ADULTS-ONLY, without a doubt. As well, GTA: SA allows children to budget their money to buy clothes and food while "legimately" working as taxi drivers. =\

This could be problematic, though, for those who are against censorship of games.

Consider that their (our) primary argument was that parents need to take responsibility for their children's gaming habits. If this study shows that they already do, then that lowers the effectiveness of the argument and lends credence to fuckwits like Hillary Clinton and Jack Thompson who insist that games are tools of the devil, hellbent on corrupting our youth and SWEET FUCKING JESUS WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

While I'm glad that parents are overseeing game purchases, I'm not about to believe that they're actually taking an interest in the content or even understanding, most of the time, what the game is all about.

That's the problem though Celt. It still doesn't seem like the majority of parents are overseeing their kids purchases. I'd say 1 out of 10 parents that buy something in my store even bother to mention something about the content or ESRB rating. And 100% of them don't know were to look for the rating nor do they know where to look on the back for the list of what caused said rating.

At most, by "oversee" I would assume the researchers mean "watch their kids pay for a game or pay for it themselves." 'Cause not too many of them ask about ratings.

In Australia, the same body who censor games, censor movies. They use the same scale too. Everyone understands it, even parents. So why doesn't America either;
a) wisen up and get the film guys to do games too
or
b) Have the ESRB adopt the same ratings as films.

Too much logic here.

The other fact of the matter though is most parents don't care for their children to see shootings and bad language because it's already all over tv.

Honestly, I don't know why the ESRB (and for that matter, the television rating system as well) doesn't adopt the same scale as movies.

We've got the ESRB, whoever it is that rates movies, and then the TV scale, which is the most confusing of the three. TV-Y, Y7, Y7fv, etc. etc. I completely agree with you Rab -- we should have one universal rating system.

Originally Posted by SouthJag

Honestly, I don't know why the ESRB (and for that matter, the television rating system as well) doesn't adopt the same scale as movies.

We've got the ESRB, whoever it is that rates movies, and then the TV scale, which is the most confusing of the three. TV-Y, Y7, Y7fv, etc. etc. I completely agree with you Rab -- we should have one universal rating system.

Simple they don’t want their asses fined. No, really the MPAA rating are trademarks of the MPAA, they can’t legally be used by another organization. I’m not 100 % sure but I think some organization has tried to get the MPAA to let them use their rating, but the MPAA refused. And just because some always brings this up the MPAA rating are not law in the US ,they can never be law, the first and fourteenth amendments prohibit it.