6 Comments

Aaron J
July 5th, 2011 | 4:04 pm

The comments on Kotaku piece are just what I expected: heartbreaking and worrisome.

And this is coming from a twentysomething male who enjoys video games.

Blake
July 5th, 2011 | 7:15 pm

What bothers me about the “protected speech” issue is not that it is legal to sell inappropriate content to minors (really what is needed is a recognition that when violence reaches a certain level, it is pornographic) but that there are certain groups in our society that are deliberately seeking to override parental authority, parental values, and parental wishes.

Intact homes with strong relationships and good boundaries may not have too much difficulty with this. But not only peers but teachers and librarians actively push an agenda, with the result being not only that they deliberately seek to create a wedge between children and parents, but also that they seek to cut parents out of political dialogues – as if everyone has a right to care what’s going on in their communities except parents.

Dblade
July 6th, 2011 | 12:03 am

It’s Kotaku, not the best venue for serious gaming discussion. Maybe you can also let gamepolitics or gamasutra know? They are more serious, and less noise.

David Nickol
July 6th, 2011 | 6:16 am

I found the comments less troublesome than Aaron J. I don’t know a great deal about video games and the market for them, but there were people pointing out that minors can’t afford a gaming system (so it must come from their parents), and that you just don’t see violent video games being sold to minors. (There is a voluntary rating system, as with movies, and apparently it works reasonably well.) One commenter said he had seen employees in game stores trying to talk parents out of buying certain games for their kids.

One thing I have not seen discussed anywhere is how well or poorly the voluntary rating system works. Walmart seems to be a big seller of these games. Do they really sell adult-rated games to kids? I find that hard to believe.

Dblade
July 6th, 2011 | 11:31 am

David, probably. Wal-mart had an age prompt that would come up every time an M-rated game scanned at register. But most cashiers can just hit yes: there’s no accountability, and denying the sale tends to back up lines and lose profits. The only downside is if a customer complains later.

In a big box store, it’s really just how moral, knowledgable, or scrupulous the individual is. There’s no auditing or no real penalty as opposed to cigarettes. If a ten year old comes in with 50 bucks his dad gave him, your average big-box cashier wont bat an eye if he buys Halo or Call of Duty.

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July 9th, 2011 | 5:38 pm

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