ESRB ratings are familiar to all gamers and most parents, as well. However, despite high awareness and use of the ESRB ratings, it’s still critically important that we as an industry sustain our efforts to educate parents about the rating system and the tools we provide that help them manage the games their children play.
To that end, SCEA is doing its part with the ESRB Video Game Ratings Guide that comes pre-loaded right on the new PSPgo device itself. I got a peek at the Guide as it was being developed and it was great to see its straight-forward and thorough overview of the ESRB rating system as well as a step-by-step walkthrough of the device’s parental control features and settings. Definitions of the ESRB age rating categories and content descriptors give parents a good understanding of how the ratings work, examples of titles that carry each of the ratings provide a useful point of reference, and the tutorial on setting up parental controls makes putting those ratings to work on the system a quick and easy process.
Honestly, I think it's a waste of time and money. It's great that they want to do that, but honestly, how many parents who actually by their child a PSP are going to read a guide that's with it?
When was the last time any of your parents bought a game system for you and actually read the guide that came with it? How many of your parents actually use the parental control options with you t.v. or other game systems?
I think having the signs that explain the ratings right out in the open (like at the register) is a better idea to really get parents to see it. Also, instead of the often random setup of the games in the stores, they could start to organize them by rating. Then, all the games of one rating would be together and parents would have a easy time finding games for their child that are within the rating group they are buying.
I use to work in the electronics department and sell a lot of video games, in all the time I was there, I only had one parent ask me if a game they were looking at was suitable for their child. I gave them the answer and explained the rating system to them.
A lot of parents out there don't care until it's too late. Their child says "I want _____ game", so they go out and buy that game without looking at it at all...half the time they don't even flip it over to the back to see what it's about. They just find the title and keep going. Then, when they are at home and their child is playing it and they realize it's not really suitable for their child, instead of just taking it away until their child gets older, they let the kid keep playing it, but whine about the fact that they didn't know what the game was like.
Honestly, it's like buying anything else. You aren't going to buy a car without checking it out and making sure it meets your expectations, why buy a game for your child without making sure it's suitable first.
***I tried to add this to my first post, but there was an error while editing my post (per the little box that popped up) and now I can't edit that post, so I had to add this as a separate post.***
QUOTE (Seaofclouds @ September 18, 2009 05:56 am) ***I tried to add this to my first post, but there was an error while editing my post (per the little box that popped up) and now I can't edit that post, so I had to add this as a separate post.***
the little box that appears is the quick edit. under it there should be a button saying go to full edit. could you have done that? If not I may have to report it as a bug to jcink.
QUOTE (Demon_Skeith @ September 18, 2009 09:46 am) QUOTE (Seaofclouds @ September 18, 2009 05:56 am) ***I tried to add this to my first post, but there was an error while editing my post (per the little box that popped up) and now I can't edit that post, so I had to add this as a separate post.***
the little box that appears is the quick edit. under it there should be a button saying go to full edit. could you have done that? If not I may have to report it as a bug to jcink.
Yeah, I did that. It was when I hit to post it that the error came up. It might have just been a bug or something.
