Comments on: No wonder games’ media coverage is biased

By: Pheret1

Pheret1 — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 19:57:36 +0000

As an interesting aside, a friend of mine has a PS2. He and his wife went to put in a movie (I guess "R" rated) and the parental controls kicked in and wouldn't let them watch it. They didn't know the PIN or whatever and just gave up (being lazy and it beeing a weekend evening when customer support was presumably closed).

They popped in some porn DVDs and watched those instead. Not a Hollywood production = not coded for parental control.

By: Administrator

Administrator — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 16:55:30 +0000

I saw that you didn't advocate a V-Chip. But this is a topic that obviously interests you (why comment, otherwise), you seem to be following the media (why else would you be on the blog), and yet you don't have the information that there already is the equivalent of a V-chip. It's clearly a failure of the media to inform about the issue.

For the record: I don't think parental controls on a game console are a bad thing. I think government-mandated rules on what can and cannot be said in games are a bad thing. That also includes a mandated V-chip.

There's nothing wrong with voluntary information, and the ability to flag that information, on the basis of a personal decision. The government has no place in child-raising.

By: reyonthehill

reyonthehill — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 16:46:00 +0000

I think if you read my full comments on Tapper’s blog, you would see that I didn’t advocate for a v-chip. But it is interesting that you acknowledge that most systems available now have no parental controls (you mention new ones will). And I am a gamer, but I don’t play rpgs, so I admit I don’t know all the ins and outs.