Monday, December 17, 2007

Media vs Video Game

It's Christmas, and it's time for the media to start another FUD against video games. I was watching my local news, and they are advertising an upcoming segment on how to pick video games for your kids. Well, with so many family friendly video games out there (Guitar Hero, Rockband, DDR, Singstar, Karaoke Revolution, Super Mario Galaxy, etc), they used a cutscene from Half Life 2 video game, an M-rated game. So, why would a segment about choosing a video game for your kids is showing an M-rated game? OK, pretty obvious that their intention is to spread FUD to unsuspecting parents.

Going into the segment, more video game cutscenes are played. Again, nothing from all those popular family friendly games mentioned above. Instead, all I saw were scenes from FPS games, namely more Half Life 2, Assassin Creed (also an M-rated game), etc.

Come the worst part. They went to a local video game store to interview some shoppers. They interviewed few parents, then, a 12-year-old black kid, playing a demo of Heavenly Sword. Then the reporter asked the kid why he liked that video game. The kid innocently said because he can kill stuff. Wow, jackpot for the FUD spreader. Look parents, video game is "bad" because it makes a black kid killing stuff! WTF? Of course, no other kids are shown. You have to wonder why they picked a black kid for the interview.

The next step is a short interview with a guy, presumably someone from the gaming industry. He was explaining the ESRB rating system and how it helps parents to pick a suitable game, and suddenly the interview was cut off with the reporter continuing the show off camera saying "Oh really," and rambled on about parents still not knowing what is inside the game box. WTF? Are parents illiterate or something? How hard can it be? M for Mature, T for Teen, etc. How simple can that be? But the reporter was trying to make as if reading a 1 letter rating to be very confusing and complicated.

Of course, during the whole segment, none of those popular family friendly games are even mentioned. And this is about a segment for choosing a video game for your kid? It's as if they're saying parents to pick those M-rated FPS games for their kids. WTF?

*sigh. Jack Thompson is probably cheering somewhere. Maybe we should just flood the US video game market with Japanese eroge.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with that BS Adrian, just some stupid reporter playing hero to the community.."ooh look at me I'm doing a good service to the community..."
Parents keep shedding off parental responsibility these days, its never their fault when their kids do bad things, its the music, the video games, the movies...