Retro: articles salvaged from GamerDad.com – from 2005

GamerDad is in the Dallas Morning News today. Since they don’t allow article linking, and since you might not live in Dallas, here’s the article.

Parents get tough on game

05:13 PM CDT on Tuesday, July 26, 2005

By NANCY CHURNIN / The Dallas Morning News

Lauren Charbonneau didn’t worry about purchasing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for her son, Luke, in October when he was 11. Luke is “pretty mature,” his mother says. She figured he could handle an M-rated video game.

Then news broke last week that explicit interactive sex scenes were discovered hidden in the code of the game that touts intense violence, blood and gore.

As a result, the Entertainment Software Rating Board upped the M for Mature rating to AO for Adults Only. Wal-Mart promptly pulled the game off its shelves.

Luke says he never accessed the hidden scenes, but the news of their existence upset his mother. “I’m shocked and angry,” says Ms. Charbonneau, 47, of Plano. “They deceived the public.”

The revelations make it easier and harder on parents, says Dr. Philip Korenman, a psychiatrist in private practice in Plano. It’s easier in one sense, he notes, because “if you had any doubts about getting this game for your kids, now the new rating makes it less ambiguous.”

At the same time, he adds, it’s harder because you realize other games may have more content than you realized.

“You have to watch the games, play the games and be in the room with the child when he’s playing the games.”

Part of what many parents find so disturbing about the newly discovered code is that they don’t understand how kids access it. Every parent needs to know about modifications, which can be created and applied to any PC game, says Andrew Bub, 34, the founder of www.GamerDad.com, a Milwaukee, Wis.-based Web site that helps parents navigate video games. That includes nude codes for the T-Teen rated Sims 2. “It’s a scary Internet out there, but the industry isn’t as bad as people think it is. The industry needs to do a better job defending itself. We try to give people the truth, and let them decide,” he says.

David G. Kenney, CEO of Los Angeles-based PSV ratings, a company that collects data on profanity, sex and violence in the media (www.currentattractions.com), believes the current revelations might be “a good thing for parents and a bad thing for the industry.”

“I don’t think you’re going to find many game manufacturers who hide codes like this anymore. They’re going to lose a lot of money because retailers don’t want to sell AO titles.”

Ironically, if the manufacturer had been upfront they might have continued to fly under the radar with an M rating, Mr. Kenney adds. “There are other games that show every bit as much sex as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Now they’ve set a precedent for giving an AO rating to titles like these.”

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas bears the same “Adults Only” distinction as a handful of other games, including The Joy of Sex , Playboy Screensaver: The Women of Playboy and All Nude Nikki , according to the entertainment board’s Web site.

But code or no code, the decision to purchase a game will continue to be an individual one for parents and kids. And that’s how it should be, says Mr. Bub.

GamerDad rated Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as Adult from the beginning because of the violence. He says he finds it “interesting that a game that features mayhem, murder, manslaughter is suddenly worse if you add sex to the mix.”

He also doesn’t think changing the rating is all that significant as M is aimed at 17+ and AO is 18+.

Some parents agree the game was pretty raunchy even before the discovery of the code. Diane McGuire, 44, of Dallas first saw the game when a friend of her son, Patrick, 13, brought it over. It took her a few minutes to ban it from her home.

“It’s about prostitution, drug dealing and theft. It was always inappropriate for children.”

Secola Edwards, 37, of Coppell struggled for months with her decision to buy Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as a Christmas present for her son, Dixon, 13. Finally, she made a pact with her sister, who has a son the same age: They would buy their kids the game, but would keep a watchful eye on them.

Dixon says he likes the game because it lets his character drive fancy cars and travel the world. His mother says the game may be “a little on the violent side, but from what I’ve seen it hasn’t affected him negatively. He knows it’s not real.”

She doesn’t intend to take advantage of the offer Wal-Mart has made to exchange the game she bought for one without the code. Dixon promised he wouldn’t access anything like that. “I trust my son,” she says. “I don’t want to send a message that I don’t.”

But Dixon says he might prefer to exchange it for one without the code. He really likes the game, he says. And it wouldn’t be worth it to him to check out the code because if he did, his mother would take the game away.

“Whenever I play it now, I’m going to be wondering if the code really works. I might trade it in so I won’t be thinking of that.”

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