According to an article on Yahoo! News, Sony will be putting parental controls into the PS3. According to the article they are the last of the consoles to do so. I guess they’re idea of parental controls are to just not allow the playing of games that are rated as mature or whatever.
I don’t think this covers the actual need of parental controls though. What I’d like to be able to do is to turn off the language and blood on various games. I haven’t seen a current system that will let me do this yet and that’s what I’m looking for.
Sony To Put Parental Controls in PlayStation 3 on Yahoo! News
RodeoClown says
The problem with these controls is that they require the parents to actually set things up (and be aware of the fact that the controls even exist). From what I've seen, most parents have only the most cursory experience with their children's game consoles.
Also, rather than have the machine dictate what can be played, why not have a more sensible location for the machine, say… the family room, so that Mum and Dad can walk past and see what's being played at any time (I know kids can borrow games from friends, so I'm not going to mention parents buying these adult games for their kids).
I used to play violent games on my Nintendo and the PC when I lived at my parents' place, the nintendo was in the living room, attached to the main TV (the only other one was in my parents' room – I only got a TV in my room once I was 18/19, another good idea I think). Once mum saw me playing Goldeneye with the slow-mo cheat on, and I was 'painting' scientists by shooting them continually, making more and more red spots appear on them. She wasn't happy, and now I don't do things like that at all anymore. She could see what I was doing was inappropriate and could take action.
As for turning off blood and language, I think the blood doesn't really mean much if a game is about shooting people anyway. I know Half-life and Duke Nukem 3d had controls to turn off excessive gore, but what parent is going to know they can set that anyway (some might I guess). It's actually very difficult in most circumstances to remove certain speech/graphics from a game, as scripts need to be recorded twice (expensive).
Just a few thoughts (sorry it grew so long :) )
RodeoClown says
The problem with these controls is that they require the parents to actually set things up (and be aware of the fact that the controls even exist). From what I’ve seen, most parents have only the most cursory experience with their children’s game consoles.
Also, rather than have the machine dictate what can be played, why not have a more sensible location for the machine, say… the family room, so that Mum and Dad can walk past and see what’s being played at any time (I know kids can borrow games from friends, so I’m not going to mention parents buying these adult games for their kids).
I used to play violent games on my Nintendo and the PC when I lived at my parents’ place, the nintendo was in the living room, attached to the main TV (the only other one was in my parents’ room – I only got a TV in my room once I was 18/19, another good idea I think). Once mum saw me playing Goldeneye with the slow-mo cheat on, and I was ‘painting’ scientists by shooting them continually, making more and more red spots appear on them. She wasn’t happy, and now I don’t do things like that at all anymore. She could see what I was doing was inappropriate and could take action.
As for turning off blood and language, I think the blood doesn’t really mean much if a game is about shooting people anyway. I know Half-life and Duke Nukem 3d had controls to turn off excessive gore, but what parent is going to know they can set that anyway (some might I guess). It’s actually very difficult in most circumstances to remove certain speech/graphics from a game, as scripts need to be recorded twice (expensive).
Just a few thoughts (sorry it grew so long :) )