your.family.games

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Update (April 29, 2008)

New this week:
Four new game reviews in one week! A new record!

Check below this post later tomorrow for our GTA4 media wrap-up and coverage, which is all aimed at answering the big question: is GTA appropriate for the kids?

Violence, sex, drugs, and swearing all in the midst of an extremely popular games series that's dubbed "revolutionary" by the games media. Start the hype machine and fire up the presses because GTA4 is finally available to the public. But should your kid play it?
Today, Grand Theft Auto 4 was released. There has been and will be an unreasonable amount of media coverage of this game, mostly from the gaming enthusiast press, but also a handful of articles from the mainstream media. No matter what media coverage you may trawl through in trying to determine if you should allow your child to play this game, I suggest you bear two things in mind:

The Grand Theft Auto series simply is not designed for younger audiences. Yet, GTA isn't all sex and violence. The story has some intelligent, satirical commentary. Its open-world format is declared revolutionary. Still, this is not for the 13-and-under crowd. The most startling aspect I've heard about GTA4 is that you can drive up to a prostitute and choose which sexual act you'd like. The game doesn't show explicit details, but it's very obvious what's going on. High-school-aged audiences might be mature enough for this content, but no lower.
There is no proven, causal link between videogame violence and real-life violence. From the Surgeon General's report to the more recent Byron Report, studies agree that more research is needed on this topic.

News links and observation/analysis forthcoming (check back Tuesday in the P.M.). Sorry.