Open letters to Parents, Gamers and Bad Reporters

 Dear Parents Scared by bad reporting,

According to 1up.com, the Denver Fox Affiliate KDVR put this video up last week.

Before I go after this video, which is pretty well panned by 1up and their commentators, I showed the above link to a current reporter and a former reporter neither of whom are gamers. Here are their reactions:

Current Reporter, “I agree with the commentary below the article. It's sloppy journalism. Pretty much everything they say in the story is anecdotal. There are no stats, no research into the privacy controls, no quotes from microsoft. It's crap.”

Former Reporter, “I think the text below the video pretty much says it all, the video clearly left some important things unaddressed. The purpose of the video definitely seemed, to me, to be more about scaring parents than informing them about prevention and safety. Definitely irresponsible journalism.”

There you have it, trained journalists say “its crap.” This is clearly not responsible journalism by any stretch of the imagination. As you see above, they leave out important details like, “here's how parents can protect their kids against just such a thing.”

The ESRB does do a great job, and they're often not thanked for it. They have made some questionable calls over the years, but it is a relatively new organization. The fact that these ratings exist allows parents to lock their kids consoles to only allow age appropriate games...on all 3 major consoles. A simple google search will give you instructions on everything they need to do to protect your kids in that way.

One place the ESRB is not responsible for is online content. This says they can't police the internet, they don't have any control of character names, in game chat or voice chat among users or in the case of mods on the PC they can't control content that may appear either. You as a parent need to be aware of this and prepare against it. While you can't control what comes out of the mouths of babes (or gamers) then you need to explain to your kids that language or behavior like that isn't appropriate.

Here's where you step in, Scared Parent, keep an ear open when they're online, make sure conversations are played through the tv speakers rather then the headset so you can hear what's going on in the game. If you hear something you don't want to hear take appropriate action. If you set up your kids xbox live account correctly you are able to monitor what happens to it including who they can interact with. If you're on the Wii you don't need to worry about this as there's little to no voice support. You can e-mail with the service but Nintendo has gone above and beyond the call of duty by making the Friend Code program.

Here's the bottom line its not Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo, nor EA, Infinity Ward, Bungie or any other company is responsible for what your kid is exposed to while playing a game with other people Its you, your kid and all the other end users on there.

That being said.

Dear 30 year old Ohio Lady arrested for exposing herself to a minor over Xbox live and other people who send inappropriate things like that,

STOP! When you pull stuff like this is makes gamers far and wide get a bad rap. Its hard to believe sometimes that the average age of a gamer is 35 due to the amount of childish antics that go down in the average game of Modern Warfare 2.

Dear Gamers in general,

We all grew up with games in our lives, they've affected us all one way or another, be it skipping a class to wrap up Final Fantasy 7 or really wanting to play Left 4 Dead with your friends when you get home after a long day at work or maybe getting a little weepy at the end of Bioshock. Its time we grew up too, let's watch our language online, mute people we find irritable rather then flame them or call them names. Let's go back to the Golden rule and treat others as we would want to be treated show some respect and sportsmanship.

Finally.

Dear KDVR Fox Affiliate in Denver,

Learn to report things, its kind of what you're paid for. Its clear to me and your contemporary journalists that you did little to no research on this topic. There were no links mentioned, you had no quotes from the other side, you failed at your job as reporters. Your duty to the public is to inform, this did nothing but incite panic among parents. We have enough real problems to worry about, we don't need fake ones on top of it. 

Thank you all for your time,

SovietDancnbear 

Parent and Gamer.