Musician and record producer Mike Stock lashed out against the current state of pop music, stating that the “industry has gone too far” as it serves up “soft pornography” to children.

Stock, perhaps best-known as one member of a trio of songwriters and producers known as Stock Aitken Waterman, which produced and wrote songs for an impressive list of musical acts ranging from Elton John to Judas Priest to Bananarama, saved some of his blame for videogames, stating:

Before children even step into school, they have all these images. The pop videos and computer games like Grand Theft Auto confronting them, and the parents can't control it. Talking to mothers' groups, they were saying that even they have lost faith in brands like Disney.

A 28-year old Delhi Township, Ohio man visiting his son at his ex-wife’s house, stole his nine-year old son’s game system and games upon leaving and traded them in at a nearby game store.

Joseph Phillips sold the items for about a tenth of their value according to an article on Cincinnati.com. His ex-wife valued the goods at $1,070, leading the website to question why Phillips was arrested for misdemeanor theft charges and not on felony charges.

Phillips, who has a history of drug arrests, allegedly committed the deed on Sunday and was arrested on Monday. His stay in jail was short-lived due to overcrowding, but he failed to appear in court on Tuesday, leading to an arrest warrant being issued against him.

Phillips reportedly told police that he would not be around because he was checking into a Teen Challenge USA recovery program. Officials “could not confirm if Phillips was in the program.”

Indie game developer and publisher Amanita Design has announced a Pirate Amnesty Sale to encourage the purchase of its point and click adventure game, Machinarium (Mac, PC, Linux). The sale, which runs until August 12, is a smart assed response to internal figures it has unearthed showing that only 5 - 15 percent of those playing the game have actually paid for it. During the sale the game will be available for a mere $5 - down from the usual $20.

Part of the reason the game is so widely available and apparently heavily pirated is because the company chose to release it without any kind of DRM protection. For doing that Amanita Design deserves a bit of credit and some respect.

So how can it get that respect? By those that are enjoying the game to pay a little something for it. Here's a message from the developers on the sale:

The UK’s first Communication Champion for kids thinks that long car rides are the perfect chance for children to “double their vocabulary,” but that the proliferation of in-car entertainment devices like games and DVD players, if enacted during a trip, eliminate any chance for growth.

Jean Gross issued the warning, stating that kids from affluent families, who were more likely to be able to outfit their cars with the electronic devices in question, were more at risk.

Gross stated:

I remember [when my children were little] we did spotting games in the car, but with the Nintendo DS and other hand-held video games it's going to be more affluent parents whose children have problems learning to speak, not just those from poorer homes who have less exposure to a wide range of language.

A rather advanced (and enlightened) “school” in Germany exists solely to teach adults about the benefits of playing videogames and how to leverage games as a way to improve relationships and grow closer with their offspring.

Almost two-years old, the Leipzig Video Game School is targeted at parents and grandparents, reports DW-World.de. University of Leipzig instructor Claudia Philipp, who heads up the Video Game School, told the publication that her mission is “to broaden media literacy and allowing people to get acquainted with what kind of games there are, what types of genres there are.”

A sampling of who attends:

Gabriele Heidecker, 52, sits with her two grandchildren Jonas and Melika just a couple of machines down. This is the tenth time here for these three, who've been coming twice a week. Eight-year-old Melika is excited to have a video game-playing grandma.

The school is free to visit for the first two hours of play, then charges one Euro per hour per person.

Writer Matthew Orona let his four-year old son play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and documented the action for an article on Bitmob.

Asked by his father to jack a car waiting at a red light, the boy “quickly looked up at me with disgust and refused, stating that the car was already owned by the person driving it.” After finally grabbing an unoccupied car, the boy, unfamiliar with the controls and driving a bit too fast, ran over a woman on a sidewalk. His reaction? “He was incredibly ashamed of himself and profusely apologized.”

The boy rounded out his time by attempting to complete missions which aided other citizens, piloting a police car, ambulance and fire truck. While driving an ambulance he passed a fire house with a shiny red truck out front which mesmerized him, as it would any four-year old boy. Rather than ditch his passengers however, the boy completed his mission by bringing the ambulance occupants to the hospital before asking his dad to guide him back to the firehouse.

Orona summed up the experience:

Glinn & Giordano, a California-based physical therapy business, recently conducted a study which focused on the posture of gamers between the ages of five and fifteen.

The study, done in conjunction with the Cal State Bakersfield Department of Physical Education, watched the youngsters as they played a title for five minutes. Preliminary findings, as offered by Bakersfield.com, suggested that “posture became worse as the five minutes wore on and that children sitting in chairs had better posture both at the start and finish than did those sitting on the floor.”

Glinn & Giordano’s Brian Monroe, a Doctor of Physical Therapy, therefore recommended that games should be played from a chair “with feet flat on the ground and back support." He also suggested that parents should correct the posture of their kids if they see a forward-leaning head, rounded shoulders and/or the lower back rounding forward.

Lazlow Jones (pictured), best known as the voice of the radio DJ in the Grand Theft Auto series of games, thinks that parental units who purchase a Rockstar game for their offspring are “terrible parents.”

Jones, who has been credited in a slew of Rockstar Games titles, was discussing the publisher’s latest release Red Dead Redemption in a BBC interview, when he was asked “How do you feel about accusations that games such as yours are responsible for more violence among young people?”

Jones responded:

Our games are not designed for young people. If you're a parent and buy one of our games for your child you're a terrible parent. We design games for adults because we're adults. There's a lot of kids games out there that we're not interested in playing. Just like you enjoy watching movies and TV shows with adult themes and language and violence that's the kind of thing we seek to produce.

Yet another examination of parental controls on the current crop of consoles has resulted in the Xbox 360 being labeled the best of the bunch.

A Game Informer editor created a scenario for his wife tasking her with adjusting parental controls for a pair of fictional teen boys on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii. The wife was chosen because of her lack of hands on time with the game machines.

A sampling of the article’s commentary and grades for each console are featured below:

A Spanaway, Washington mother got a surprise when purchasing what she thought was an “E” (Everyone)-rated game for her nine year old daughter.

The game Kara Petrich bought at a Tacoma Big Lots store was labeled as an entry in Ubisoft’s Petz videogame series, in which players care for a virtual pet. Unfortunately, reports Komo News, the game inside was the “T” (Teen)-rated game Sprung, a title billed as a “flirty” dating simulator. The game cartridge itself was also mislabeled, adding to the mom’s confusion.

When Petrich’s daughter started playing the game, she was presented with dialogue like “Make sure you bring your life jackets, condoms,” and “You wanna rock my mountains, don't you?”

Petrich said she was angry about the mixup, saying, “Most important, I want parents to know that you can't just hand kids a game and then send them off.”

The South Korean parents of a three-month old allegedly fed their gaming habits obsessively while neglecting their daughter, who effectively starved to death.

The 41-yeard old husband and his 25-year old wife, identified only as “the Kims,” spent up to 12 hours every night at Internet cafés playing games, according to a story on ABC. The couple came home one morning last September, after spending the whole night out, and alerted authorities upon finding their daughter deceased.

An autopsy revealed that the baby’s death came about from malnourishment. The Kims subsequently confessed that they had been feeding their daughter “rotten, powdered milk and had often spanked their crying baby.”

In a sinister bit of irony, officials reported that instead of taking care of their real child, who was born prematurely, the couple was infatuated with raising a virtual daughter in the massively multiplayer online game PRIUS.

The article also features a quote from Dr. Kim Sang Eun, of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, who believes game addiction is a brain disease. She stated, “there's no certain clinical indicator to define 'game addiction' but our study shows that brain PET [scan] images of suspected online game addicts are very similar to that of a cocaine addict.”

The parents were arrested on Wednesday.

Parents looking for more information on what games are safe for their kids are now armed with a new resource.

FamilyFriendlyVideogames focuses on “games that are easy to play and fun for families to play together.” Each reviewed game will feature a score based on how fun the game is for a family to play as a group, along with detailed information on which age groups a game’s subject matter is safe for.  Age recommendations are broken down into Toddler (2-4), Kid (5-8), Tween (9-12) and Teen (13+) categories.

Accepted games receive a Seal of Approval from the site, offering parents a way to judge games with a quick glance. Progress Reports are also offered for games that the site has not had a chance to review yet, allowing parents to at least access some basic information on the title.

The site was launched by the husband/wife team of Johner and Christina Riehl. Johner, a former videogame industry  veteran on the PR front, on why the site was started, “It's difficult for a family to find relevant information when deciding whether or not to buy a videogame to play together, because many of the traditional media outlets that provide videogame reviews don't represent the family viewpoint.”

The Pearson Foundation has released a white paper authored by Arizona State University’s Jay Blanchard and Terry Moore which gathers information on how digital media effects learning in children.

The Digital World of Young Children: Emergent Literacy (PDF) examines the impact of cell phones, television, videogames, smart devices and computers, with an emphasis on three to five year old kids in developing and least-developed countries. The report offers that, “digital media is already transforming the language and cultural practices that enable early literacy development, making possible a new kind of personal and global interconnectedness.”

A few excerpts from the section on videogames:

With the exception of a study of video game effects on first- and second-grade children in Chile, there is no research available on the influence of video games on emergent literacy skills development.

However, more and more video games are now tailored for young children, and some are targeted at emergent literacy.

The impact of this increased availability is unclear. It is known that video games can have both negative and positive influences on older children and adolescents. Benefits have been documented in terms of enhanced visual attention and perceptual-motor skills development among older users.

However, negative effects from video game violence and aggression have been a contentious issue, particularly with regard to young children even if they are just watching and listening.

On media that is not “intentionally educational” (i.e. television and videogames):

These types of media activate orienting and selecting processes as direct responses to the visual and auditory features of the content. However, it is not until young children engage and sustain their attention that actual encoding, or learning, occurs.

The white paper offers the following conclusion:

… until more empirical research becomes available, it is only possible to speculate about the effects based mostly on what the research has taught us about television and computer-based learning with older children, adolescents, and adults in developed nations. Factors that may be affected include attention, information processing speed, social collaboration, attitudes and digital literacy.

A columnist for a local Minnesota paper recently detailed her ability to overcome an aversion for videogames.

Maggie Modjeski, a writer for the Winona Daily News of Winona, Minnesota, was given a Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit for Christmas. The console remained boxed for sometime after the holidays as Modjeski wrestled with the fact that the game machine was “against everything I had preached for so long to my children.”

After some setup assistance from her kids, the Wii was ready to go. Modjeski noticed that her offspring playing Wii Fit were not only occupied, but “they were active and they were getting tired,” in addition to “burning pent-up energy that comes with a long, cold Minnesota winter.”

Once her weary children went to bed, the author tried her own hand at the Wii, playing Wii Tennis until her “arm was about to fall off.”

Modjeski’s opinion of games changed almost immediately:

Since that day, the Wii has become my friend. However, I don't condone hours of play or use it as a babysitter. I don't believe it is a revolutionary tool that brings families together, nor does the system replace a trip to the YMCA or any other real activity.
 

The Wii isn't going to eradicate childhood obesity, and, to be honest, when I hear about kids using it during their physical education classes, I do get a little irritable.

I have come to the conclusion that, like most everything else, in moderation it's OK.

A little different than the last mom covered around these parts.


|Image from Flickr|

70.0% of parents pay “close” attention to videogame ratings when making a purchase for themselves or their children according to a new study from Activision Publishing and The Harrison Group.

The survey was conducted as part of Activision’s Ratings Are Not a Game initiative, which is designed to educate parents and consumers further on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) rating system.

Additional survey statistics showed that 63.0% of parents with children consider themselves a gamer, with that number increasing to 83.0% for parents 35 years of age and younger. Additionally, 82.0% of gamers indicated awareness of ESRB ratings, as did 75.0% of children.

76.0% of adults surveyed indicated they were comfortable with videogames being a part of their family’s activities.

Gamers also spent an average of 32.0% of their free time on entertainment, with 19.0% of that time spent on videogames.

Mike Griffith, Activision Publishing President and CEO, added:

Parents rely on and value the ESRB ratings in helping them decide which games to allow their children to play. Our 'Ratings Are Not A Game' education initiative underscores our commitment to helping parents better understand and utilize the ratings system as they select age appropriate games and determine the best way for the entire family to enjoy the gaming experience.

Research was culled from 1,201 online surveys of videogamers, and their parents, between the ages of 6 and 44.

PlayStation 3 parental controls are confusing and subpar when compared to the Xbox 360 writes an IGN columnist.

While the 360 uses ESRB and MPAA ratings to restrict videogames and movies (Ed: confirmed by looking on Xbox.com), the author writes that doing so on the PS3 is confusing, because Sony implemented a number system, “Over on the PlayStation 3, you assign a number. What does the number mean? Who the hell knows.”

Well, while it is confusing, the PS3 manual features a chart that correlates numbers with ESRB ratings: parental control level 2 corresponds with the ESRB’s Early Childhood (EC) rating, 3 with Everyone (E), 4 with Everyone +10 (E10+), 5 with Teen (T), 9 with Mature (M) and 10 with Adults Only (AO).

Limiting Blu-Ray disc playback is a little easier. From the manual: "When playing a BD with parental control settings, restrict playback based on the age you have set."

The author agrees that this is rather straight forward, “For Blu-ray discs, you can set a number anywhere between 0 and what seems to effectively equate to infinity. It sounds like you can just treat this as someone's age, which at least sort of makes sense, but that doesn't apply to games.”

Regular DVD restriction is a little more confusing. Says the IGN author, “DVDs have had this same confusing system for a while now, where you can choose a number between 1 and 8, but on its games front, Sony has gone with a system that spans from 1 to 11.”

We would have to agree that having two different numbering systems is a bit confusing. In both cases however, the lower the number, the tighter the restrictions.

GP: Having little reason to enact parental controls, this was all relatively new territory. Obviously the IGN editor did not take the time to read the manual, but this is common among consumers.

Did Sony make their parental controls too difficult for the average person to understand?

Any parents out there have similar problems or confusion limiting PS3 content?

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) is taking children’s TV network Nickelodeon to task for linking to “naughty” online games from its Nick.com and NickJR.com websites.

CCFC claims Nickelodeon is promoting “sexualized and violent video games to children as young as preschoolers” by cross-linking to its sister-website, AddictingGames.com.

Among the titles to raise CCFC’s ire are Naughty Classroom (Hot for teacher?...Here's your chance to fulfill your ultimate childhood fantasy), Foxy Sniper (Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. Fear me, because I am a crack shot!) and Dark Cut 2 (More macho surgery! No anesthetic. No antiseptics. Just rusty knives, corn whiskey, and lots of blood!).

Nick had apparently pulled some games from the site after it received complaints toward the end of last year, but this was not enough to appease CCFC, who said that, “Nickelodeon was clearly more concerned about protecting its reputation than protecting children.”

AddictingGames.com does have a rudimentary warning system in place for games that “may be a little “edgy.” Such titles are flagged on the site with a picture of a small bomb. A short Parent’s Guide to the site is offered as well.

Concerned parents are urged to take action on the CCFC website, where they can submit a form letter to Steve Youngwood, Executive Vice President, Digital, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group.

The refusal of a 14-year old to turn off his videogame system in the wee hours of the night resulted in his mother calling 911.

The Boston Herald has the story, which begins with 49-year old Angela Mejia noticing a light on in her son’s room around 2:30 AM on Saturday, hours after she apparently told him to go sleep. Finding him playing a videogame, she called 911 rather than simply turning off the videogame console. Police responded, told the boy to “Chill out” and to “Go to Bed,” which the boy then did.

The boy was playing a version of Grand Theft Auto, which the mother, further demonstrating her lack of prowess in the parental arena, rightfully disapproved of. Mejia said she has no problem with sports videogames, but said about GTA, ““I would never buy that kind of video. No way.”

Grand Theft Childhood co-author Lawrence Kutner even weighed in a quote for the piece, saying, “Clearly, it’s a very, very rare situation for someone to call the cops. That she went to the extreme of calling the police tells me more about her level of frustration than anything else.”

|Image via FailBlog|

A UK-gamer has interviewed his own personal videogame “gate keeper,” (his mother) for a wonderful piece examining the roles of parents in ensuring that inappropriate titles are kept out of the hands of younger users.

Penned by Nathan Miller, who is an Assistant Community Manager at Face, the piece appears in the company’s blog. Miller, who came of age in the early 1990s, began by asking his mother about how she managed his early fascination with games :

I had heard stories of addiction on the radio, alongside those more extreme stories of children getting violent through not being able to differentiate between fantasy and reality and re-enacting the games that you had, but ultimately I didn’t censor you beyond the extremely violent and gore-filled games as I had faith both in my parenting ability by correlation your own ability to distinguish fantasy and reality.

Miller’s mum refused to buy Grand Theft Auto for him, even in light of every child’s number one rallying cry—that all his friends owned the game. He wrote that, “I suppose the early censorship my Mum had instilled had worked as I don’t really remember having a large desire to get GTA.”

The Miller-family matron would typically examine the cover of a game to decide suitability for her son and was not averse to playing games herself. She enjoyed Golden Axe, but fell for Streets of Rage after some initial distaste:

And Streets of Rage, I was iffy about the violence on the cover but I let you convince me slightly and I wanted to experience it myself to see whether it was bad or not, and in the end I ended up really enjoying it! The girl character became a fantasy me!

I think I ended up playing it through wanting to experience how violent it was for myself and also you asking me to play with you when you didn’t have friends round.

As her son is now a grown-up and capable of making his own decisions, Miller’s mother has had little reason to keep abreast of the latest in videogames. To bring her up to speed, Miller decided to show her the “No Russian” scene from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Her reaction:

I’m shocked at the realness of it! I’m not sure I would’ve bought you the beat-em up games if they’d been this real!

…the wanton destruction of this game disgusts me. It made me shudder and dragged my emotions into it despite it being a game. If you were younger, I wouldn’t be buying that for you if you!

Miller ends the piece with a bit of insight, “My discussion with my own Mum also suggests that it is possible to find a middle road, where both parents and children can enjoy games together, where censoring can become more of a behind-the-scenes issues rather than a confrontational one.”


|Image Via Tumblr|

Vision Audio Inc. has developed a PC game designed to provide assistance for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) by teaching them to cope with noise while improving sensory processing.

EASe Funhouse Treasure Hunt combines therapeutic music with several different types of interactive immersion “designed to stimulate, but not over-stimulate, a child who is challenged by sensory processing and organization.”

Bill Mueller, president of Vision Audio explained, “Our goal is to balance the child’s sensory experiences. Too much stimulation can result in fight-or-flight responses. Too little stimulation and we won't get past the child's existing sensory defense mechanisms."

Those afflicted with ASD have difficulty filtering information from their environment, which can result in overstimulation, “A touch may feel like a burn, lights may be blinding, sounds deafening, smells repugnant.”

The game, recommended for kids ages six and up, is on sale for $39.00 on the EaseCD website. A demo is also available for download.

The effect of videogames and media on children is a polarizing topic and one that’s not so simple to nail down writes researcher Neils Clark in a column on The Escapist.

Entitled Developmental Stage Select, the piece begins with Clark cautioning against pigeonholing:

Though two kids may be the same age, they could be in vastly different places developmentally. Each one is a different combination of genetics, environment and age - what's potentially harmful to one specific child in one developmental stage can be innocuous to another in a different stage.

Clark then cycles through the different age ranges of kids, while examining the type of activities that might best match the stage of their development.

Dr. Hilarie Cash, of the ReStart gaming addiction center, recommends no “screens” before age 7 and is  quoted in the article cautioning parents, “… to not associate the internet with entertainment ... I think it's analogous to parents handing their kids a joint.”

Cash’s remark drew a split response from Clark:

Games aren't chemical substances. THC, the active compound in marijuana, mimics the body's native cannabinoids, in effect raising the body's natural dopamine dam. Rhetoric referencing cocaine, pot, booze, or any other physical substance is inappropriate.

But just as importantly, accessible and rewarding behaviors can release dopamine to the point where one can form a behavioral addiction. In such an addiction, a person chooses the singular behavior they love over the many they'll need to survive. And the natural defenses to this are always going to be weaker in humans who are not fully developed.

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has released an iPhone application that allows users to search the ESRB for videogame information.

In addition to showing a game’s rating, the app also details rating descriptors and provides a full explanation of the content in the title. Game summaries date back to July 1, 2008.

To back the launch of the application, the ESRB has also debuted a new Public Service Announcement.

ESRB president Patricia Vance added, “This new rating search app puts all this information at parents’ fingertips when they need it most, right at the store.  It’s a powerful tool that will help assure parents that the games they give as gifts are not only fun but also appropriate for their children.”

A Buffalo Grove, Illinois boy called 911 after his parents took away his Xbox console as punishment.

The boy hung up, reports The Chicago Tribune, but as a matter of routine, an officer was dispatched to the home just in case. The boy apparently admitted to making the call and asked a cop whether his parents were within their rights taking away his game system. A police officer assured him that they were.

A Police Commander told the paper that he did not know why the boy was being punished. Police further advised the boy to listen to his parents.

Activision Publishing Inc. has linked up with Dr. Cheryl Olson in a bid to enable parents and teachers to “optimize” children’s videogame experience.

Dr. Olson, no stranger to this site, is co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games.

The partnership will result in a series of seven videos posted on Activision’s Ratings Are Not a Game website. The first two are already up:  Using Videogames to Teach Problem Solving and Planning and How Can I Tell if a Game is Appropriate for My Child and How Do I Set Play Limits.

Dr. Olson stated, “These videos give practical research-based advice on how to help your kids--and your family--get more out of video games, and how to watch for and limit electronic game play.”

In related news, Dr. Olson’s husband and co-author of Grand Theft Childhood, Dr. Lawrence Kutner, has been appointed Executive Director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

Research from Nielsen indicates that the average time spent in front of the boob tube by American children is on the rise.

The usage, which includes viewing DVR, DVD and VCR content, in addition to videogames, rose to an average of over 32 hours a week for kids ages 2-5 and to over 28 hours for kids between the ages of 6-11.

Average videogame usage per week was measured at one hour and 12 minutes for the 2-5 age group and more than doubled—at two hours and 23 minutes—in the 6-11 year old range.

The report also noted that children in the two-five year old age group were more likely to watch commercials than any other group, including adults.

As part of a policy statement on media violence, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) outlines steps pediatricians can take to evaluate potential heavy media use by children.

Beginning with the claim that “the evidence is now clear and convincing: media violence is 1 of the causal factors of real-life violence and aggression,” the AAP paper encourages pediatricians to ask at least two media-related questions per each adolescent visit: How much entertainment media per day is the child watching? and Is there a TV or Internet connection in the child’s bedroom?

The AAP recommends that parents remove televisions, Internet and videogames from their kid’s rooms and limit screen time to one to two hours per day, totally avoiding violent games. Parents are also encouraged to co-view any material in order to screen it for appropriateness.

The AAP had recommendations targeted at the entertainment industry as well, including these specific videogame-related topics:

• Video games should not use human or other living targets or award points for killing, because this teaches children to associate pleasure and success with their ability to cause pain and suffering to others.
• Play of violent video games should be restricted to age-limited areas of gaming arcades; the distribution of videos and video games and the exhibition of movies should be limited to appropriate age groups.

An article on The Escapist traces the origins of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) from an institution initially created in order to avoid government regulation to where it is today.

While noting that the ESRB has made huge advances in connecting with its primary clientele (parents) and has even won over The National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF), the article begins to detail “unaddressed challenges” from today’s videogame market that “pose serious threats to the ESRB's newfound relevance.”

Among these challenges is the ESRB’s current disinclination to rate online interactions (i.e. Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB):

The organization is missing out on a great opportunity to provide parents and children with a resource that enables informed choices beyond the enforced restriction of filters, a noble cause given that children play more online games than any other format.

A shift from brick and mortar retail outlets to digital distribution also poses “an immediate threat to ESRB compliance rates” says the piece’s author, Sara Grimes, who worries that this means that “the ESRB must rely on console manufacturers and mobile service providers to act as the system's new wardens.”

In summation, Grimes writes that “it’s almost as if the Board is orchestrating its own obsolescence.” She continued:

It's abstaining from involvement in significant game trends, failing to provide guidance where it is arguably needed most and handing over key governance responsibilities to certain members of the game industry while leaving others to fend for themselves.

The Federal Communications Commission will evaluate the potential for a single content rating system that would span various forms of media, including video games, movies, TV and music.

Bloomberg reports that the FCC will study the issue at the direction of Congress:

The FCC action follows congressional queries into whether children are harmed by inappropriate content, such as sex, violence and obscenity. Senators want to know whether revisions are needed to the law to protect children, said Senator Jay Rockefeller...

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told Congress in July he was “hopeful that the evolving media landscape” will enhance parents’ power “to pick and choose” what their child sees and hears.

Not surprisingly, game publishers lobbying group ESA is opposed to the idea. Kotaku has comment from ESA VP RichTaylor:

The ESA appreciates the FCC and its important role. However, the ESRB rating system is considered by parents, family advocates, the Federal Trade Commission, and elected officials as the gold standard in providing caregivers with the information they need to make the right choices for their families. Universal ratings will, in the end, only serve to confuse consumers, violate the Constitution's first amendment, and are a solution in search of a problem.

Last Sunday morning, a Utah police officer chased a car that blew through stop signs and narrowly missed a pedestrian.  Imagine the pursuing cop’s surprise when the car came to a stop and out popped a 7-year-old boy.

On Thursday, Captain Klint Anderson of the Weber County Sheriff’s Office spoke of the incident to Fox News.  Young Preston Scarbrough told police he had taken the family car because he didn’t want to go to church that morning (he later told his mom he just wanted to give driving a go).

Fox News: “How did he even learn how to [drive]?”

Anderson: “Well, we’re not exactly sure except that his father has grounded him from one of his video games which involves operating vehicles so…”

Fox News: “Something like a Grand Theft Auto, something like that?”

Anderson: “I have no idea.  I didn’t ask the father what game it was but some of those video games are pretty realistic.”

The following day, the Scarbrough family appeared on NBC's Today Show.  Preston’s father, who initially thought the police sirens outside were coming from one of his boy’s video games, confirmed that the little lawbreaker had been grounded for four days with no TV or games.

We’re going to throw away those driving video games for sure.

Preston, for his part, explained how he learned to drive.

Watched my mom. Watched my sister.

Video of the Today Show segment can be seen here and here.

-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Correspondent Andrew Eisen…

Beleagured British Prime Minister Gordon Brown plans to spend part of his upcoming holiday enjoying games with his two young sons, reports the Mirror:

The workaholic PM is determined to enjoy his holiday in the Lake District with wife Sarah and his sons, five-year-old John and three-year old Fraser.

He is well aware - partly because his Church of Scotland minister father had long absences overseas on missionary work - of the need to spend quality time with his boys. "I think for all fathers the challenge is finding the time to spend with your children," he admits...

He plans to do more "re-winning" of their interest as he watches the boys' favourite TV shows and plays computer games over the next few weeks at the couple's home in Scotland and on their holiday.

No particular games or systems were specified in the report, but last year Brown admitted that his son - then four - beat him at Wii Sports Tennis.

Partially Via: MCVUK