Revisiting video game ratings: Shift from content-centric to parent-centric approach

Abstract

The rapid adoption of video gaming among children has placed tremendous strain on parents’ ability to manage their children’s consumption. While parents refer online to video games ratings (VGR) information to support their mediation efforts, there are many difficulties associated with such practice. This paper explores the popular VGR sites, and highlights the inadequacies of VGRs to capture the parents’ concerns, such as time displacement, social interactions, financial spending and various video game effects, beyond the widespread panics over content issues, that is subjective, ever-changing and irrelevant. As such, this paper argues for a shift from content-centric to a parent-centric approach in VGRs, that captures the evolving nature of video gaming, and support parents, the main users of VGRs, in their management of their young video gaming children. This paper proposes a Video Games Repository for Parents to represent that shift.