games: Confessions of A Failed Gaming Parent

By Brian Crecente

[1]Confessions of A Failed Gaming Parent
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I have a confession to make: My 9-year-old spent about two weeks playing
Modern Warfare 2 on the Xbox 360, and I had no idea he was doing it.

[2]My wife and I set up parental locks on the console and on Tristan's Xbox
Live gold account, which allows him to play online. But we underestimated
just how crafty our son can be.
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Like all children his age, Tristan found a loophole in the rules that I had
laid out and that the Xbox 360 was enforcing. He managed to discover a way
around Microsoft's fairly robust parental controls: His parents.

Here's how: My wife and I allow Tristan to create maps in Halo 3, just maps.
That means no playing the game. And he's very good about doing just that;
not playing, just making maps. For Tristan, Halo 3's map maker is like
virtual building blocks.

But we set up Tristan's account to prevent him from playing mature-rated
games like Halo 3. So every time our son asked to create a map in the game
we had to manually unlock the console with our password. Earlier this month
Tristan started surreptitiously switching the game in the console that my
wife was unlocking to Modern Warfare 2, getting her to unwittingly unlock
the first-person shooter.

Eventually, we caught him in the act.

It's a reminder that as parents we have to remain constantly vigilant.
Something Microsoft gets. It's part of the reason, it seems, that the
company is rolling out even more robust parental controls come this fall.

Due out this November, the Xbox Live Gold Family plan will run you $99 for
up to four linked Xbox Gold accounts, accounts that normally come in at just
under $50 a pop. And if you don't use all four accounts immediately you can
always activate them later.

Upgrading to the Xbox Live Gold Family plan also gives you access to the
Family Center, a new area in Xbox Live that includes more ways to monitor
your child's gaming habits.

You can, under the new system, divvy out an allowance of points that can be
spent on Xbox 360 games, avatars and add-ons. You will also be able to track
exactly what all four account holders are doing through an online monitor.
The family plan will also include regular discounts geared toward families,
like maybe a price cut for a game like Uno on Xbox Live.

What intrigues me most about the Family Center is that activity monitor,
which can show you what games are being played by each account holder and
for how long.

While it won't break down what's going on inside non-gaming applications, it
can show you how long they're being used. For instance, you can see how long
your son was watching movies or TV shows using NetFlix on the Xbox 360, but
not what he was watching.

Microsoft is also rolling out new parental controls to all Xbox Live
members, whether they are family plan subscribers or not.

New features include the ability to lock down all content (movies, games and
television shows) on the Xbox 360 by rating. The console can also
automatically set up the privacy and activity settings for your children
based on their age, if you don't have the time or know-how to do it
yourself.

Finally, the Xbox 360 is letting you make exceptions to the ratings rules
you set up on the console. In other words, you can choose specific games
that your child can play, like Halo 3, no matter what rating you've locked
out on the console. That way you won't have to manually enter a code every
time you want to grant them access to that game.

It's a fantastic addition to a fantastic tool for parenting gamer children,
one that acknowledges that even the Entertainment Software Rating Board's
robust ratings can't satisfy 100 percent of the parents 100 percent of the
time.

Jerret West, senior group product manager of Xbox Live subscriptions, tells
Kotaku that Microsoft decided to roll out these changes and create a new
Family plan because they feel the Xbox 360 is becoming more of an
entertainment box than a video game console.

"A lot of what we announced at E3 are things that will bring a lot more
people into Xbox Live," West said.

That includes the Xbox 360's motion-sensing Kinect add-on and the addition
of ESPN to the console.

"Our goal," West said, "is more participation and making the console easier
to use."

Both as a gamer and a parent, it seems.

_[3]Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of
the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come.
Feel free to join in the discussion._
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