Rockstar: Bad Parents Buy Our Games for Kids

Rockstar Games recently came out and spoke against parents who purchase its games for their children. The retaliation comes at the heels of its latest release, Red Dead Redemption, now heading to stores worldwide. Like most of Rockstar's games, Red Dead Redemption is rated "M" for violence, language, drug use, and other adult content. And like the games preceding it, Rockstar will undoubtedly receive flak for the content despite its ratings, even from parents.

Is it any wonder the developer/publisher comes out with guns blazing? The argument clearly gets tiring after a while. "Our games are not designed for young people," said Rockstar's Lazlow in an interview. "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."

He made an interesting comparison to the retired HBO TV series, The Sopranos, saying the show earned numerous awards even though it was a gritty crime drama filled with excessive violence, language, and strong sexual content. He pointed out that--if the same material was applied to an electronic format called a video game--certain organizations "are all up in arms." Does he make a good point? Certainly. It's also an indication that the general adult consumer may still view games as toys rather than forms of art.

But that perspective may finally be changing. "I think ever since GTA IV came out and there were such rave reviews by major publications saying that this is actually art the restrictions about being politically correct have largely fallen away."