Age Verification For Online Gaming
By William on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 7:27 AM PST In Gamer Life
 
The ESRB has been talked about on nearly every site and forum extensively in the past couple of weeks. While I am sometimes skeptical when it comes to the motivation behind these ratings, I do support keeping violent games away from kids. However, I will not support taking games off the shelves that would have been played by mostly adults anyway. I think the real issue we need to look into is actual accountability.
I am often curious why a rated M game can be played on services such as Xbox Live by little kids. Of course, the main answer is bad parenting, but I would assume Microsoft and others could eventually start some type of age verification process. It could be a system to lower the number of little kids playing online games. Of course, little kids shouldn’t be playing unsupervised online anyway, but I am sure they aren’t being watched. It’s interesting when I hear some adults mention the types of language their kids are exposed to on XBL.   It’s been my experience that it’s actually the little kids using the bad language and acting poorly. If I’m waiting for a Halo 2 match and hear little kid voices, I immediately realize it’s going to be a stupid game of whining, cursing and team killing if they don’t get the weapon or vehicle they want. I can only dream, but would one day like to go an entire day in gaming where I don’t have to deal with bratty little kids who ruin the experience for everyone else.
Yes there should be averification process made. i am a admin on a couple of games such as halflife2 deathmatch. what i hate hearing is when i am watching a coop map and 5-7 little kids are standing around a crane control deck fighting over who uses it and screams on mic causeing lag, it just ticks you off havewing to deal with little 9 year olds saying that they are 15.
i think i know a good process to stop this madness over little kids screwing around. just use a State Id or if your UK i belive its just called a ID. you can verify someones age off of the ID thus stopping little kids.
however there is a flaw…the little kid could borrow his dad’s ID and use it to get in. but i dont think they will get to their mom or dads personal items like credit cards. much less a ID.
I think IDs could be a good way. I mean it would never stop all fraud, but I think it may deter a good number of little kids.