With kids at home, you must be familiar to certain amount of games and consoles. Some of those games for kids are fairly fun and interesting even you also love participate with your kids in the game. But, you still need to be a bit watchful about the selection of your kids’ selection of games so as to prevent them from playing inappropriate types of games. Games are randomly getting more advanced and contain more realistic theme and characters. And some games could be more violent than it should be for kids to play. So what would happen if you overlook or be unaware of the fact that your kids are playing unsuitable and wrong types of games? This is when parental control is mandatory.
Parental control software and tools are focused to restrict access to kids’ games on the basis of the content rating of the games on your behalf. These software also let you keep a watch over other areas of kids’ computer usage such as chatting, Internet browsing, downloads and online purchases of games since Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Microsoft XBOX 360 invite games purchase from their online stores. Along with buying games, these online stores allow renting movies also. These three major video game consoles include some degree of parental controls which can be restricted by a code or a password. The ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) implement rules for setting parental controls on these three main gaming consoles. Parents are recommended to watch for the information provided by Nintendo Wii, Microsoft XBOX 360, and Sony PlayStation 3. Following are the things you should be careful about the games your children play.
Content
First of all, you need to make sure that the games must be right as per your kids’ age. Each gaming systems sell games for all age groups and those are also rated by the Entertainment Software Rating Board system (ESRB). The sales package clearly mention the type of content to be found in the game and this should be found on the back of the box, besides showing rating on the front side of the box. You can also get hints on the content from the ‘What They Play’ section to learn about how the rating system differentiates violence games. Each game comes with parental controls inside the game consoles to let you monitor what your children are playing and can set the restriction on the games as implemented by the ratings. You can also restrict viewing of movies with this rating as well as all the content before download which are not rated.
Internet Activities
All three game consoles can be synced with Internet connection to allow players to browse the web, participate in online games, multiplayer level of games, to chat with fellow players. That’s why, all gaming systems enable parental controls to restrict and allow Internet access. If you allow kids to access Internet, Microsoft XBOX and Sony PS3 have built-in parental controls to monitor your kids’ usage of online features.
The Microsoft XBOX Live service provided by Microsoft XBOX 360 allows multiplayer gaming as well as social networking; here you can decide to turn on or turn off Facebook or Twitter integration feature. Even you can restrict the chat options to ‘friends only’ so that you know whom your kids are communicating with your approved list of friends.
