Advertising age restricted games

As anyone who follows my twitter (that'll be nobody then) would have saw yesterday,. I was stood in Merthyr Tydfil Tesco overlooking a display for last nights midnight shipping of Black Ops. The display had a short section of the game (looked like every other COD to me) running and then a display where the games would be at midnight and a poster.

Quite normal you'd think.

However, a quick glance around to check all the people mesmerised by this display and there was a large compliment of kids, the oldest I'd imagine about 14 or 15 down to one boy of no more than 7. No adults present at all. Now thinking about it, that kind of display is absolutely perfect for catching the attention of... kids. The loud bangs, the running video, and of course... no price, not the kind of thing to perfectly grab an adults attention.

Earlier on yesterday I was listening to the Richard Bacon show on 5, the man is surprisingly good! One of this points of discussion was COD and the effect it has on children playing it. The game is sweary, violent, obviously due to the genre it has to be aggressive, all points we don't really want to bring out in sprogs, and a good percentage of the calls basically said it should fall to parental control to stop under-age playing it. But give the parents a break, this was blatantly being marketed at the kids, it's easy to say well don't let them play it, but get them hooked and they'll find a way.

I'm not having a go at just Tesco, over my days of weekend/lunchtime browsing in Game stores I've heard some of the worst advice mankind has ever given. The amount of times I've seen parents being given truly awful advice by incentive crazy (I assume) staff members just so they sell them the 360. Mothers of 8 year olds ho know no better being handed over GTA4, Modern Warfare 2 and being told, 'well it is 18 but....'

As much as the parents have of course a duty of care, sure to god there should be a duty of responsibility with the advertising of age restricted products. You wouldn't show an advert for it before the watershed (not that I've noticed anyway) so why leave it running, even if it was a fairly innocuous section of the game, there was still shooting and killing, 24/7 for kids to watch, and watch they did.

Saying that, it is the same game store when a staff member of about 17 refused to sell 27 year old me Manhunt 2 (not a great game anyway) because I looked so young... moron.

I haven't yet picked up a copy of COD:BO but I probably will, but I have Fable 3 to play and I've barely even started that yet, but it's on me list.