[casual_games] Portal Sales

[Alex Amsel]

Chuck Walbourn wrote:

> The reality is that a large number of titles world-wide of all kinds will be "unrated". Parents using Parental Controls who decide to block "unrated games" will likely need to use the per-title approval functionality for many games, particularly depending on their chosen rating system.

>   

This is where we're going to disagree unfortunately.

Firstly many people won't touch the parental controls because "it 
involves doing something". Never ask the user to do anything if you can 
help it. That makes the system semi-redundant in many cases, but I 
completely understand why it's there and I have no problem with that.

Secondly, of the people who do switch on parental controls, only a small 
fraction are going to go through and approve an unrated game. Why? Human 
nature again, Partly because it involves doing something - therefore 
most users won't, but also because most of these "parents" just won't 
understand the concept of unrated games. We may know that it's because 
of cost etc, but parents will assume that means "adult" or "unsuitable".

If they've gone to the trouble to enable parental controls, that 
probably means they'll trust the rating system. Therefore unrated games 
will disappear.

Vista question - if you have parental controls turned on, and a user 
tries to install an unrated - or high rated - game, then what happens? 
Firstly if the user has parental control access, and secondly if they don't?

-- 

Alex Amsel
Tuna Technologies Ltd (Sheffield, UK)
Cross Platform Game Development
Tel: +44 (0)114 266 2211  Mob: +44(0)7771 524 632