This article is meant to be a general guide for parents on how to determine video game buying and time playing. Know what your child is playing on their Nintendo Wii. Most importantly known how to use the
Parental Controls on the Wii to limit the activities that might not be good for your child.
Understand the Game Rating
Game ratings are there for a reason, pay attention to them. The Entertainment Software Rating Board(ESRB) labels each video game sold in the US with a game rating. The rating label is there to assist you in being able to determine if the game is suited for your child based on age and level of maturity. The ESRB rating labels are as following EC (Early Childhood), E (Everyone), E10+ (Everyone 10 and above), T (Teen), M (Mature) and AO (Adult Only). Nintendo parents do not have to worry about the AO rating since Nintendo does not allow any games with AO ratings be developed for the Wii consoles or DS systems. However, there are several M rating games out for the Wii so make sure to read the rating.
This is a remind to parents that you can control what rating games can be played on the Nintendo Wii by using the
Wii Parental Controls to lock children from playing games based on game ratings.
The ESRB also provide Content Descriptors on the game boxes which farther assist in determining if a game is right for your child. On a game cover the Content Descriptors are located next to the game rating, and provide additional information about the game that the basic rating would not tell you. The content descriptors inform you of what type of violence, language, types of references you might find within the game. Some of these include terms such has 'Strong Lyrics', 'Drug Reference', 'Cartoon Violence' and many more.
How To Determine if the Game is right for your child
One option, is to rent the game before buying it. In other words, test drive before you buy. By renting it you get to not only see if the game is appropriate for your child, you also find it if they like the game or not and if the game is worth buying. There are many Wii games out there are are rated E for everyone but young children find them difficult to play. You might also find out that you may not agree with the ESRB rating for the game. A game that might be rated E for everyone you might believe should be T for teen and vice-versa.
GameFly is a great option for renting video games, allowing you test the games out before you buy. GameFly has games for your Nintendo Wii and DS, including other game consoles. GameFly offers free shipping and returns plus no late fees. If you liked the game after you rent it you have the option of just buying it. They currently offer a free trial of their game rentals.
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How Many Hours per Day?
A subject long debated... How many hours per day should you let a child play video games. Well it depends... and it's really up to you. However, we recommend limiting your child to at most two hours on school nights...if not just one hour. Other non-school days extend the hours your child can play but always limiting it a bit. Most importantly, is to keep monitoring your child's playing. This is a good way to see what games they like to play and to be able to know if it's suited for them or not. We believe it's very important to monitor not only the games they play but the amount of time they play the video games. After all you don't want their school work to be affected because they don't study. But like we said before, it's really is up to you.
If you are really concerned about how many hours and what they are playing, a good way to watch over them is to have the game console located in a central area of the house so you can see what they are up to. This is especially important with the Wii console since kids can share their Wii console number with "friends" and receive messages and photos from these friends. There are several games that use Wi-Fi and lets players play against other players around the world. Usually players can exchange Wii console numbers before hand and then play each other. It's important that you know you can control these exchanges by using the
Wii's Parental Controls. There are several websites where Wii console numbers can be exchanged with other people, including ours. So this is why it's important to keep an eye on your child's video game activities.
Look for our articles on what are the best Wii or DS games for boys and girls.
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