A Moment of Your Time

Allow me to rant, yet again, for a minute.

Today, I gathered up the courage to jump into Grand Theft Auto IV's multiplayer mode. I always get scared the first time I play multiplayer, because I feel like I'm jumping into a pool where everyone's already been there for days, and I don't even know what the temperature's like. Weird metaphor. Anyways, I did it. The game itself was awesome. My first (and only) match I ended up playing with a developer of the game, which I only knew because I unlocked an achievement when I killed him.

On the other hand, however, I also had the unfortunate pleasure of playing with a 12-year-old. Let me be clear here. I am not an agist in any sense, mostly because when I was young, I enjoyed having conversations online with people older than me, since I could hold a coherent conversation. But when you're playing a game that is rated Mature, and not just any game, but Grand Theft Auto, you do NOT need to see a whiny 12-year-old yelling at you in his Texan accent, about how he had sex with your mother last week.

My rant is twofold here. First, obvioiusly, is how this kid got the game. I am very proud of the fact that when I worked at CompUSA, I was ALWAYS making sure the parent knew what game they were buying for their child. ALWAYS. And many times, after I explained that Game X was all about killing babies, the parents would look at me in shock (and gratitude), and tell their child there was no way in hell they'd be buying it for them. GameStop, from my experience, has been pretty good about that sort of thing as well. I'm 21, and they still carded me when I wanted to buy GTA. That's fine with me. I'm happy to do that. But what fucked up parents would let their child buy a game entitled "Grand Theft Auto"? If he wanted to buy a game called "Murder Children In Their Sleep", I bet mom and dad would happily hand over their wallets. Seriously. This is ridiculous.

My second rant is why ANY game allows for these kids to join in multiplayer, and just yell at you nonstop for 20 minutes. I'm not complaining about trash-talking. I just need a feature, like in Halo 3, to mute a person who is annoying me. It's very simple, and extremely necessary. I would've had the greatest gameplay experience today if it weren't for that young'un, and I searched around for a way to shut him up. Couldn't find anything. Developers, you need that feature. I'm afraid to play again, because I don't ever want to sit through eight people yelling at a child, and him yelling profane things back. It's just unacceptable.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program.